TEXT: "_And they stood every man in his place round about the camp, and
all the host ran, and cried, and fled._"--Judges 7:21.
Few things in this world are so inspiring to the traveler and at the
same time so depressing as a city or temple in ruins. I remember a
delightful experience in passing through the ruins of Karnak and Luxor,
on the Nile in Egypt, and later passing through Phylae at Assuan on the
Nile; and these two thoughts, each the opposite of the other, kept
constantly coming to my mind. The loneliness is oppressive, and one
would be delighted to hear the song of a bird, the bark of a dog, or
the cry of a child. These ruins were once happy homes, or were temples
filled with worshipers. Here little children played and gray-haired
patriarchs worshiped their gods.
Akin to this picture is the one of the people of Israel at the time of
this story, and the alternating feelings of pleasure and sadness keep
constantly coming and going. The condition of the land beggared
description. Homes were there, but no children were about the doors;
there were fields, but no crops to be harvested; pastures, but no
cattle fed upon them; the hills were to be seen, but no flocks bleated
on their sides; people were there, but they were found in the caves and
hiding away on the mountain sides. When they had entered Canaan, these
chosen people of God, he had said unto them, "And it shall come to
pass, if thou shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy
God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee
this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations
of the earth; and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake
thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.
Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the
field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy
ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the
flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.
Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be
when thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up
against thee to be smitten before thy face; they shall come out against
thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command
the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest
thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto
himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the
commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways. And all the
people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the
Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee."
We have here the Old Testament Beatitudes, and there is nothing like
them.
The story with which the text is associated really begins in the first
verse of the sixth chapter of Judges, "And the children of Israel did
evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the
hand of Midian seven years." But there must also be read in connection
with this the last verse of the fifth chapter of Judges, "So let all
thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun
when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years."
It seems incredible that there could be such a difference in the
experiences of God's people, and yet, as you study them in all their
wanderings, you will find, if you turn over but one leaf of the Bible,
the people who sing to-day are active in evil to-morrow, and the
history of Israel is the history of one's self. Life is like a short
ladder, as some one has said, and we spend most of our time going up to
pray and down to sin. There is a striking picture in the second verse
of the sixth chapter. The chosen people of God were dwelling in caves
instead of their rightful positions in their homes, and the same is
true to-day; men who ought to be at the front are left behind because
they are living selfish lives or lives of sin. Do not for a moment
think that I am saying that because a man is living out of sight that
he is doing nothing, for we have only to remember Gideon to know that
this is not true. He was a hidden man doing an honest work, and the
Angel of the Lord called him, saying, "The Lord is with thee, thou
mighty man of valor." To this Gideon makes a significant reply in the
thirteenth verse of the sixth chapter of Judges, "And Gideon said unto
him, Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen
us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying,
Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken
us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites." For the angel
had said, "The Lord is with thee, Gideon," and Gideon had said, "If the
Lord is with us, then how can these things be?" And the angel did not
say it. How often it is true that we miss the truth of God because we
miss the grammar of the Bible. When Gideon had thus replied, we read
in the fourteenth verse of the sixth chapter, "And the Lord _looked_
upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel
from the hand of the Midianites; have not I sent thee?" And the thing
to pay special attention to there is that the angel _looked_ at Gideon.
Sometimes in translating a foreign language you come upon a word which
you cannot express in your own language; so it is with us here, for the
Lord looked Gideon into a new man and said unto him, "Go and thou shalt
save the people," which leads me to say that one man right with God is
mightier than a host against God. The seventh chapter of Judges opens
with the significant word "then." You must have all that goes before
in your mind to appreciate this word. God has a plan for every life,
and all your sickness, your disappointment, your discipline, is for
something. There must be a "then" for you. It is the call of God and
the answer to it that makes real life. Compare Gideon the farmer with
Gideon the soldier, and you will see the difference in a human life.
Let one, however low or ignorant, but hear the voice of God and respond
to it, and when such an one answers God's call for his country, for the
church, or for Christ, the heroic in him is being stirred.
It is said that years ago there used to be a man in Mr. Spurgeon's
Tabernacle who never had spoken in his social meetings, for the reason
that he had a stammering tongue. One day he heard the great preacher
say that the Lord could use even the tongue of the stammerer. It sent
him to his home, and to his knees, and when he rose to his feet after
having yielded himself wholly to God, as if by miracle God gave him the
gift of speech, and I have been told that no one in the Tabernacle
spoke more to the edification of the people or the praise of God than
he.
Some years ago when John G. Woolley was delivering his closing address
on the commencement day at college a young boy heard him under peculiar
circumstances. He had walked in from the country. It was a hot day,
and to quench his thirst he had tasted the water of one of the springs.
It made him very ill, and just to escape the heat of the sun he crept
under the platform, which had been erected upon the college campus for
the commencement exercises. While there he fell asleep and was
awakened by the sound of a musical voice. Something that the
graduating student said stirred his soul, and he there made a vow that
he would be a preacher. It was God's call to him and his answer. He
has since become one of the world's most famous preachers, and his
influence has been as wide as the world itself. When the Midianites
stood against the children of Israel God called Gideon to lead an army
against them, and this text is part of this story.
The scene was remarkable. Thirty-two thousand people following
Gideon's leadership with the first flush of the battle upon them. They
were ready to march, and God said when he looked at them, "The people
are too many." They would seem to us to have been too few, for
literally a multitude of Midianites stood against him. But we go wrong
so often by applying human arithmetic to divine decrees. It is said
that when Napoleon marched with his soldiers he was counted as being
equal to 40,000 of his men, and so, after all, it is not a question of
numbers with God, but of the few men whom he can use.
The test by means of which Gideon's army was decreased was remarkable.
In Judges, the seventh chapter and the second to seventh verses, we
read, "And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are
too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel
vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now
therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever
is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount
Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and
there remained ten thousand. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people
are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them
for thee there; and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This
shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I
say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So
he brought down the people unto the water; and the Lord said unto
Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog
lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth
down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped,
putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men; but all the
rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the
Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save
you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand; and let all the other
people go every man unto his place." This test is going on now among
men; by the way we walk and talk, by the way we listen and work, men
form their judgment of us, and so does God. We may measure our
spiritual state by the way we spend our leisure moments, by the way we
spend our Saturday afternoons, by our rest days, and by the books we
read. There is flowing past us the stream of literature and the stream
of pleasure, and the question is whether we are going to fall down
before these streams to drink or whether we are just going to dip up as
we hurry along to fulfill our mission; or, in other words, whether we
are to be so taken up with God's plan that we have no time to idle away
and no disposition to turn aside.
"It does not so much matter how many members one may have in his
church, for under the banner of a popular Christianity soldiers march.
What if there should be a struggle ahead when to be a Christian would
mean to suffer martyrdom, or dying at the stake, or contending with the
beasts of Ephesus like Paul, how then do you think it would be?" And
yet all the time to-day the struggle is going on; both from within and
from without the foe is assailing us, the Bible is being attacked,
Christ is being denied, the resurrection is counted a myth, and the
future is being questioned, and in every part of the church it would
seem as if men thought that the life of the Christian was all a
holiday, for people are idling, gossiping, buying and selling, marrying
and giving in marriage, instead of being in the thick of the fight in
the name of the Lord of hosts. Give us three hundred in the church
right with God rather than the thirty-two thousand compromising with
sin and the world, and we shall win the victory.
I
I am impressed in this story with the thought of how much may be
accomplished without wealth, influence or material strength. We
somehow seem to think that we cannot work as ministers without a fine
equipment. We have an idea that we must have a committee back of us to
be assured of success, that if we are without influence we have a small
mission in the world, forgetting that Michelangelo wrought the frescoes
in the Sistine Chapel with the ochres which he digged with his own
hands in the garden of the Vatican; forgetting also that the greatest
work in the world has been accomplished by men like Gideon, who delayed
not for elaborate preparation, but just took firebrands and
torches--indeed, anything they could lay their hands upon--and cried
out, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and won the victory. The
text is most striking, and presents an outline which any one ought to
be able to see.