On Friday evening Mr. Eardley, in the cottage of Holdich, went on with the history which he had chosen as his theme.
LECTURE III.—FAITH IN OBEDIENCE.
We are to-day to examine faith in a further state of development. If only the green leaves of hope appear, if—as with the barren fig-tree in the parable—there be no fruit, or promise of fruit, hope itself becomes but self-deception. Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? asked the Saviour; If ye love Me, keep My commandments. Faith must blossom into obedience, as we see the fruit-trees in our orchards now bursting into brightness and beauty. Yes; obedience is the blossom, and the essence of its fragrance, self-denial. In heaven obedience is ever a source of delight; but in a world of sin like this, it must, sooner or later, involve a sacrifice of the human will to the divine. Sweet to our Lord is the fragrance which rises like incense when the lips of his servant—tempted and tried—can echo the words once breathed from His own to His Father in heaven, Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
Gideon had received a promise from the Lord: it was linked, as God’s promises ever are, with a command. That night the Lord thus spake to the son of Joash: “Take thy father’s young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it; and build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down.”
Many difficulties lay in the way of the execution of such a command, and obedience to it must be fraught with great danger. We should not have marvelled had we found that Gideon had pleaded to be spared a part at least of the painful task assigned him. He was not of the tribe to which pertained the service of the sanctuary; he had, under ordinary circumstances, no right to offer such a sacrifice to God. His own father was an idolater: was it for Gideon to destroy what a parent had set up, to draw down upon himself, as might be expected, the severe displeasure of that parent, and perhaps involve Joash in the peril to which he himself would be certainly exposed? Then—as Gideon might have anxiously reflected—as it would be impossible for him by the strength of his single right hand to cut down a grove, destroy an altar, and build another as God had commanded, where was he to find comrades trusty enough and bold enough to help in the perilous work?
Gideon is not represented in the sacred narrative as a man likely to rush heedlessly upon an enterprise of difficulty and danger, and such thoughts as I have suggested are likely to have passed through his mind. They would have led many in his place to frame excuses, or at least to interpose delays. But we hear not of Gideon doing either. A direct command had been given; simple, unquestioning obedience followed. Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the Lord had said unto him. Conscious of danger to be apprehended, not only from the Midianites and the men of his own city, but even from the household of his father, the son of Joash chose the night-time to accomplish his task. Under the cover of darkness, when other eyes were closed in sleep, Gideon and his companions felled the trees of the grove, cast down the altar of Baal, and raised another to Israel’s God. They led thither the appointed sacrifice, slew the bullock, and set fire to the wood, from whence the smoke of the burnt-offering rose towards heaven. That was a busy, an eventful, and must have been an anxious night to Gideon. By so decisive an act, he had indeed drawn the sword and thrown the scabbard away.
THE ALTAR RAISED.