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where they belong (Ps. 77:7-9; 89:49; Isa. 49:1-2), and on the other hand, they are disposed to take all the credit for victories and prosperity to themselves. It is well, however, when misfortunes do befall us, for us to go right to God and ask Him why they have befallen us. When He then points out the sin which is the cause of our de feats and failures, if we will confess and put away the sin, we will be delivered from our miseries. “Where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of?” Gideon seems to have been tempted even to doubt the wonders that God had done in the past because He was not’ doing them now, and there are many who today question the miracles re corded in the Word of God because they do not see similar miracles wrought in their own experience; but when we meet the con ditions through which God wrought in power through men in the past, He will work in similar power through us today. Gideon could not understand why it Was that if God had wrought such miracles in the past and had brought them up out of Egypt; He had now forsaken them. How ever, there was no mystery about it. Je hovah was simply doing what He had said He would do (Deut. 31:17; cf. 2 Chron. 15:2). Backsliders today cannot understand why it is that God leaves them to suffer such troubles and misfortunes as always be fall them, but God in suffering these things to befall them is simply keeping His word regarding the backslider, and graciously seeking to bring him to repentance and to Himself. v. 14. “And the LORD looked upon him.” There is a wealth of meaning and a depth of tenderness in these words which it is hard to expound. The words really call for meditation rather than exposition. But let us each take it to ourselves that if we will only cry to the LORD, and hon estly seek from Him an explanation of our difficulties and- defeats, He will look upon us with tenderness and favor, and with that look will come the promise of deliverance just as it did to Gideon.
despise the humble work right at hand and be waiting around for some call of God to higher work. If we will make ourselves conspicuously useful where we are, then God will come to us and call us to the higher service as He did Gideon, and Moses, and a host of others. God called Gideon from threshing wheat to thresh the Midian- ites. It was a time of great distress'when he had to hide his grain and was not threshing it in the ordinary place on the threshing floor by the winepress, and it is in times of oppression and trouble that God is most likely to reveal Himself to us. God’s great prophets and servants have al ways appeared, not in times of prosperity, but in times of distress and oppression. v. 12. “The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.’’ There is nothing more cheering that Jehovah could have said to him. It is a favorite word of Jehovah’s (cf. ch. 2:18; Exod. 3:12; Joshua 1:5, 9). We have the same word of promise, pro vided we go the way God sends us (Matt. 28:18-20; -cf. Acts 18:9, 10). In the eyes of the world Gideon was only a humble farmer, .but in the eyes of God he was a “mighty man of valor.” Men see us as we are in our present position. God sees us as we shall become through the operation of His grace. v. 13. “And Gideon said unto him, O my Lord, if the LORD be with us why then is all this befallen us?” Gideon could not see how it was that the LORD was with them when they suffered such great oppres sion’ (cf. Rom. 8:21), but it was just be cause the LORD was with them that they were suffering oppression to bring them to their senses and to repentance. Gideon was tempted to doubt God’s word. In his per plexity he asked a question which was right to the point, “Why, then, is all this befallen us?” God had already answered that ques tion in His own Word (Deut. 30:17, 18). Their suffering and misery was not because of God not doing His part, but because of their own sin. Men in all ages are dis posed to lay their calamities at God’s door rather than at the door of their own sins,
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