“All these men of war, that could keep rank, came with a perfect heart to Hebron, to make David king over all Israel” (1 Chron. 12:38).
Fellow-Christian, if you and I are to “keep rank,” we will have to be in company with those who are marching under the commands of our great “Head-General.” You’ll not be able to keep rank with stragglers, but with those who are in the battle line.
We don’t want to drop out of the ranks or lag behind. We don’t want to get out of step and join the stragglers. How sad that would be.
Dear brother and sister in Christ, are you, in your local gathering, keeping rank? Are you keeping step with those who are going on with God? Or do you lag behind and by your example become a hindrance, discouraging those who would keep rank?
These who followed David didn’t learn to do that all in one moment—it took energy and effort to learn.
There is something wrong when we cannot keep rank with our brethren—when we find ourselves superior to all the rest of our brethren. There is something wrong with a condition like that.
God expects us to go on with our brethren, not, of course, in what is wrong—never!—but there is such a thing as being found going on with the saints of God.
When we find ourselves going off to ourselves, taking the ground of superior holiness—all our brethren are wrong and we alone are right—there is something fundamentally wrong with us.
C. H. Brown (Christian Truth)