THE entire history of man from his fall in Eden to the present moment is an undisputed witness of the fact that his greatest deliverances have been so unmistakably of God that they have left him nothing to glory in. Not an inch of ground have they left on which the foot of human pride could stand and make her selfish boast.
“Salvation is of the Lord,” said Jonah in the whale’s belly; and certainly his position there, and the way that led to it, left little for him to glory in.
The sons of Jacob owed their provision in the years of famine to the one whom they had hated and sold to slavery. But, as Joseph more than once reminded them, though he was personally the instrument, it was God Who had thus wrought for them, “to save their lives by a great deliverance” (Gen. 45:77And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. (Genesis 45:7)). God so overruled their wickedness, that their sin against their brother became a stepping-stone to their own blessing. But what room did such grace leave them for self-glorying? None whatever.
Centuries after this the fixed time had arrived for the descendants of these very men to be delivered from their galling slavery under Pharaoh.
“I have surely seen the affliction of My people.... I have heard their cry.... I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them” (Ex. 3:7,87And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:7‑8)). On the selfsame day as God had promised, and without a single stroke of their own hand, He brought them forth triumphantly, and this when, to all human calculation, deliverance seemed furthest from their reach. Thus was nothing left for them but to say, What hath God wrought!
But not many days later this band of six hundred thousand and their families were face to face with another difficulty. The pursuing hosts of Pharaoh were close upon their heels, and in front the forbidding waters of the Red Sea. Now was the time to boast in their delivering power, if they had any! But in their extremity all they could do was to cry in the ears of Moses, the man of God. And what happened? God heard. God interfered. God delivered. In whom could they boast save in their Great Deliverer and His overpowering might?
But another foe had now to be faced. Amalek evidently took early advantage of their weakness and of their ignorance of warfare, and made onslaught upon them. These determined foes seemed to have everything in their favor, yet they were defeated. But the secret of victory was not in. Israel’s prowess. Those uplifted hands on the mountain-top connected their weakness with Divine Almightiness, and left them in the hour of triumph positively nothing to boast in save God Himself.
Once more. After forty years of wandering the thousands of Israel were taken over Jordan. Jericho and her king and his mighty men of valor had to be encountered. What can such novices at aggressive warfare do in front of those defiant walls? What indeed! But God has thoughts and plans of His own. His wisdom is never outwitted or baffled: His resources never beggared. Seven priests, each with a ram’s horn trumpet in his hand, are directed to compass the city once a day for six days and blow their trumpets. On the seventh day they were to do this seven times. How contemptible must such means have appeared to the warriors in Jericho! What a display of weakness! Exactly; but that, no doubt, was the divine intention. What of weakness if God’s mighty overcoming power is behind it, and at the appointed moment the walls of the city fall flat! But not a single stone in those high walls was dislodged or ever disturbed by Israel’s power. God had acted. He won His own victory in His down way, and left no room for human boasting.
The story of the barley-cake in the Midianite soldier’s dream in Gideon’s days (Judges 7:1313And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. (Judges 7:13)), the story of the jaw-bone in the hand of the Nazarite, Samson, and of the smooth stone in the hand of the stripling shepherd, all declare the same truth. God’s power is the great overcoming power, and man’s weakness only makes room for it. “When I am weak, then am I strong.”
It is the crippled Jacob that prevails! “The lame takes the prey.” Happy, therefore, is every servant upon whose heart is written by the Spirit of the Lord, “Apart from Me ye can do nothing.” “I can do all things through Christ that gives me power.”
“Contented, now, upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On Thee alone for strength depend,
Nor have I power from Thee to move;
Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love.
“Lame as I am, I take the prey;
Hell, earth and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And, as a bounding hart, fly home,
Through all Eternity to prove
Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love.”
GEO. C.