[AI translation] The passage describes the great battle fought by the Lord's people under Gideon against the Midianites. It is a report of some quite unimaginable victory. For Gideon went into battle with only 300 men, while the enemy camp had tens of thousands of men ready to fight. A handful of troops against a formidable overwhelming force of over a hundred! Humanly speaking, it was the most hopeless and reckless undertaking! And yet that small army defeated the mighty enemy. There was no other way but that an invisible but real power, the Lord Himself, led His people to victory over the enemy. But what is more important than the mere historicity of the story is what is God's message to us through it? Because it is also a symbolic story: It reflects the lives of God's children. The mystery of victorious life is revealed to us.A victorious life! The very sound of it makes our souls blush. Is there such a thing? A victorious life? Is there such a thing as being victorious over ever-renewing temptations, over ever-returning sins, over the satanic forces that are constantly at work around you? Is it possible to overcome these ever-overpowering enemies of the individual Christian life? A victorious life? This is what we experience least in ourselves and in others. But often we make great resolutions, commitments, even vows, that things will be different - and that everything will stay the same! Once again we lose the battle. Once, in a group of people, they were talking about the saddest thing in the world. One said: living in an unhappy marriage, the other said: suffering from an incurable disease. But the thought that struck me most deeply was this: to see someone we love so much die beyond repair. - So it is sad to see the Christian life in ourselves almost beyond repair. We may once have hoped that, if we walked in faith, we would rise above the many vices and weaknesses of our lives, but then we sadly realized that, even as believers, we are just as helpless against our vices and weaknesses as we are without faith. What then is all our Christian faith worth? Why are we Christians at all if we cannot win, if we lose the battle of faith again and again? Does the Christian man, whose Lord is Jesus Christ, remain a prisoner of the passions that rise up from the depths of his soul? Is he also eaten up by worry, this terrible incognito of Satan? Does he also fall into the temptations that surprise him, whether at work, at leisure, in company, or in amusement? Does he also remain a prisoner of old sins which he has already put away and surrendered to his redeeming Lord? Has nothing changed by belonging to the camp of Christ? So promising are the words of Jesus at one point in the Bible, "I will make all things new" (Rev 21:5), and the apostle's exultant cry, "He who is in Christ is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17). I am still the same man who cannot cope with his miseries and sins that I have always been! Is there no victorious life? Let us face the fact that, even with faith in Jesus, we remain prisoners of our selfish desires, of the desires of our flesh and blood, of an insurmountable passion, of our whole hateful nature? Do we care that there is no victorious life? No! Let us not care! For through this old story God is encouraging us that there is a victorious life! It is precisely this Word that reveals to us some serious rules for a victorious life.
Here we have two camps facing each other: a small one and a big one. One weak and one strong. A team of three hundred against an overwhelming force of a hundred thousand. In a fight so unequal, it seems pointless to even try! It's as if an intravenous morphine addict - a medically hopeless case - were trying to win over his addiction. Impossible! No wonder even Gideon is terrified. But before I can even get into the fight, something happens. At the Lord's command, Gideon overhears a dream of the Midianites. The story goes like this, "And when Gideon came, behold, one man was telling another of his dream, and said, 'Behold, I dreamed a dream that a loaf of baked barley bread rolled down on the Midianite camp, and when it came to the tent, it struck it, so that it fell, and turned it upside down, and the tent fell. And the other answered and said, This is none other than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel, into whose hand God hath delivered Midian and all the camp. And when Gideon heard the dream told, and the interpretation thereof, he bowed himself, and returned to the camp of Israel, and said, Arise, for the LORD hath delivered into your hand the camp of Midian." So he is amazed to see that the Lord has already triumphed here! That mighty army is more afraid of battle than it should be. For it is already a defeated enemy! Then Gideon fell down and thanked the Lord on the spot for what he had already done! Now he is confident, he can face the overwhelming force with confidence, God has gone before him!
What does this mean? - A great unveiling of a wonderful secret. You and I, of course, are weak in the face of our sins, our passions, our desires, the satanic overwhelming power that haunts us in body and soul. It is a very unequal struggle. To go it alone is truly futile - doomed to failure! But! Let us never forget that Someone has gone before us! Someone has already earned this battlefield. Someone has already intimidated and even defeated that enemy. So look to that Someone - Jesus - and do not be grieved, but count on His victory! Remember how Jesus once encouraged his disciples? He said, "Trust, I have convinced the world" (John 16:33) And another time, "The Son of Man came to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8) So when you are fighting against anything evil in yourself, always remember that you are fighting against a defeated enemy. Jesus, when He walked among us, met and conquered all sin. This is what we don't usually think about. That is why we are paralysed by a sense of inferiority, why we are intimidated by evil, by temptation, by sin. This is why we are spiritually defeated before the battle even begins. With Gideon, it was the other way round! He was spiritually defeated before the battle even began. And we give up the fight, we feel that there is no point in fighting, it's all in vain anyway! Well, we must let ourselves know that that sin, that satanic temptation, has already been defeated! If we can accept this victory of Jesus as a gift by faith: it becomes a wonderful power within us. Say to yourself, "I will not meet any sin today that Jesus has not already conquered!" When the tempter or the evil that seems to rise up in me seems immensely strong and invincible, I should calmly say to his face: "My Master has already conquered me when he met you on earth, when he struck you with the sword of the cross on Calvary, and inflicted a fatal and fatal wound! So Jesus has already conquered, Jesus has already gone before us! Let us embrace this, let us build on this foundation above all else!
But that does not mean that I myself now have nothing to do! So, again, this is an important aspect for a victorious life. God had promised Gideon victory and had prepared everything for it, but that did not make it unnecessary for Gideon to take action and do his best! Here was a whole plan of war. So use your brain. He's organising every detail of the fight. Use your hands, your muscle, and come at the enemy with all your might! He knows that the Lord has "delivered the Midianites into his hands", so he has the victory, but now he himself must make this victory a reality.- This means that the victory of Jesus, who has gone before me, does not save me from fighting my Midianites myself, but gives me strength to fight, inspires me, encourages me to fight with hope. The Lord does not help those who are lazy, who do nothing themselves, who do not do what is incumbent on them. I cannot entrust back to God what He has entrusted to me! We cannot expect from God what He expects from us! That is why the Bible has such unambiguous, direct commands, such as. "do good to those who hurt you and persecute you", - or - "bear one another's burdens", "forgive, live in peace with all men, let your gentleness be known to all men". "Resist the devil" - and so on. Victory is won, for Jesus has already won, but it does not just fall into anyone's lap. God wants me to do my best to win. So beautifully and truly someone once said, "Expect great things from God and do great things for God." "Ask the Lord for help as if your greatest efforts would not avail, and strive as if your greatest prayers would not avail."
So go ahead and take up the fight against your outnumbered Midianites, because it is through your personal struggle that the Lord will share His victory. The apostle Paul, who truly knew the victory of Jesus at Calvary, for he preached it incessantly everywhere for a lifetime, yet he speaks of himself thus: 'I run as one who does not falter, I fight as one who does not draw breath...' So he runs, so he fights. Only he who struggles against his own desires, his own laziness, his own bad habits, against the desires of his flesh, against his own old man, only he who struggles for the peace of his family, for the triumph of the good, for his moral purity, only he who struggles for the peace of his family, for the triumph of the good, for his moral purity, only he who knows the victory of Jesus, the reality and the beauty of the victorious life through Jesus! So the fact that Jesus is already victorious does not exempt us from fighting with all our might, like Gideon against the Midianites!
And one more thing! Gideon, the commander of the army that fought, said something to his men that we should pay attention to, because it is one of the rules of the victorious life: "And he said to them: 'Take heed to me, and so do. And behold, I am going into the wind of the camp, and then as I do, so you shall do. When I blow the trumpet, and all who are with me, then you also shall blow your trumpets all around the camp, and shout, 'For the Lord and for Gideon!' Perhaps those men did not understand why they too should do the same. Perhaps they didn't see the logic in the situation. Maybe they would not have done it, but it seems to be part of the victory. Victory is assured if they take care of Gideon and act like the leader. So always watch out for Gideon - Jesus! As He did, so must we do! We must imitate Him. He once said, "As I have done unto you, do ye even so to one another."
It may not seem reasonable in some situations to forgive, but He did, so I must do the same. It may seem unhelpful to stand by someone who is despised and abandoned by everyone, but then so did He, so I must do the same. It may not be logical enough to reject the tempter when he makes an offer of great financial gain, but then Jesus rejected him, so I must imitate Him in that. Maybe it would be advisable to retaliate for an insult that has fallen on me, but He didn't retaliate either, and in fact... - well, then I won't either.
Many of you know the famous old saying, "What would Jesus do?" Well, as trite as it may be, it is good to ask ourselves that question sometimes: What would Jesus do in my place? And then I do the same! "Take heed to me and act accordingly." This is also part of the victorious life. And then, as I take up my tasks: power flows into me, the power of Jesus. As I face difficult questions: I find unexpected solutions. I begin to feel as if the love and power of someone else behind me, or within me, is rising up and lifting me up myself. Jesus becomes involved in my daily life and wins. I am winning! We win together! His victory is mine!
Our Gideon also says: People, be victorious over your Midianites! Listen only to me and act accordingly.
Amen
Date: 19 October 1969 Evangelization