In this issue

THE SWORD OF
THE LORD AND
OF GIDEON
Judges ch. 7 vs. 1-11 & 15b-18
Ephesians ch. 6 vs. 10-20
Iwonder if
you follow
the TV
news much from day
to day. It doesn’t seem
to matter when one watches
it, it’s always full of murder and
mayhem and bombing
and violence.
We could be speaking about
Afghanistan or the Congo, Pakistan,
Sudan or any one of a dozen other lands, but
always the background is the same. We may not
approve at all of what the terrorist groups do, but all of them are
living illustrations of the tremendous power of even a very small
group. It only takes one fanatical person in a car loaded with
dynamite to cause hundreds of casualties; or a tiny suicide
squad of extremists and the deed is done!
All of this interests me perhaps more than the average man
or woman in the street because I used to be an Army Chaplain.
I was with my Regiment for some 22 years and over these years
I became conscious of a strange thing; instead of growing
larger like lots of other armies around the globe, ours is getting
smaller. People tell us that we are leaner and fitter now than we
were before – but we have shrunk!
All right, so somebody once wrote a famous book called “Small
is Beautiful” and somebody else coined that lovely saying “all the
best presents come in little parcels”, but can it really be so?
Well, even the Bible seems to be on the side of the small
battalions. Look at what Jesus managed to do with just a handful
of disciples. Or, think about the strange story in the book of
Judges Chapter 7, how Gideon raised a great army to fight and
God made him whittle it right down again. Bit by bit God made
Gideon reduce his force until by the time it was actually ready to
go into battle it was a mere 300 men, a fraction of its former size.
Now, the point about that story from ancient times is not
simply to make some kind of comparison with our modern army
today, or the size of the Brigade across the land. Rather, it’s
that word commitment, which is all important. With it, with your
tiny committed group, you can move mountains. Without it, you
needn’t bother even starting. For the story wasn’t just about
Gideon and his army, though it’s very easy to read it as if it was.
First and foremost, it was about the sword of the Lord and the
soldiers of God. We in The Boys’ Brigade are being asked to
think of ourselves and of our lives in military terms. Nothing new
about that. The letters of the New Testament are full of weapons
used as symbols, like the helmet of faith and the sword of the
spirit. And you and I, if we are Christians, are encouraged to
see ourselves as persons under arms, with one Captain, Jesus
Christ, and fighting for one common aim – the winning back
of the earth for the God who made it, and the advancing
of Christ’s Kingdom.
Anybody who would be a Christian, a Christ’s man or
woman, must first be a volunteer. Volunteers who do not have
the heart of the matter in them do not last the pace. When God or
their conscience makes demands upon them, like the seed sown
on stony ground, the faint hearted shrivel up by the sun and they
soon fade away. So there’s another rule for the Christian soldier
(borrowed from President Harry Truman’s famous words) “If you
can’t stand the heat, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen!”
To go back to the story again, the sending home of those who
were afraid or faint hearted, disposed of twenty two thousand
who started out with Gideon, which left ten thousand willing to
fight. Willing, yes! But prepared and truly ready – very few.
I wonder if you can guess why the 300 were chosen. The answer
is simple really. Gideon’s army was vastly outnumbered by
the enemy and as it moves it would have been under constant
threat of ambush or attack. So how they drank at that stream
might have been of critical importance. If you took up water in
your hand you would have remained standing and therefore
have been on the watch. If you chose to lie down to drink, your
back would have been turned toward an enemy and you would
have been vulnerable. A small point? Perhaps, but one which
might have made the difference between survival and defeat.
So, the 300 then were the ever-readies who would go
anywhere and do anything for God because they were the
ones with faith and trust that they did not travel or fight alone.
Ultimately, their real strength was not their own. It came and it
comes still in the commission which God gives: “Go out into
all the world and preach the Gospel. And I”, says Jesus,”
will be with you always till the end of time.”
The most important thing is belief in what one is doing, as
a soldier, or as a Christian. In the modern army, in the church,
in the Brigade and in the world at large, we will always be
outnumbered, but that need not necessarily put us down, or
cause us to despair. If God be for us and if we are committed to
a cause that is just, there is no one of whom we need be afraid.
If God be for us, who can stand against us? Things become
possible which otherwise would have been totally unlikely.
The sword of the Lord is always in the hand of God’s three
hundred. Believe it and you will find that He has greater
treasures still to share with His faithful people.
May God bless and keep you all.
The Very Revd Alan Main TD
88 The Boys’ Brigade Gazette July 2009