The greater the difficulty of the time in which I am, the more I have to learn that the only true regulator of my course is the Lord Himself as my object. When I know Him thus, I am " holding the Head, from whom all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together increaseth with the increase of God." When Christ is my object, He is both my guide and my support. He not only occupies my heart, but He nourishes me with His own strength, in order that I may accompany Him in His mind and counsel.
Gideon is presented to us in this chapter as the center and rallying-point of the true hearts in Israel in a time of difficulty. Midian and Amalek were to be overcome. Thirty-two thousand gather around his standard; of these, twenty-two thousand are fearful and afraid, and there remain ten thousand. But these are now to be tested as to whether they are fit and prepared to go forth with Gideon. And the Lord's mode of testing them is " Bring them down to the water and I will try them for thee there." Why to the water?
Now there are two phases in man's history; one is adversity, or, as we may call it, difficulty; the other prosperity; and each is placed before us in its moral effects in Deut. 8. The wilderness was the time of difficulty. There the soul was learning God; there the strait became the occasion of God's help when the soul had found out that it had no other resource, and thus was truly strengthened; for the real measure of our strength is the measure of the strait we have passed through with God. God's great purpose in leading me through the straits of the wilderness, is to lead my soul into the simple dependence of hanging on His word apart from and beyond any provision or arrangement. Thus difficulty or adversity differs much from prosperity. In difficulty I am thrown on God, and any strength that I have must be in Him; if I have any it will come out then. In the day of adversity all my resources according to the strain bearing on me, will be pressed into use; and if I fail, it is a proof that my strength is small. But in prosperity my resources are not so necessarily in God, and if I have a weakness I have an opportunity of gratifying it. Hence, the Lord warns Israel lest, in the prosperity of Canaan, they should forget Him.
And now we may understand the nature of the test to which Gideon's army was subjected. The water represents prosperity or mercies; it may be anything which addresses ourselves, and, which, though provided or allowed of God is, as addressed to ourselves, in no way connected with Gideon and his work. But it is the test. If Christ be not simply and definitely my object, things, good things, which address and suit myself, and for which I may be thankful as mercies, will engross my attention, and Christ as my distinct object is lost. And not only so; but if He be not my distinct object, I am not " holding the Head," and as a consequence, am not nourished or enabled to hold on and accompany Him in His objects and purpose. And here it is that so many true-hearted ones are turned aside. The water tests them, and it assumes such specious forms that they see not that they are tested by it, and so are often found wanting. Various are the forms it takes. One great test is our own usefulness. This is Martha-like: she was full of serving Christ, and, in a measure, it became her as mistress of the house. But her heart was more in her work than in the Lord, and she was not one of the three hundred. Nine thousand, seven hundred threw themselves on their knees to drink water-were engrossed by it. The three hundred did not deny the existence of the mercy, they lapped it-took just what was necessary and no more, for they had another object. Gideon was their object, who doubtless was looking on to see who would be able to stand the test. And any who did stand it, he not only equipped suitably for the conflict, but put them in the blessed place of imitators of himself. " As I do so shall ye do," are his words to them; they were to be similar to himself in place and action. What more blessed, more honorable for a soul in this day of difficulty; and how fully answering to us now. If our Lord be simply our object, we are as He is in place and action; we are " holding the Head," and He nourishes us up into His own mind and ways at the time.
Another test may be our reputation among men, which Paul calls " loss for Christ." His own righteousness, which would have given him a place among men, he counts as dung, something not to be touched.
Another test (as in Col. 2) is the effort the heart makes to set itself off by will-worship, etc., and is thus turned from Christ. It is as I surrender the water -prosperity-that I am devoted, fit for Gideon. Everyone ordinarily is seeking some prosperity, but our devotedness to Christ is in proportion as we surrender it. Yet, in the surrender it is that we receive an " hundredfold more! " The Lord in the same breath in which He tells the young ruler that he must leave all and follow Him, and when Peter retorts, " We have left all and followed Thee," replies, " You will have an hundredfold more." Had not the three hundred?
The Lord be thanked that He has given us such an object as Himself, and that as our hearts make Him such, so we are helped, nourished and guided according to His very mind.