What might be God’s path to bring us to major triumph?
Gideon’s history blesses us by showing how, unexpectedly, our troubles might just be one such path…
In Judges 7, Gideon learns the hard way how God’s victorious power may be revealed right amid absurd human weakness. We’ll jump into his story halfway through (though how God trained him in ch6 is well worth feeding on too). Gideon was obviously a man of charisma, and at the start of ch7 he succeeds in recruiting an army of thirty thousand to liberate Israel from the invader, despite the enemy’s vast army, more than four times their number (see 7:12, 8:10).
But then, first, God told him to send home any who were frightened (v3); so much for all his efforts in recruitment and motivation. That cost him two thirds of his army. And next, God separated the rest into two groups, one nine thousand seven hundred strong, the other a mere three hundred. And just when (one imagines) Gideon was feeling relief that this time he would lose just 3% more, God told him to send the nine thousand home; so that – this was evidently vital, and it’s a key lesson for us – Israel would go into battle with faith in God, not in their own strength (Jud 7:2; cf 2 Cor 1:9, 4:7).
Hardly the normal way to go to war; but clearly a spiritually vital step – and one facilitated by God’s rather drastic weakening of Gideon. But now came the battle plan. Under God’s guidance, Gideon gave each man a light in a clay jar, and set them to encircle the enemy’s camp. In the middle of the night, the invaders woke to hear trumpet blasts and the smashing of clay jars, and to see lights flaming out in every direction around them. Panic ensued, in which God intervened directly (v22); and the enemy was totally put to flight. It was a fantastic, improbable victory, and the Midianites never came back.
But what’s the lesson? It was when those clay jars were broken that the victory came. Can we translate this into spiritual terms? In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul tells us there are certain situations in particular through which God’s resurrection power is released; and this may help us grasp why certain things happen to us, & what’s being achieved in them. We have, he says, a `treasure`, `the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ` (v6, NIV as usual). But, he says, `we have this treasure in jars of clay` (v7). Very reminiscent of Gideon’s story; but if that was in Paul’s mind, he will have remembered what victory cost: those clay jars had to be broken, irreparably, for the treasure inside to shine out. At any rate that is what is happening to him as he writes 2 Corinthians. We’re bringing `the light of the knowledge of the glory of God`, he says (4:4), but it’s not easy for us `jars of clay`: `We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed… struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body’ (4:8-10).
There seems to be a central spiritual principle here: the divine power of the resurrection goes with the brokenness of the cross. The principle was most clearly set out by the divine `wounded healer’, Jesus himself, in John 12:24: `Unless’ – unless – `a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ (Thankyou, Lord, that you at least know what it’s like to have to go this way.) That was the path of the cross, and, said Jesus, there is no alternative route to glory: `Whoever serves me must follow me’ (John 12:26,23). At any rate, Paul knows it is happening to him; in the pressures, in the criticisms he describes, in the pitiless disclosures of his own human weakness. They connect to this `carrying around in our body the death of Jesus’. In fact, they are part of the process of being made like Jesus, `transformed into his likeness’, that shone over Paul’s horizon in 3:18. But growing into Christ cannot totally exclude the cross that was so central to his incarnation here.
And to recognise this is to find meaning inherent in our own stresses, our inadequacy, even our failures (cf 2 Cor 12:10). Somehow, it seems, they make us useable; they are inseparable from the release, somewhere and somehow, of God’s power, of `the life of Jesus’ (4:10-11). It may even be, as a Japanese colleague counselled me late one night about an issue I felt was genuinely harming my own work, that our difficulty is our strength. It’s okay to feel bad; but `therefore we do not lose heart’, says Paul; even when (to quote Eric Clapton’s Unplugged now) we’re down to `running on faith’.
In all the pressure, then, Paul lives, survives, by faith. (Lord, please give me strength to trust too.) Faith that in all the problems – even as the `clay jar’ that he has become is `wasting away'(v16) – so the gospel is furthered, God is glorified, and others benefit (v12,15). `In all these things’, as he says in a similar context in Romans 8:35-37, that is, in `trouble, hardship, famine, nakedness, danger` – we will turn out to be `more than conquerors…’
(Thus the Chinese writer Watchman Nee, in his classic What Shall This Man Do?: `Life, Paul tells us, is that with which he serves the Church, and in doing so he defines the thing upon which all true ministry in the Church is founded. Death, working in the servant of God, produces life; and because he has life, others too have life. The Church receives, because some are willing to bear the Cross… By allowing God to work through their trials and testings, praising Him and submitting to His will, His children make it possible for Him to bring life to others. But only those who pay the price receive this costly ministry. For life is released through death, but only so… Thus we see two ministries by which the Body is built up – gifts and life; and we may ask ourselves: In which do we discern God’s highest purpose? I reply: not in gifts, but in the life from Christ which comes through death.’)
Let’s apply this as we can to ourselves. 2 Cor 4:7 says that our innermost contents are very different from our packaging. Astonishingly, we carry inside us an amazing `treasure`; and we can think here also of the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God Himself, who is flowing out through us all the time. (Cf 2 Cor 3:6, and John 7:38-39.) It’s an incredible privilege. We are like tin cans containing a wonderful vintage wine. But suppose you want to taste that wine: what do you have to do? You have to break open the can. Or like a cardboard box containing very expensive chocolates; what do you have to do if it’s time to eat them? You have to rip the box open; you have to break the packaging. And surely we recognise those experiences. Things that happen in our family, in our work-life, in our health. Why do they happen? 4:10: `We… carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body…’
Let me give another kind of example. Many of us have to do things upfront, at work or youth group or church. And most of us know what it is to go home realising that it’s all gone wrong, that it was (or anyway seemed) such a rubbish session. (Hopefully we’ve not followed in the steps of the preacher who realised at his sermon’s end that his trouser zip was obviously undone all the time. But there is worse that can happen: a friend of mine became associate minister in a large, respectable church, and the first time he went into the pulpit his nerves so overcame him that he vomited all over it in front of everybody.) And we can’t help asking: God, why did you let this session be ruined? I’m so second-rate, so weak, so incompetent, I hope not too many people notice – but why did it have to be this way? Lots of us know this experience. Here then is God’s word for us: Paul is saying in 2 Cor 4:7-11 that it has a meaning, even a really significant value…
We may call this the Calvary Principle: the fundamental pattern of how God’s resurrection power is released. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says, astoundingly, that we are being `transformed into the likeness` of Jesus (3:28). But is this not likely sometimes to include going the way Jesus went, the cross as the road to the release of all God’s resurrection goodness and power? Again let’s recall John 12: `I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds… Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me…`
Paul knows that this is the pattern of the cross (see 2 Cor 13:4). These things have happened to him in full measure. But look at the crucial verses of 2 Cor 12:8-10: the Calvary principle is this (and grasping it can give us both relief and joy): If we’ve come into God’s kingdom, then our weakness will turn out to be strength, and our suffering is the gateway to glory, here or in the millions of years of eternity. (Outside that kingdom, of course, it isn’t; out there, suffering may just lead to anarchy and tragedy.) So often in the new testament suffering and glory are presented as two sides of a coin: see Rom 8:17-18, for example, or the various instances in 1 Peter. `My power is made perfect in weakness`, God told Paul (2 Cor 12:9).
And if we’ve absorbed this we can draw on his strength to say – and sometimes we will have to: Lord, I know you love me enormously, I don’t enjoy what you’re doing at all; the pressures, the troubles, my weakness. But, I know that any experience you permit of the cross must lead to resurrection; I know that because you love me you will permit suffering only if it leads to enormous goodness that totally outweighs it [Rom 8:18 again]; so Lord, even with difficulty, I trust you, go on…
And as we pray that, let’s bring our minds prayerfully back to the history of Gideon: how those clay jars were smashed, but so, and only so, colossal victory was won. Because this is what so many old testament stories are for: they contain for us events that help us grasp more imaginatively the vital principles they embody; and that the new testament teaches us in clearer, but perhaps more abstract, terms…
