Judges 7-8: The Victory is the Lord's

Image: Eternal Victory, 2017, Severna Park, Md

Judges 7:7–8 (NKJV) ⁷ Then the Lord said to Gideon, “By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place.” ⁸ So the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands. And he sent away all the rest of Israel, every man to his tent, and retained those three hundred men. Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.

Judges 8:12 (NKJV) ¹² When Zebah and Zalmunna fled, he pursued them; and he took the two kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, and routed the whole army.

1 Corinthians 15:54–57 (NKJV) ⁵⁴ So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” ⁵⁵“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” ⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The old hymn "Victory in Jesus" is very special to me.  It was sung at the first service of our church plant and became our theme song.  Every first Sunday in March is our anniversary service and though the church has changed in some ways since 1991 yet still that hymn is sung gladly and with true thanksgiving at the close of the service.

Certainly the Scriptures are concerned with "victory!"  From beginning to end they speak of the spiritual warfare that constitutes the subject matter of all human history.  Historians seldom write their books and papers organized around this principle.  Virtually all of them, to some degree or another, are concerned with the "progress of history", looking at the developing nations and events as sequentially and humanistically advancing from lesser to greater.  Most histories are entirely man-centered, pragmatic and technologically centered.  What is lost in these is the true reality that has governed the history of man ever since Adam sinned in Eden. 

There is a battle raging around us.  God declared this in Genesis 3 when he clearly stated that "enmity would exist" between the sons of the serpent and the offspring of the woman.  "Enmity" is unrelenting antagonism, ceaseless resentment and murderous motivations.  History is the outward manifestation of this on-going battle. 

Can anyone deny the ruthless and bloody nature of secular human history?  Has there been any "just" governments that did not, to a greater or lesser extent, use power abusively, if not at first then in time?  Has not both prosperity and rank poverty both served to bring out the worst in human nature for the majority of those experiencing either one? 

No, history is the continuing outworking of the shifting theaters of a constant war and this war is a central tenet of the Scriptural story.

We have to understand this in order to appreciate Gideon in context.  The history of Israel in Judges is explicitly the story of the ebb and flow of warfare.  Behind each "side" in this war stands the spiritual forces that constitute their 'strength.'  The victories that Gideon wins are vindication of the God of Israel as being the One, Ultimate Power in the universe.  The proclamation of Judges is that this Ultimate Power will have Ultimate Victory though it shall involve many battles and prolonged warfare.

When the Lord Christ came into the world He preached victory.  He preached that God was in the world reconciling men to Himself and that when He was raised up He would gather men from all the nations to Himself.  He said that any man that came to Him, came because God hauled him to Jesus and that "on the last day" He, Christ, would raise that man up.... in victory.

This is the victory that Paul celebrated in the passage above.  There is a sense that the victory has already been won in that the resurrection of Christ established Him as preeminent in all things.  Thus He has won!  His victory, like Gideon's, was the victory of all His Israel.  He did it decisively, as did Gideon, through the way of human weakness.  He defeated death by dying.  The weakness of His body, like the mere 300 men of Gideon's army, proved conclusively that the battle is the Lord's.

The great covenant plan of God, His eternal counsel, expressed in His Covenant of Redemption was to do it just this way.  To exalt Himself in the eyes of all creation by delivering His people from the battle by leading them through the battle.  The way of victory is through deadly struggle.

This view of history is sadly lacking in our day and time.  Our young people are infatuated with the "now" and they see this "now" often only in terms of how their prosperity has been handed to them.  They need to see that prosperity, like all good gifts, are to be enjoyed but it also must be understood in terms of being a battle.  If it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven then we must see prosperity as often being employed as a weapon against us.

Victory!  That should be our goal and motivation.  There will time enough for resting when the war is over.