Nahash, King of the Ammonites died.  His young son, Hanun, succeeded him to the throne. King David, understanding something of the young man’s dilemma, his sorrow over his father’s death, his uncertainty and insecurity in his new untried responsibilities, sent a delegation of his noblemen with a message of sympathy and friendship to encourage the young king and let him know that someone close by was willing to stand with him.

But David’s kind act is misinterpreted and his motives questioned.  Hanun’s older advisers give the counsel of suspicion and fear.  They assure the young monarch that David’s embassage of friendship is really a coterie of spies.  They urge the young king to deal harshly with King David’s men.  So they cut off their clothes in a disgraceful manner, and shave their beards, one of the most insulting acts that could be performed against an Oriental.  The record shows David’s men more ashamed of losing their beards than of being stripped half naked!

Then, having rashly insulted his father’s friend, Hanun is afraid. He is forced to hire mercenary troops from Syria to protect his borders.  That costs him money – one thousand talents of silver.  When King David hears of the concentration of troops on his borders the welfare of his kingdom is threatened, so he sounds the call to colors throughout Israel and puts in the field the best army he can muster under General Joab. What started out as a friendly gesture ends in a bloody war.

This strange and amusing story drawn from Israel’s ancient past highlights our tragic human propensity for always getting into scraps which are provoked by inconsequential incidents and fought for the sake of causes not worth the fight.

Most national and international differences and difficulties which have precipitated wars were really not worth fighting over.  Bewitching and endearing though a beautiful woman’s face may be, even Helen of Troy had not sufficient loveliness of features to warrant the launching of a thousand ships and plunging Greece and Troy into war.  The long and hardly fought campaigns of Alexander the Great were fought principally to satisfy Alexander’s thirst for power, and what difference was there in provoking the Second World War except it was Hitler’s rather than Alexander’s lust which touched it off?

But it is not only on the national scale that our costly and painful wars are touched off by incidents and causes not worth the fight – it’s in our church troubles, too.  The bloody religious wars of Ireland began in a difference of opinion over the proper translation of one of the Psalms.  The divisions that linger to this day in our Presbyterian family are caused by differences, oh, so small!  It is usually rumor, or misinterpreted motives, or prejudice, or someone who’s got his feelings hurt that is at the bottom of our church differences and disturbances.  In the whole of Christendom, as well as in each local congregation, there is no man’s opinion or position, be he clergyman or layman, so important as to divide into contending camps the body of Christ which is His church.

But it goes even farther – this persistent human perversity for getting into a fight over something not worth fighting for – even in our families and our personal relationships this ancient failing of the human race still plagues us.  Don’t you know of families separated and at dagger’s points with one another over the most trivial of misunderstandings?  I don’t have to go outside my own family to find a disgraceful illustration:  one member, in selfish greed, attempted to break a will and, though it was a small amount of cash involved, stirred up such resentment that twenty five years passed before reconciliation was effected between the estranged kin.

There are some folks who are always geared up for combat.  Touch them and they square away with fists up – on their guard – or strike back venomously.  Did you ever notice how many people’s natural pose is that of a coiled rattlesnake, ready to strike friend or foe who approaches?  Like Hanun they are eager to believe that any approach made in their direction is to harm or slander them.

One of the greatest dangers of living in a city where most contacts are impersonal is that we begin to assume automatically that all and sundry we meet are ready to take advantage of us or make unfair demands of us or slight us.  Before we know it we have taken a trivial incident, perhaps meant as a friendly overture, and turned it into a personal declaration of war.

Of course, there are some things worth fighting for, and had they not been worth a scrap and someone not willing to fight for them we would not now be enjoying the fruits of their victory.  Freedom is worth fighting for, and so thought and fought, and bravely died, men at Lexington and Concord, Normandy, Salerno Beachhead and Guadalcanal.

And worship of God according to the dictates of conscience is worth fighting for – and for such a cause the Puritans struggled and suffered.  When they cast anchor in Plymouth harbor aboard the Mayflower, though they had endured years of exile in Holland, and just came through a stormy crossing of the Atlantic, eager though they were to set foot on their new homeland, since it was Saturday afternoon they remained aboard ship continuing their preparations for observing the Lord’s Day.  For forty-two hours, Saturday afternoon and evening and all day Sunday, they remained on board, worshipping God and remembering to keep the Sabbath day holy.  Not until Monday did they set foot on land.  They were in dead earnest in seeking and struggling and fighting for the Kingdom of God first.

And providing in love the necessities of life for our dearest is worth fighting for.  Channing Pollock liked to tell of meeting, on a crowded New York street one day, an old friend.  On the small salary of an office clerk this friend had managed to buy his own home over in Jersey and send both his sons through college.  This day, seeing his friend still clad in the same slick, thread-bare, blue serge suit he had been wearing when last Pollock met him (and Pollock added: “You know how a blue serge suit can shine and where”), he said to his friend: “John, now that your home is paid for and your boys are educated and out on their own, you owe it to yourself to treat yourself better – some new clothes and a vacation trip now and then.” The little clerk smiled wanly and replied, “Not now.  Perhaps later.  Right now I’m carrying insurance policies with rather heavy premium payments.  I want to be sure Mary will be well taken care of if anything happened to me.”  And Channing Pollock said his friend turned and made his way along the crowded sidewalk in the shadows of the skyscrapers lining the street.  But as he watched, a stray sunbeam wandered down into that canyon of gloom and struck the back of the old blue serge suit.  “Then suddenly I saw,” said Pollock, “no longer a shy little clerk in a shabby blue serge suit, but a knight in shining armor, with a plume in his helmet and the colors of his lady upon his arm.  For was he not a knight indeed?  For thirty long years he had put up a chivalrous fight for the lady he loved, shaming the record of knights of old who fought in the tournaments twenty minutes to prove their affection.”  Yes, the fight to provide the necessities and opportunities and comforts of life for those we love is something worth fighting for.

And the conflict against all forces of evil, cruelty, oppression, bitterness, and despair that assail the human heart is a fight worth the fighting.  Moses wasn’t afraid to pick such a fight.  Oh, no, and what a fight it was – one man against the royal house of Egypt and the horses and chariots of Pharaoh.  But Moses was meek and timid as a frightened lamb until he knew that God was on his side, until he clearly discerned that the stars in their courses were geared to pull the whole oppressive, enslaving world off its hinges.  Moses saw what way the Eternal, Omnipotent God was going in human history, then he rolled up his sleeves and pitched into the fight.

Jesus was not reluctant to throw down the gauntlet and join battle with the enemy, even when He clearly foresaw in the balances a ghastly and violent death for Himself.  And it was the whole hierarchy of hell, the stupendous spiritual forces of evil marshaled against the whole human race that the Savior of men tore into.

God, for a noble purpose has put fight within the heart of man that he struggle and fight for the things worth fighting for.  Our trouble, alas, is that we pick our fights in the back alleys of human relations, and scrap over the marble games and jack-rock contests, instead of joining battle on the broad fields of noble contest – pitting our strength against the real enemies and destroyers of men.

And how are we to know what are the issues worth fighting for?  Albert Schweitzer says Goethe taught him that our fight should be against conditions that destroy or damage the highest spiritual wellbeing of man, whether those conditions be in the realm of nature, or in the institutions of society, or in the spirits of evil men.

When Mahatma Gandhi, as a young lawyer representing a client, made a trip to South Africa he was subjected to racial discriminations that were both humiliating and painful.  Because of his color he was kicked off a coach and stoned by a mob.  That one incident started the fight Gandhi waged all his life.  But Gandhi did not strike back in retaliation for the evil done him just to secure his vengeance.  Gandhi put himself in the place of every discriminated against person, took their struggles upon himself and so throughout his life fought not for personal place and honor and recognition but for every enslaved, dishonored and neglected human being.

Haven’t you noticed how the fellow who’s in the fight for the Kingdom of God up to his neck has an almost other-worldly calm and peace that can’t be ruffled by those provoking incidents not really worth a scrap?  And the reason we get involved in the chicken fights and tavern brawls is that we have not yet enlisted in the Celestial Conflict – the fight big enough to claim our total strength.

I think it was James Stewart who suggested what might have happened in an English recruiting station during the highest pitch of fury in the battle of Britain.

“Suppose,” said Stewart, “that in this hour of stern trial when the aerial bombardment was heaviest, and there was imminent hourly peril of invasion, and every man, woman and child was doing his uttermost for defense, a young, able-bodied, well dressed fellow had sauntered into a British recruiting station and said to the sergeant there:  ‘I’m a very busy man.  My business makes heavy demands on my time.  And there is my club and my circle of friends.  But I’m interested in the war effort and don’t wish to be quite out of it.  So I think I might spare, say couple of hours a week.’”

Whereupon the sergeant would turn upon the young man with strange and awful oaths and say: “Get out of here.  Begone.  England does not want what you think you can spare after all your other obligations are met.  Your country demands all that you have, all that you are, all that you hope to be, and if are not prepared to give that, get out!”

Yes, and the Christ of God, who has thrown Himself into this cosmic struggle which hour by hour is mounting in terrible intensity, does not want what you and I think we can jolly well spare of the odds and ends of our strength and time and talents – that pitiful mite of personality which is left when all our social and business and community obligations have squeezed us dry. He wants all of you – not two hours on Sunday and one on Wednesday, but every waking hour of every living day to fight with all the ferocity of your soul for His Kingdom of light and truth and right and love.