THE PLACE OF VICTORY
Chapter 5
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My text, or texts, from Judges chapter 7, is, firstly, verse 2. 'The Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her."' And secondly verse 4, 'But the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many men."' Finally verse 7, 'The Lord said to Gideon, "With the three hundred men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands."' It is the story of how God, in stages, reduced the army of Gideon from the original thirty two thousand, to the derisory three hundred men.

I want to couple these verses in Judges with two verses in the New Testament. They are 2 Corinthians, chapter 12 and verse 9, 'But God said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."' And the end of verse 10, "For when I am weak, then I am strong."

The Title for our meditation in this chapter is 'The Place of Victory'. The place of victory in our Christian lives.

This part of Gideon's story is the most exciting part. We all know it. I learnt it at a preparatory school at the age of about nine. A Miss Swain used to teach us Scripture, and she told us these stories. She did it rather well, as I seem to have remembered this story quite well without actually having to read the text. When I do read the text, however, I realise that there are bits and pieces that are missing in my memory, and I have to fill them in from the text. This is why we should be constantly re-reading every passage of Scripture as our memories will constantly let us down, specially in the details of the text.

We have come now to the high point in the history of Gideon. The life of Gideon up to this time is leading up to it. Afterwards, although Gideon still is a judge in Israel, he does not seem to reach any great heights. In fact he seems to be a very ordinary person after this event, as he was before.

Here is the great victory over the Midianites who had persecuted and afflicted Israel, which came through Gideon's leadership. It brings out a very important lesson for the Christian life, and this is our emphasis in this study. It is a golden thread right through the whole story, but it is brought out particularly in this first part. In this part God is speaking to Gideon, and impressing this lesson upon him.

The reason I have linked the New Testament references to it, is because St.Paul is testifying that he was being taught the very same lesson by the Lord. The lesson concerning the place where we really know victory in the Christian life and spiritual warfare.

In the story so far we have seen Israel totally defeated, and I think we need to notice this in order to obtain the full impact of the lesson God is teaching Gideon. We have been introduced to Gideon, and we have found him a very, very ordinary person. In fact a nobody who no one would notice unless God had stepped into his life. We find him also a very reluctant hero. He doesn't want to come out and serve God. We find him also very trembling and weak in faith. We looked at this in the last study. Even though God had given him a direct promise, he still could not lay hold of that promise. He wanted assurances.

The first thing that I would emphasise from our story, is a human failing that is never far from us in our lives. We can deduce from what God was saying to Gideon that it was a problem with Gideon also. Verse 2 in our text speaks of it. 'The Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into your hands". The implication is that if he had that many men he would begin to boast in his own strength.

It is the problem of pride and vain glory. I guess in the eyes of God, this is a sin that is worse than most. We tend, you know, to go through the ten commandments, and say, yes, thieving and adultery and so on, these are very bad and I must avoid them; but pride is something we hardly bother about. I am not sure that in God's eyes this particular manifestation of our fallen nature, pride, is not more offensive to God than all those others. That is if we can grade sin at all, which I don't think we can.

Even though Israel up to this point had been a total failure, and with all their resources they could not inflict the smallest reversal in Midian's power over them, God knew that as soon as they were given deliverance, with the slightest reason they would begin to boast that it was their power that had brought it about, and achieved it.

Oh! they would say, "God delivered us", but they would be really saying in all their actions and words 'Look at us, aren't we a mighty army'. We do this as a church, not necessarily our own particular congregation, although we do in fact do it. I know I do it in myself. It is there all the time, and it is something we need to struggle with all our lives. We will find it slipping in at almost every possible occasion. It is one of Satan's most useful weapons of temptation, that we take to ourselves glory that is due to God alone.

Even though we have marked proof in our lives in the past that we, without God, are nothing, still we will be proud. And the tragedy is this. It is seen in two things.

Firstly if, for instance, the Israelites had gone in to battle with their thirty two thousand men, and they had beaten the Midianites, then the next time there was a battle they would go in to battle with confidence in themselves, not trusting in God, and they would be defeated.

And isn't that the pattern of our spiritual lives. We are conscious of our weakness and we throw ourselves on the mercy of God, and then God delivers us. And then in the euphoria of that victory, we are puffed up with pride and self trust, and we go out in our own strength, fall flat on our faces, and we wonder why.

You may be better than me, but I find that I am constantly falling into this trap. We find this in our personal walk of holiness. We find that for a little while the walk of holiness has gone well. We have been given victory. Then we become confident, and then we find we fall. Pride has entered in.

Consider our personal service as Christians. In whatever avenue of service, whether it is in the church or in some organisation, or in some social work, or in some caring, or in whatever it may be, we start off with trembling, and we throw ourselves upon the Lord. Then things begin to go well. We begin to trust in ourselves. We take glory to ourselves, and we fail.

A church starts, as the church I am privileged to minister in did. In the beginning, when the church opened after building, we came trembling, and we came weak, and God opened the floodgates of his blessing upon us. And then we got confident, and all sorts of problems flooded in.

Secondly, the other thing is that God is a jealous God, and he will not give his glory to another. If we said that of ourselves then we would be great proud sinners, but God is all glorious, and he deserves all glory, and it is not inappropriate for him to claim that glory. So all glory should be given to him. One of the most prominent reasons for the lack of blessing in God's work is because we do not give God the glory due to his name.

At the reformation on the continent of Europe, there were three tags, expressed in Latin, which I learnt in my college lectures on reformation theology. They were the foundation of the revival at that time. They were 'by faith alone'; 'by grace alone'; and 'Glory to God alone'. And that last tag, possibly was the secret of God's great out-pouring of his Spirit at that time.

So what is the truth revealed from our passage in this chapter. In verse 2, when God says, "You have too many for me to deliver Midian into your hands," we see the first truth is this that Gideon's success and Israel's deliverance was to be and was by God's power alone. This will be emphasised in the story, for it is so profoundly marked by the way God sent Gideon and the three hundred men into battle. You could not imagine from an human point of view that there could be greater folly, or such nonsense in battle, as Israel's assault on the Midianites. It powerfully emphasises that the power was of God alone.

This is what Gideon was learning, and what we can learn from God's dealings with Gideon. Gideon was a leader by God's power alone. Nobody would have thought of Gideon as a leader. Gideon didn't think of himself as a leader, nor did anybody else in Israel think of Gideon as a leader until God made him judge in Israel and called him out. Gideon would not even have a thought of it, let alone taken it up. He did not welcome it either.

It was God who gave acceptance of Gideon to the Israelites. He went out and gathered the people around him to fight Midian. Why did they accept him as their leader? The only reason was God's power. There was nothing in Gideon. The whole story tells us that. There is nothing in Gideon that would commend such allegiance from other people. It was God who gave him the power, and God who commended the loyalty of the people to Gideon, and it was God who promised Gideon that he would be given a victory. God declared it as his power in the words "for me to give Midian into your hands". And although God repeats that, we don't really hear it. Gideon didn't hear it. He had to have it repeated and repeated. And we have to have it repeated too.

In actual fact it is true in every realm of life, whether within the believing population, or in the unbelieving. All power is of God. No government can do anything but by the power of God. He raises up one government, and he puts down another. He raises up one man and he puts down another. In the Old Testament we find Nebuchadnezzar and other ungodly rulers being called servants of God. They received their power from God. In the book of Daniel we find that Nebuchadnezzar had to learn that his power came from God. He was converted after he had been humbled by being made to live in a field like an animal. By this he was brought to his senses; God teaching him, by this experience, that his power came from God.

As Christians, we should certainly know this to be true, that our power is from God, whether it is personally to live the Christian life and to serve the Lord, or corporately as a body to do things for the Lord. We need to take that to heart.

It is not sufficient, you see, to affirm these things with our minds. We know them to be true. We are not discussing anything that is new to us, but what we need to grasp, however, is the conviction of it, the reality of it, in our hearts and minds. That is the thing we need to get hold of.

Then secondly, as we look into this passage - Victory in the spiritual realm is not dependant on human power and ability. I find that most comforting. I have gone to conferences, and usually at conferences the speakers are those who are successful. You must have the big name - I am thinking of our local Bible Convention - you have to have the big name or it is said that nobody will come. At least that is the thought behind the choosing of the speaker. I think that this is tragic, because the blessing of the thing is not actually in the excellence of the speaker, but whether God is pleased, on that occasion, to give his blessing. Perhaps if convention committees said, Well, let us pray, and we will pray through this meeting until God gives us a name, it would be better. It might simply be Joe Smith down the road who is totally unknown, to whom the committee is directed. But God would have called him to preach. Nobody may know him. People may despise him. But God has called him, so we may believe that he will bless the ministry and the preaching. We may also believe that the people will come to hear him. I believe that then, perhaps, we would have a better convention than we have ever had before.

In the spiritual realm it is not human power or ability, it is God and his purposes and his calling and his equipping and his power behind it. So we must not be crushed by the littleness of our resources. God is not limited by the smallness of our resources. We ought not to complain, when things are not going too well in our particular patch. We ought not to complain that we have not got the teachers, or the leaders, or we haven't got this or that, or we haven't got the equipment. We have most things in the church where I am privileged to minister, but our blessing did not depend on that. If we had had a crummy little tin tabernacle, it wouldn't be inhibiting to God's blessing.

As I write I wonder whether I believe that. If suddenly, in the mercy of God, the lovely building I have the privilege to minister in was suddenly turned into a concrete shack, I think I would go back to the vicarage totally crushed. But this shouldn't be so, because the blessing of God is not dependent on our power or ability or plant or resources. This is what is brought out in this passage, and it had to be taught to Gideon by the reduction of his forces until it was a derisory force.

It was a ridiculous number for Gideon to take into battle, and as we shall see it was a ridiculous way that they went into battle. God's business is to impress this upon us that our strength is from him alone, and at the same time removing all pride by taking away confidence in the flesh, and our pride in the flesh. That is why this passage in 2 Corinthians is so helpful and so relevant.

Here was the Apostle Paul. Fourteen years before he had had this transcendent spiritual experience, of visions, of being caught up into the third heaven, and seeing things that were so wonderful and so lovely and so heavenly that he couldn't put them into words. He was told he must not put them into words, but he had an experience which perhaps no one else has ever had as an ordinary human being. Then he finds that God sends a messenger of Satan to buffet him. He pleads with God with all his heart, "Lord, please take this problem away." We are not told what the problem was. Many commentators have speculated upon it, and some have said it couldn't be a moral failing, because we couldn't attribute moral failing to the Apostle Paul. I am not so sure. It was a messenger of Satan he struggled with. And the Lord did not take it away. He said you have to struggle with that until the end of your life. And God said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you."

God is our strength, not ourselves. And it is as we remember that, that we are strong. "My grace is sufficient for you." "My power is made perfect in weakness." I can certainly testify to the fact that God teaches us this thing in our lives by the very fact that we are led to know our weakness. We may cry and cry to God to be delivered from that problem, whatever it may be, and God says, "No! for in your struggle with that you will be kept in this position of knowing, and never forgetting, that your power, or your victory, is dependent, not on yourself, but on me, the Lord."

So lastly, Gideon found out this glorious truth, which Paul expresses so succinctly at the end of that passage - "For when I am weak, then I am strong." A paradox. The world outside says we must be strong to have victory. The Lord says to the Christian when you are weak then you have victory. That is the place of victory. When we know we are weak, then we are strong. Why? Simply because of this lesson we have learnt again in this meditation, that all power is from God, and all blessing is from God, and all victory is from God. He is the one who delivers us, and delivers our enemies into our hands. When we feel our weakness, we go to God and depend on his infinite power. Without that sense of weakness we depend on ourselves.

It is when we know ourselves to be weak and we go to God, that God is able and willing to give us the victory, for then we do not take glory to ourselves. It is then we are open to the power he is ready to give. We are not going in our own strength. We are claiming that power which is from God, and we find that God's grace is sufficient for us. This is one of the greatest lessons in our spiritual life, and it is actually brought out in a collect from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. It commences as follows, "Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves." Blest is the Christian who knows and has learnt that in his heart; who, when he prays such a collect, knows rapport with it in his heart, for then like Gideon we shall find God opening for us victory which we would never have thought possible.