THE darkest hour of the night is usually that which immediately precedes the dawning of the day. We find it so in our spiritual history often. How deep is the darkness that settles down upon the converted sinner, “a darkness that may be felt,” just before the blessed light of the Gospel of the grace of God bursts upon his astonished vision! How intense the joy which follows! How like the glad fresh light of early sunrise chasing the shadows of the night away!
And often too, in their after-history, Christians find it so. Sorrows follow thick and fast upon each other―
“They mount up to the heaven,
They go down again to the depths:
Their soul is melted because of trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
And are at their wit’s end.
Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,
And he bringeth them out of their distresses.
He maketh the storm a calm,
So that the waves thereof are still.
Then are they glad because they be quiet;
So he bringeth them to their desired haven.”
It was probably in the shadow less darkness of deepest night that Gideon and Phurah stealthily descended the crags of Gilead, and crept under cover of the gloom towards the outposts of the Midianitish camp. It was a solemn moment for Gideon, solemn as the hour itself. He knew not in the least what was to take place; in what particular direction, or to what point of the immense camp, he was to go. It lay extended before-him through the valley like a boundless sea. The snort of the sleeping camels, which for number were as the sea sand, the stertorous breathing of the slumbering host, countless as “grasshoppers,” came up and around him on the night wind but there was no voice to guide, no hand to lead. The risk he ran of being overheard, as he and his servant crept down the rocks and through the brushwood, where the snapping of a twig, the roll of a stone, a false step, would have betrayed them to the waking sentinels; the utter uncertainty that surrounded him, the doubts that must have assailed him, even as to the nature of his errand, because of the weakness and fear that it betrayed, must have filled his heart with conflicting emotions. He was going rather by permission than in obedience to a command. The Lord had said unto him, “If thou fear to go down [that is, to the assault with three hundred men], go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host.... Then went he down: with Phurah his servant,” and in doing so acknowledged that he did fear to attack the foe with so small a force, although the Lord had said, “I have delivered it into thine hand.” When the day previously he saw the “twenty and two thousand” confess to being “fearful and afraid,” by departing “early in the morning,” had his heart sat in judgment on them? If so, what were his thoughts now, as he stole towards the camp? Might not the Lord have sent him on this errand to rebuke and chasten, to teach him forbearance towards others, to check “spiritual pride,” to show him how like theirs his heart still remained, notwithstanding that he had known exercises, mercies, loving kindnesses, teachings, such as they had not so much as dreamed of? “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these SEE the works of the Lord,” others only hear of them. And had he seen so much, to find himself at last so like them? Was this a suited errand to a servant of the omnipotent Jehovah, who had already said, “I have delivered”? Was it a fitting return for all the Lord’s “pitifulness” towards him, thus openly to declare his doubts of HIS word? And yet how oft the Lord’s people make similar return for all his grace towards them! how oft insult the majesty and truth of their infinitely patient, gracious God! It is an insult to an honest man to doubt his word; it is giving him indirectly the lie. The soul shudders at the thought, and yet the heart doubts again and again. But, stranger still, there are not a few who think it humility to doubt, and that in a matter of the first importance. How many of God’s dear children are there who, in the face of such declarations as, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, HATH everlasting life, and SHALL NOT come into condemnation;” “My sheep shall NEVER perish;” “We HAVE redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,” still go on under various senses, doubting, fearing, questioning the fact of an accomplished salvation, mourning over sin, praying for forgiveness, drooping like bulrushes by the water-side ore( their own image, instead of looking up at Christ.
Yet are they believers, undoubtedly washed from their sins in his blood; not mere professors — persons who have believed to the saving of the soul, “born from above,” “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” One cannot be in their company long without discovering unquestionable evidence of this fact. “I often hold the telescope with a trembling hand to look-wist-fully upon the promised inheritance,” once said a believer of many years’ standing, and a preacher of the Gospel, too, to the writer. What he intended to express was, that he looked doubtfully upon his ultimate salvation and entrance upon the promised inheritance. Moreover, he evidently seemed to think that this was but becoming humility. What a mistake! Is it humility to doubt God? Was it humility in Gideon to need to have his hand strengthened by a visit to the Midianitish camp after the Lord had said, “I have delivered”? At what was Gideon looking that he needed to be “strengthened” at all? At the three hundred men, at the immense host of Midianites, and not at the Lord, or but faintly. At what are such believers looking? At themselves, at their own hearts, their own thoughts, ways, and experiences; at the power of the adversary.
No wonder they “hold the telescope with a trembling hand.” But why a “telescope”? Is the matter so far off? “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart.... that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord. Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou SHALT BE SAVED.” “Ah, that is just it,” someone will exclaim, “I look into my heart to see whether I really do believe,’ and I can get no decided or satisfactory answer.” Nor ever will while you look there for evidence. It is not “if thou shalt believe thine heart,” for that is “deceitful above all things;” how, then, can its evidence satisfy or give ground of peace? At what should Gideon have looked when the Lord said, “I have delivered”? At the word of the Lord; at the assurance thus given him; at the great and ever-blessed. Giver himself. Then he would have been in peace as to all the power of the enemy. He would not merely, have looked into his heart to see whether he believed or not, but believing, his heart would have reposed upon the word, “I have delivered.” And should any doubts have arisen afterward for the passing moment, one believing glance at that precious word, not at his own heart, would have settled his fears at once and finally. Go, thou trembling saint, and do likewise. Insult the Lord no more with “voluntary humility.” Mourning and tears, which have their root in an indomitable self-love, are not suited sacrifices, though your ‘own heart may persuade you that they are. Have done with thyself; look outward and upward, and henceforth find rest in HIM whose word declares, as to your salvation, “IT IS FINISHED.” But to return to Gideon. Guided, perhaps, by the light of a watch-fire, he advanced with Phurah towards an outpost of the enemy, and there, concealed behind some rock or intervening tree, he awaited the issue. One of the marauders, who had apparently been just awakened from sleep to take his turn in watching, relates a dream to his fellow. Dream-like, it was strange, inconsistent in its details, improbable. “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.” Who, on hearing such a narration, could see in it aught beyond the strange and fitful fancies of the brain in sleep? That a cake should prostrate a tent was as unlikely as it seemed to be devoid of meaning; and as Gideon listened, he may well have thought that he had indeed made a mistake in the direction he had taken, and the quarter of the camp he had reached. In danger of his life, if he moved hand o foot to go on or to return, in doubt of the character of his errand, many thoughts must have flashed through his mind: “What shall I do? Whither shall I turn? Had I any business to come at all? Is it thus the Lord would rebuke my folly and unbelief in seeking in the camp of these uncircumcised that strengthening of the hands which I should have found in his own gracious assurances? Are these the chastenings of love? or will they prove to be the pitifulness which grace so tenderly shows to utter weakness?” Has the reader never passed through some such scene as this? If not, he can form but a very faint estimate of the conflict and depression Gideon may well have known, as he lay there stealthily listening to the strange dream of the superstitious Midianite. But how must his heart have leaped within him, when, almost prostrate with self-condemnation, doubt, and misgiving, he heard the dreamer’s fellow-soldier say, evidently by the word of the Lord, though a Midianite, “This is nothing, else save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered. Midian, and all the host.” It is when, under a deep sense of failure, we meet with some unlooked-for mercy, some super abounding grace, that we are most powerfully affected by it. It is thus that grace often sanctifies our very failures, brings good out of evil, “turns the curse into a blessing,” and makes that which in itself is a source of sorrow, a cause for praise. That the Lord should go so far out of his way as to cause a Midianite to dream a dream, and another to interpret it, and all to strengthen and rouse to action his poor, weak, hesitating servant; that this should occur just when he was in a situation which declared him unable to repose in simple trust upon the word of the Lord, after all that he had shown him, was grace indeed, and more than Gideon, with all his experience of the Lord’s tenderness with weakness, at all expected. It seems to have been the crowning act of all the Lord’s patient ways towards him, and to have gone straight to his heart at once. Self was swallowed up, and all the fears that had their root there vanished immediately, and forever. Henceforth Gideon is another man — bold, resolute, self-forgetful, in very deed a “mighty man of valor.” And there, in the darkness close beside the unconscious sentinels, while a strange dread of coming evil starts the cold dews of affright on their swarthy brows, the happy servant of the Lord bows down in heartfelt worship before his gracious God, for “It was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped, and returned to the host of Israel, and said, Arise; for the Lord HATH delivered into your hand the host of Midian.”