GOD'S RETRIBUTIVE RIGHTEOUSNESS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CONISSUES OF FAITHFULNESS AND APOSTASY EVEN

TRASTED

IN THIS WORLD.

1. Gideon's unambitious spirit: loyalty to God, Israel's true King: peaceful retirement in his own home, when he might have been a king his victory over the foe without, and his moderation as a judge in administering internal affairs, secured to Israel forty years' rest: his death in a good old age (ch. ix. 22-35). (1) Gideon's piety. The Israelites offered Gideon the rule over them. Few men would have refused so tempting an offer. But Gideon knew that he could not accept it without trenching upon God's prerogative. Jehovah had appointed the Judges by the special desiguation of His Spirit to rule by the grace of God, not by the will of the multitude. Gideon wished still to rule only as God's viceroy; nor did he covet to entail upon his children an usurped authority. Herein he showed his piety towards God, modesty as regarded himself, and true patriotism towards his fellow-countrymen. His great services to Israel in the deliverance from the oppressor might seem to warrant his elevation. But the privilege of doing them good was in his eyes its own best reward. And a good conscience towards God and man afforded him far higher satisfaction than could be obtained by the possession of a precarious and illegal sway.

In the spiritual application, our wisdom is to make request to the Lord Jesus: " Rule Thou over us, for Thou hast delivered us." He hath "saved us," at the cost of His own life-blood, "from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us." And His very design was "that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life" (Luke i. 71, 74, 75). "Servati sumus ut serviamus "-saved by God, that we may serve God. He who is the Prophet, Priest, and Redeemer of His people is the fittest One to whom we shall render our heart's allegiance, and say, "The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King" (Isa. xxxii. 22). The loyal servant of Jesus will shrink from accepting for himself any of the honour which belongs to the Master alone. So

Paul (Acts xiv. 14, 15; 1 Cor. i. 13); so Peter (Acts x. 2 26); so the angel (Rev. xix. 10). (Contrast Isa. x. 13, 1 xlii. 8; Habak. i. 16).

The service itself

The acquisition

Mid

(2) Gideon's modesty and wisdom.-What he had sought his service against Midian, was not his own aggrandisemer but Israel's welfare. The true minister of God should act the principle, "I seek not yours, but you" (2 Cor. xii. 14, 1 1 Cor. ix. 18, 23). Ambition and self-seeking mar the serv of God, and injure the minister's own soul. its own highest honour and best reward. power entails loss of ease. The increase of comforts bears proportion to the increase of cares which greatness entails. Gideon's wisdom too appears in his choosing to remain in station to which the Providence of God had called him. was now subdued through his agency, and the country entering on a period of rest which lasted for forty years. number was the same as that of Othniel's and of Bar judgeships, and might remind Israel of their forty years wandering in the wilderness, the penalty of apostasy, just their present forty years of rest was the fruit of repenta Restlessness can never bring happiness. The adage is true, who carves for himself often cuts his fingers; he who le God to carve for him, shall never have an empty plate." every man wherein he is called, therein abide with G (1 Cor. vii. 24). "Seekest thou great things for thyself, them not" (Jer. xlv. 5). How wise was the Shunam woman's answer when offered greatness: "I dwell a mine own people" (2 Kings iv. 13). Had Gideon acc greatness, it would have been at the cost of comfort a conscience. As it was, having ministered for the Lord in p he now humbly seeks to enjoy the Lord in private; not s by successes and honours, he did not covet a palace, bu duty having been done, he retired to his own house, w he had come; like Cincinnatus, who was called from the I to save his country, and when he had conquered th returned to the plough again. Moreover, what he sough for himself he sought not for his children-an here crown; for ambition could never promote their real good.

blessed Gideon with a numerous family. And he was gathered to his fathers in peace, honoured and respected, in a good old age-an illustration of the promise, “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season (Job v. 26). He had lived long enough to "serve his own generation by the will of God," and what more ought to be desired?

2. Gideon's great error; its injurious effects in his lifetime, and still more fatal consequences afterwards.—(1) Gideon's sin, and its bad effects on himself and his family. Scripture, unlike mere human biographies, tells faithfully the failings of its heroes. The record of the believer's blemishes is as edifying as that of his graces. Others are thereby warned not to trust in their own hearts, which are by nature desperately wicked, but in the grace of God, which alone can keep them from similar falls. "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." Gideon, though he declined the kingship, virtually assumed a kind of priesthood, by making an ephod, and with it consulting Jehovah to ascertain the Divine will. His pretext probably was that Jehovah had so specially revealed Himself to him, and commanded him to build an altar (vi. 26). But the ephod was an invention of his own; and it is the very condemnation declared against Israel" They went a whoring with their own inventions" (Ps. cvi. 39). Good intentions are no excuse for self-willed inventions. "Will-worship," whatever "show of wisdom" it may have, is self-condemned; for it rests with God, not with man himself, to prescribe the mode of worship acceptable to the Holy One (Col. ii. 23). An oracle of Gideon's own contrivance, and made out of the golden amulets of idolaters, could never be pleasing to God, and was a bad return to make for the Divine favour in granting him victory. It "became a snare unto Gideon " himself, by lessening his zeal for the house of God in Shiloh. Still more so to his family. Besides his error in making an ephod, he committed another evil in multiplying wives; and worse even than this, in connecting himself with a concubine and a Canaanitess. She it was, probably, who moved him to call their son by the name of the Canaanite king, Abimelech,—a presage of the kingship which she coveted

for her son. Gideon showed the same partiality to the son the concubine that Abraham had shown to the son of the bon maid (Gen. xvii. 18), even to the degree of tacitly allowing t hope of the kingdom which he had professedly rejected for 1 sons as well as for himself. The Holy Ghost has from t beginning taught us the sin, folly, and trouble to famil involved in violating the original law of Paradise, that one m should be joined to one wife in holy unity (Matt. xix. 4– His partial apostasy from the unity of the Divine worship, represented by the one only priesthood at Shiloh, was doubt) closely related, as effect and cause, to his connection with concubine woman of the corrupt Canaanite stock, for idola and adultery go hand in hand (Mal. ii. 14, 15; 1 Kings xi 4; Deut. xvii. 17). Shechem, the scene of his concubing proved to be the seat of the Baal worship which ensued.

(2) Gideon's sin had a deadly effect on the nation.-One f step of a good man leads multitudes astray. All Israel w a whoring, in spiritual fornication (Ezek. xvi., xxiii.; xvii.), after Gideon's ephod. Sin is a growing evil. It i the letting out of water through the small aperture of a dy embankment.

"Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,
That to be hated needs but to be seen;

But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

Fond of change, political and religious, the Israelites had checked by Gideon as to the former, but indulged in the l They had the excuse that so good a man had set up the ef made out of the golden prey wrested from the enemy, as plea for rendering it reverence; by slow but sure degree reverence grew into superstition, and their superstition idolatry; and this ended in their ruin. No sooner was G dead than they turned again to their idols, from which, as as the consequent bondage, he had delivered them, and were speedily to prove their destruction. So the time i coming to all who give their hearts to the ornaments. feed the lust of the eye, and to the idols of the flesh, their sin shall prove their ruin for ever. False worship

the way for false gods. "They chose new gods" (v. 8)-Baalim and Baal-berith, "the Lord of the covenant." Satan apes the prerogative of Jehovah. But the covenant with hell only leads the covenanters to hell; the covenant with Jehovah secures everlasting peace (Isa. xxviii. 15-18). If Gideon could have risen from the grave, and seen the consequence of his one grand error, how he would have grieved! His fellow-countrymen fell into base ingratitude towards God in the first instance: "They remembered not Jehovah their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies." God's judgments and mercies alike were forgotten. No wonder then that, secondly, they showed no kindness to the house of their earthly deliverer, Jerubbaal, the Baal-conqueror, notwithstanding all his goodness to them. They who remember not their Heavenly Father, are not likely to remember earthly benefactors. Apostates from God are sure to be unthankful to men.

3. Israel's apostasy punished, not as heretofore by foreign oppression, but by internal strife: the destroyers destroyed: treachery meets treachery.-(1) (ver. 1-6) Abimelech's usurpation based on fratricidal murder. "Lust when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death"-death to others first, and death to the sinner himself at last (James i. 15). The mother of Abimelech kindled in her base-born son the spark of ambition. The name which he bore, with his father's sanction, and which suggested the notion of kingship, fanned the flame.

"The evil which men do lives after them.

The good is oft interred with their bones."

Scarcely was his father buried out of sight than Abimelech flies in the face of his father's will-" neither shall my son rule over you." Without call from God or man, without natural claim or hereditary right, he aspires to the kingdom. God permitted it, because it was right that a wicked and apostate nation should be punished by the wicked ruler of their own appointment. Heretofore their punishment for apostasy had been from foes outside; but now that they are weary of the heavenly King of the theocracy, they must be scourged by the