Gideon the Deliverer

A VALLEY abandoned to solitude, however

‘picturesque and beautiful, wears a melancholy

air. Its loneliness and silence are so oppressive, as well as impressive, that we should be glad to hear a dog bark, or a cock crow, or in the blue smoke that wreaths up against gray crag or brown hill-side, see some sign of human life. The feelings, allied to sadness, such a scene produces, are deepened by the green spots we ever and anon light on, marked by nettles, a clump of decaying trees, and some crumbling ruins. These ruins were once happy homes; children played on that daisy-sward; gray patriarchs sat under the shadow of these aged trees; hospitable fires blazed on these cold hearths; and from these roofless walls the voice of joy and gladness, of praise and prayer, echoed in other days.

But the land of Israel, when Gideon was raised up to be its deliverer, presented a yet sadder aspect. The forests into which some, and the sheep-walks into which many, of our highland glens have been turned, are indications of national wealth — the fruits, legitimate or not, of long peace and great prosperity; and to relieve, if not altogether change, the painful feelings a depopulated valley is apt to awaken, one has only to transport himself in imagination to the smiling homes amid the tangled forests and verdant prairies of America, where so many of our emigrants have exchanged perpetual poverty for the comforts of life. No such happy fortune, however, was the lot of the Israelites when their land became a scene of desolation; presenting an aspect sadder than roofless ruins and lonely sheep-walks. The houses were there, but no children played about the doors; the fields, but they bore no crops; the pastures, but they fed no cattle; the hills, but they bleated ‘with no flocks of sheep; and the people also, but more unfortunate than our countrymen, whom other lands receive when their own casts them out, they possessed no homes but such as they found in caves, and dens, and mountain crags. To this extremity had the country been reduced by the invasions of the host of Midian. With occasional periods of relaxation, and exceptional cases such as Gideon’s, during seven long, weary yéars its wretched inhabitants had suffered — for disease always treads on the heels of want — the threefold scourge of war, pestilence, and famine.

It were difficult to imagine a more painful contrast than that between the condition of Israel in these days and the prospects of their fathers on entering the land of Canaan. ‘‘ Blessed,” said Moses in his parting address to the tribes before they entered the promised land, ‘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; and the Lord shall command the blessings upon thee in all that thou settest thine hand unto.” What a shower of blessings — in the form of promises! and if anything could have comforted the people for the loss of Moses, it was the prospect of entering on such a splendid career of peace and prosperity as this picture presented. Nothing more —

beautiful than the picture; but, alas! contrasted with the future sorrows and sufferings of the nation, apparently not more unsubstantial the visions of a dream — the brilliant arch that vanishes in the storm, whose dark cloud it spans. It seemed as if the people had ‘‘looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.” No wonder, therefore, that when the angel appeared to Gideon by the oak at Ophrah, accosting him with these hopeful words, ‘“‘ The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor,” his answer expressed the deepest disappointment. Looking aroun him on the desolation of his country, and at that moment in terror lest the Midianities should ag pear before he had got his corn threshed, and buried out of their sight; no wonder that, in such melancholy circumstances, he returned this melancholy reply, “O my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us ? — the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

But whatever reasons Gideon and his count ymen had to mourn, they had none to murmur or

x cast blame on God. He had not failed in one jot or tittle of all he spake to their fathers by the lips of Moses; nor did their deserted homesteads, and ravaged fields, and empty stalls, and silent hills, belong to those mysteries of Providence it baffles the wisest to solve.

First, as to the question, “If the Lord be with us, why hath this befallen us?” that was easily answered. It finds a solution — a clear, sufficient answer — in the words with which Moses prefaced his series of beatitudes, the nail on which that string of pearls was suspended — “All these blessings,” he said, ‘“‘shall come on thee and overtake thee, zf thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” They had not done so; nor was proof of that far to seek. It rose there, near by the threshing-floor, insulting God, in an altar erected to the worship of Baal, though the Lord had commanded them, saying, ‘‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Secondly, as to Gideon’s complaint, ‘‘ The Lord hath forsaken us,” their trials proved the cortrary. They are bastards, not sons, that grow up without chastisement — they are common, not precious stones, that escape the lapidary’s wheel — they are wild, not garden trees, that never bleed beneath the pruning-knife. ‘‘ Whom God loveth,” says the Apostle, ‘‘ He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that He receiveth.” Others, I may remark, besides Gideon, but with less reason or excuse, have fallen into his mistake. Nor when blow succeeds blow, and trials, like foaming waves, break on the back of trials, and we look on them through the dim and distorting medium of our tears, is the complaint unnatural, “‘The Lord hath forgotten

me, my Lord hath forsaken me.” Nevertheless it”

is a mistake, and a great mistake — a feeling that should be resisted by the people of God, since it tends to defeat his gracious purpose, and aggravate instead of alleviating the sufferings by which he seeks to sanctify, and draw them more closely to himself. God has no other object than these in afflicting his children; nor is it possible for fancy to imagine anything more touching, or tender, than the manner in which, as one hurt by their unworthy suspicions, He replies, “‘Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb? She may forget: yet will not I forget thee. I have graven thee on the palms of my hands, and thy walls are continually before me!”

To prepare the ground for sowing, the husbandman, if I may say so, afficts it — he drives a ploughshare through its bosom, and tears asunder its clods with iron teeth. Similar was the purpose for which God afflicted Israel by the hand of Midian. That object accomplished, as the sower follows the ploughman to cast seed into the furrows his share has drawn, God sent a prophet to preach to his people. With a rock for his pulpit, with repentance for his text, and for his church some mountain hollow, where ghastly crowds, creeping from their caves, assembled to hear him, this preacher set forth their sins as the cause of their sorrows; calling them to repentance. Nor, such a forerunner of Gideon as John Baptist was of Christ, did he call in vain. Tears course down the furrows of famished cheeks. The voice of suffering ascends to heaven sanctified by the voice of sorrow; confessions of penitence mingle with groans of pain; the caves and dens they had turned into dwellings, they turn into oratories; and now another ear than the rocks hears their prayers — the cry, ‘‘ How long, O Lord, how long?” The set time is come. Past that darkest hour which precedes the dawn. Heaven’s gate is thrown open; and an angel leaving it, cleaves his way earthward to raise up in Gideon one who should break the yoke of Midian, and rise the Deliverer of the oppressed.

Such was the order of God’s government and dealings then; and such, it is important to observe, it is still. The people of Israel were to be relieved of their sorrows, but not till they had repented of their sins. Penitence must precede peace. Sins not repented of are sins not forgiven: and since true joy is as certainly born of godly sorrow as bright days of gray mornings, or rather day itself of the dark womb of night, they, therefore, who fancy themselves forgiven the sins which they have never sorrowed for, only deceive themselves — saying, ‘“‘Peace, peace! — when no peace is to be found.”

The story of Gideon is written for our instruction. Nor will it have been written in vain if, seeking to obtain deliverance from the bondage of sin and, to use Paul’s words, ‘“‘ work out our salvation,” we take him asa pattern. Copying and cultivating the qualities which contributed so materially to his success, let us enter on our own battles in the spirit of his famous cry, ‘‘The sword of the Lord and Gideon!” Assuming that my readers know the details of the history, and the remarkable way in which he delivered Israel, I observe —

Gideon teaches us to be humble, and eeledicom

trustful.

In his history the curtain rises on a scene of obscure and humble life — a threshing-floor, in some sequestered nook, where we see a man, to beat out the grain, driving bullocks round and round over some corn. It has happily escaped the pillage of the Midianites, and he intends to conceal it in the ground for further safety. This countryman is Gideon — the future deliverer and judge of Israel; and that his humble task. Fired with ambition, it might have been natural for him to leave such obscure employments to others; and, panting to deliver his country and also distinguish himself, aim at something better suited to his talents and position. ‘‘ What manner of men were they whom ye slew at Tabor?” was his question to the conquered and captive kings, Zebah and Zalmunna. ‘As thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king,” was their answer. Now this answer, though fatal to themselves (for their victims were Gideon’s brethren), presents his case as one of those where the body seems to take form from the mind it lodges, and to reveal, by a certain nobleness of bearing and expression, the greatness of the soul within. Yet Gideon, though belonging, if we may judge from this, to the order of Nature’s nobility, abandoned himself to no

dreams of ambition; but was called of God from

the quiet, diligent, and contented discharge of the humblest duties, to honors and usefulness he never

dreamed of. If God should call him to a higher place, well; if not, also well. In this combination of a humble disposition and a brilliant destiny, Gideon was by no means singular. He is one of a constellation of men who have emerged from obscurity and the contented discharge of humble offices to shine as stars. Christ’s call, for example, found Matthew at the receipt of custom; Simon and Andrew, James and John, mending their nets on the shores of Galilee. Moses got his call when discharging the duties of a shepherd in the land of Midian; and David his, when, a dutiful son, he herded his father’s flocks on the hills of Bethlehem. It is the busy, not the idle, not such as are dissatisfied, but contented with their lot, and do its duties well, whom God usually calls to posts of honor and of distinguished usefulness.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit” — the astonishing exclamation with which our Lord opened His Sermon on the Mount, and at once took his hearers captive — finds no more appropriate illustration than Gideon offers. ‘‘ The Lord be with thee, thou mighty man of valor” — the words with which the heavenly messenger first accosted him — had fallen on a self-confident and ambitious spirit like a spark on a train of gunpowder — setting it in a blaze, firing it instantly up. And had such been Gideon’s temper, to the call, “Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel; have not I sent thee?” how had he leapt up; and, casting away the ox-goad to draw the sword, with the blare of trumpet summoned his country to arms? But, a humble, modest, self-distrustful man, he is overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task. Measuring it and himself, the difference is such that he deems it hopeless; and eager to escape from an enterprise in which he can anticipate nothing but certain failure, he cries, ““O, my Lord, wherewith shall 1 save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh; and I am the least in my father’s house!” Few have so thrust office and honor away. Nor does he venture to accept them till assured bya miracle that his call is from heaven — till he sees fire flash from the cold rock, and the angel, at whose touch it came, leap on the altar, and ascend to heaven in its flames.

History offers many remarkable parallels; but none perhaps more remarkable than that between the self-distrust and diffidence of Moses and the self-distrust and diffidence of Gideon. In this they present a remarkable and instructive contrast to the ready confidence with which the disciples of our Lord — by nature very inferior men — responded to His call. It was from no aversion to the work that both Moses the leader, and Gideon the deliverer, of Israel shrunk from it; but from the very humble estimate they had formed of their own powers. The disciples seem to have been troubled with no such scruples; but the contrary. Their mutual jealousies and unseemly strifes for precedence argued a self-sufficient spirit. So strong was this in Simon that swelling waves and roaring storm were not formidable enough to deter him from an attempt to rival his Master, and also walk upon the sea — in Thomas, that when Jesus by repairing to Bethany was to put his life in jeopardy, troubled with no misgiving, he said, “Let us go also and die with him” — in the whole band, that amid the dangers of that ever-memorabie night in which our Lord was betrayed, they made professions heroic and brave as Peter’s, declaring, ‘‘ We will die with thee rather than deny thee!”

But the contrast between the spirit and temper in which Moses and Gideon on the one hand, and the disciples on the other, entered on their respective vocations, is not more remarkable than that between the manner in which they filled them. With Moses returning to the court of Pharaoh, to beard the haughty tyrant, where he sits armed with imperial power, and surrounded by those that obey his nod, compare Simon Peter, cowering before a woman’s eye, and skulking away from observation, and her questions, into the darkness of the night. With Gideon advancing at the head of a handful of men against the whole host of Midian, or hanging in pursuit on their flying columns, compare the disciples as, struck with terror, they scatter, and fly from the garden where they have left their Master a prisoner in the hands of his cruel enemies. From these cases how should we learn that our strength lies in our weakness — in our sense of it — in what fosters that frame of mind which Paul expressed by this remarkable paradox, ““When I am weak, then am I strong.” The self-distrust which cries to God for help, and works out salvation with fear and trembling; which, casting away all confidence in an arm of flesh, clings to the arm of Jesus; which says with Moses, ‘Unless thou go with us, let us not go up,” and with Jacob, “‘T will not let thee go unless thou bless me;” like the army which, drawn out in battle array, was seen to first fall on its knees in prayer, — this is the sure presage, not of defeat, but of victory. In the self-distrust which prompts to prayer, and makes a man cast himself on God, and substitute for human j weakness the power of a Divine omnipotence, we may say as Samson did of his unshorn locks, ein that our great strength lies.” Gideon teaches us the importance of having our [xin strengthened.

Any means Gideon possessed for accomplishing the work he had undertaken, were, humanly speaking, altogether inadequate. He had not a chance of success, if it could be said with truth, ‘‘ There is no hope for him in God.” Faith being then, as faith is still, the medium of connection between human weakness and Divine power, it was his mainstay. He was thrown entirely on its strength. The ship does not ride the storm otherwise than by the hold her anchor takes of the solid ground. By that, which lies in the calm depths below, as little moved by the waves that swell, and roll, and foam above, as by the winds that lash them into fury, she resists the gale, and rides the billows of the stormiest sea. But her safety depends on something else also. When masts are struck and sails are furled, and, anchored off reef or rocky shore, she is laboring in the wild tumult for ner life, it likewise lies in the strength of her cable and of the iron arms that grasp the solid ground. By these she hangs to it; and thus not only the firm earth, but their strength also is her security. Let the flukes of the anchor, or strands of the cable snap, and her fate is sealed. Nothing can avert it. Powerless to resist, and swept forward by the sea, she drives on ruin; and hurled against an iron shore, her timbers are crushed to pieces like a shell. And what anchor and cable are to her, the faith, by which man makes God’s strength his own, was to Gideon; and is still to believers in their times of trial.

Aware of that, and teaching us by his example a lesson of the highest practical importance, Gideon prepared for his enterprise by seeking to have his faith strengthened; deeming that of such transcendent consequenceas to ask,what God kindly granted, a miracle — ay, two miracles ! — tostrengthenit. The time was coming to him — as probably in sore temptations and heavy trials, and certainly in the awful hour of death, it shall come to us — when he would have to stand face to face with difficulties no mere human energy could overcome, and dangers no mere human fortitude could meet. There could be no help for him then in man; and should his faith fail, there was none in God. Before the terrible figure of the giant, and in other such circumstances, David said, ‘‘I will remember the years of the right nand of the Most High;” and so, to feed his courage from a similar source, Gideon wished for something to remember, and to rest on, as proving that God was with him of a truth — something to shine like a star when the night was at the darkest — something to feel like a rock below his feet when the flood was highest.

For that purpose, casting himself on the kindness and compassion of God, he spreads out a fleece on the floor, saying, ‘‘If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, let there be dew on the fleece only; but let it be dry on all the earth beside.” It fell out as he wished. With foot that leaves no trace, or trail, upon the grass, he goes next morning to examine the fleece; and there it lies all glistening with th: dews of night, to yield to his hands, as they wring it out, a bowlful of water. Peter only needed Christ to say, “Come,” and, without a thought, or moment’s hesitation, he sprang from the boat out on the sea. In Gideon’s circumstances he would have at once dropped the fleece to draw the sword, and rush down on the hosts that lay in the valley of Israel like grasshoppers for multitude. Not so Gideon. Perhaps by nature one of those who, like the granite that is ill to work, but is long to wear, though tenacious of their purpose when it is formed, are slow to form it, he is not yet satisfied. He has heard how much both Abraham and Moses, in their days, ventured to request of God. He also will venture, and ask another miracle. Here it is — ‘‘ Let not thine anger be hot against me,” he says, ‘I will speak but this once: let it now be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.” Of the two this would be the most obvious miracle — wool being more ready than almost anything else to show signs of dew, as we have observed in beads standing thick on the tufts that furze or thorn had plucked from the passing flock, when grass and ground seemed dry. The request — not on Gideon’s part one of presumption, but of self-distrust — is granted: and now he can say with David, and many else, “Thy gentleness has made me great.” Next morning sees the whole earth “sown with orient pearl:” liquid diamonds top the spikes of grass, and hang sparkling in the sunbeams on every bush, as Gideon, with feet bathed at each step in dew, draws near the fleece. He sees it: and has no more anxiety. No bead glistens on its surface; nor drop of water falls into the bowl, as, to make assurance doubly sure, he wrings the fleece in his hands. Now, he is all faith. He has no further doubts. Recollecting the miracles of the fleece, he looks unmoved on the swarms of Midian; unmoved, sees his army of more than thirty thousand men by coward flight diminished to one-third their number; unmoved, sees the ten thousand, like a snow-wreath on which winds have blown and the sun has beaten, reduced to three hundred men. At the head of so small a band, and with no other instruments of assault but a lamp, and pitcher, and empty trumpet, he stands confident and ready. The fleece is his battle banner. In the faith it has strengthened, if not created, he steals down in the darkness on the sleeping camp. On a sudden — to have them answered by three hundred more — he flashes his light and blows his trumpet, and with his battle cry, “The sword of the Lord and Gideon!” adds to the confusion and carnage of a scene, where the Midianites, seized with a sudden panic, bury their swords in each other’s bosoms. He had a great work to do. But so has every Christian. With such temptations, perhaps, before us as have proved formidable, if not fatal, to the greatest saints; with trials to encounter that have wrung complaints from pious lips; with probably great fights of affliction to endure; with death and its gloomy terrors certainly to face — we shall need all the faith that pains and prayer can provide. The righteous scarcely are saved: many of them entering the harbor as a vessel that, with masts sprung, and sails torn to ribbons, andbulwarks gone by the board, bears marks of storm, and danger, and a sore battle for life. Paul himself trembled lest he should be a castaway; and in

view of our trials, we should labor, according to his advice, to make our calling and election sure; to have the witness of God’s Spirit with our own that we have been born again, and have certainly passed from death to life. By communion with God, let us seek to get our faith so strengthened, that its trials may prove its most signal triumphs: and, our spiritual vision growing clearer as our dying eye grows darker, a better world rising to view as this fades from the sight, glory opening over our heads as a grave opens beneath our feet, the voice of angels falling on our ear as it grows dull and duller to all earthly sounds, they who bend over us to catch life’s last low whisper may hear us saying, ‘“My heart and my flesh faint and fail; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for evermore.”

y Gideon teaches us to make thorough work of what belongs to our deliverance from sin.

In closing the account of what God did for him, and through him for his people, the historian says, ‘““Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more.” And how was this accomplished? The remarkaable victory God wrought for Gideon, without any

effort on his part, may be regarded asa type of that —

greater, better victory which, without any effort on ours, God’s Son wrought for us, when he took our nature and our sins upon him — dying, the just for the unjust, that we might be saved. Gideon followed up this victory by calling all possible resources to his aid. He summoned the whole country to arms, as, accompanied by his famous three hundred men, he hung on the skirts of the broken host, and with sword bathed in their blood cut down the fugitives — kings, princes, captains, and common soldiers, with an eye that knew no pity, and a hand that did not spare. Now it is to work as thorough, and against enemies more formidable, that He who trode the winepress alone, redeeming us to God by his blood, calls all his followers. He has achieved a victory as triumphant; and now an extermination of our sins as thorough as that of Midian is the work that should engage our utmost efforts and inspire all our prayers. Jesus, and He alone, has won the victory and purchased our salvation; but honored to be fellow-laborers with Him and God, we are called to work it out. By resolute self-denial, by constant watchfulness, by earnest prayer, by the diligent use of every means of grace, and above all by the help of the Holy Spirit, we are to labor to cast sin out of our hearts — crucifying it — killing it — thrusting it through and through with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, till its power is broken; and there is no more life in it; and it becomes hideous and hateful as a rotting corpse; and it can be said of the sins that were once our cruel masters and oppressors, They lift up their heads no more.

This is no easy work. But heaven is not to be reached by easy-going people. Like a beleaguered city, where men scale the walls and swarm in at the deadly breach, the violent take it by force. The rest it offers is for the weary. The crowns it confers are for warriors’ brows. Its rewards are bestowed on such as, cutting off a right hand or plucking out a right eye to cast it away, deem it profitable that one of their members should perish, than that their whole body should be cast into hell fire. Nor was Gideon’s easy work. His limbs were weary running; his hand was weary slaying; and the way was long and the sun high and hot, when he arrived with his three hundred followers, panting and exhausted, at Jordan’s shore. To sit down? No. It had been sweet to lie on its green banks, and, lulled to sleep by the song of birds and murmur of the stream, rest under its cool shades awhile; but, bent on their purpose, they dashed right into the waters, and, stemming the flood, passed over, ‘‘ he and the three hundred men, faint yet pursuing.” ‘“‘ Faint, yet pursuing,” be that our chosen motto. Till we are dead to sin, and sin is dead to us, be it our daily work to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; and while asking that the God of hope would give us all joy and peace in believing, be the prayer we daily offer for ourselves that of St. Paul for his Thessalonian converts, “THE VERY GOD OF PEACE SANCTIFY YOU WHOLLY.”