Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII
And the story is not antiquated in substance, however the form of the
contests which God's soldiers have to-day to fight has changed. Still
it is true that we shall only wage war aright when we feel that it is
His cause for which we contend, and His sword which wins the victory.
If Gideon had put himself first in his warcry, or had put his own name
only in it, the issue would have been different.
May we not also venture to apply the peculiar accoutrements of the
victorious three hundred to ourselves? Christ's men have no weapons to
wield but the sounding out from them, as from a trumpet, of the word of
the Lord, and the light of a Christian life shining through earthen
vessels. If we boldly lift up our voices in the ancient war-cry, and
let that word peal forth from us, and flash the light of holy lives on
a dark world, we may break the sleeper's slumbers to a glad waking, and
win the noblest of victories by leading them to enlist in the army of
our Captain, and to become partakers of His conquests by letting Him
conquer, and thereby save them.
STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST
'But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him
down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in
the prison-house. 22, Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again
after he was shaven. 23. Then the lords of the Philistines gathered
them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and
to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into
our hand. 24. And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for
they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the
destroyer of our country, which slew many of us. 25. And it came to
pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson,
that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the
prison-house; and he made them sport; and they set him between the
pillars. 20. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand.
Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth,
that I may lean upon them. 27. Now the house was full of men and women;
and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon
the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson
made sport. 28. And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God,
remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Phillistines. And he
bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords,
and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew
at his death were more than they which he slew in his life. 31. Then
his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him,
and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Ishtaol in the
burying place of Munnah his father. And he judged Israel twenty
years.'--Judges xvi. 21-31.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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