After that you get Gideon, and the lessons of his life are very familiar to us. You have the power of Midian coming in. The Midianites were those who carried Joseph down into Egypt, and they represent in that way that which carries the people of God into the world. They signify the strife, as the name Midian means, the strife that comes in through your lusts, and members which are in the world, as the apostle James puts it. This Midianite invasion is the invasion of the world into the professing Church. And what an awful invasion that is, dear brethren. We can see it about us today. It is not of Christ surely. You never find that the world represented Christ. The world does not make you think of Christ except in contrast. It is the very opposite of Christ. And wherever the world takes a place in the heart, it displaces that much of Christ.
The reason is a very suggestive one. You remember the apostle John says that whatever is not of the Father is of the world. You notice, in the Gospel of John, the Lord has one word on His lips always, and that is the Father. It was His joy to confess the Father; it is the world's to displace the Father. And so that is the element that is not of Christ, the exact opposite of Christ. It is the world, whether it comes into your heart individually, or whether it oppresses the whole Church of God collectively.
Now Gideon is the deliverer from the power of Midian, and here again, as you will remember, and as we have already seen this lesson in Deborah and in Jael, you have weakness emphasized. Only now it is a weakness that has to be produced, and that has got to be complete. They have to learn, Gideon has to learn his weakness. We, of course, cannot trace out his history. We have done that in some measure already; but the thought throughout is stripping off one thing after another, robbing him of one prop after another, until he is left, and the little band that is associated with him, in the presence of that mighty host that covers the whole face of the earth. He is left with the 300, and not even a sword in their hands, only a sword on their lips. They have the trumpets and the torches, and that cry, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." It is the sword that is spoken, the spoken sword, rather than a sword in their hands.
They are shorn of all strength, shorn so completely that they are likened to a cake of barley bread, tumbling into the midst of the camp and knocking down a tent. They are almost literally that, objects of the enemy's utter contempt; and yet, with all their weakness and puny helplessness, they have the sword upon their lips; it is the sword of the Lord. If the sword of the Lord is on their side, what do they want with any human sword? And if the trumpet which they blow proclaim His power and His leadership, and if the light which they hold up is "holding forth the word of life in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, amongst whom ye shine as lights in the world," what need have they of other help? Thus Gideon and his little company speak to us of the power of Christ resting upon weakness. As the apostle says, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
The power of the world we see, with much else, in Pergamos, Sardis, and Laodicea, while in Gideon we see the overcomer in the churches, and in Philadelphia.