God’s Strength in Our Weakness

I invite you to follow along, if you can, as I read from Judges and the sixth chapter.

And as you turn there, I am both humbled and encouraged by the welcome given to me by your president. And it’s no small thing to be invited back somewhere. You can usually get invited somewhere once. If they invite you a second time, you don’t know whether it’s because it was good or they wanted to give you a second chance. And by this time, maybe they’re saying, “Well, you know, he’s getting old; we’ll give him one more try.” But it’s a delight to be here.

I want to assign your homework. There will not be a test given by me. But I want to suggest that for homework you will read Judges chapter 6 and Judges chapter 7. I’m not going to take the time to read the whole of Judges 6 now. And tomorrow, all being well, we will follow into chapter 7, and if you have done your homework, then you’ll be very familiar with the text.

So let me read briefly and intermittently here from Judges 6. But we start with verse 1:

“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of [the Lord] cried out for help to the Lord.

“When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of [bondage]. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” But you have not obeyed my voice.’

“Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon”—who’s the key guy, key chap in this—“Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.’”

And then you’re going to read the rest of that on your own. And later on, he’s given an assignment, down at about in the mid-twenties. And he has to go and tear down the altar that his father had allowed to be raised. We’ll say something about that. And then those of you who are familiar with this story will have heard all kinds of sermons on the fleece, which comes at the end of the chapter—many of them not particularly helpful but nevertheless memorable. And I’ve had a few of them myself; I hope I haven’t preached them.

But anyway, a brief prayer before we look at this. We need help, don’t we?

Father, what we know not, teach us; what we have not, give us; what we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.

Well, I think it would be obvious to you from turning to these chapters that what I have to say to you from the Bible is along these lines: it is to address a paradox which we find throughout the Bible, and that is the strength that is found in weakness. Classically, you remember Paul in 2 Corinthians, in chapter 12, in the saga there that is unfolded for us. Eventually, he gets resolution in his life when he recognizes that when he is weak, then he is strong, because it is in his weakness that the power of God rests upon him.[1]

It is the almighty God who is overseeing the journey of his people.

So I address you this morning, myself as an old clay pot and addressing a few thousand old clay pots in front of me.[2] That may not seem a very nice way to address you, but it is the way in which the Bible describes us. Here we are. You can look along the row and say, “Oh, look, there’s another old clay pot, and a little bit broken and chipped but nevertheless still shining.” And as you look around, the temptation is there to either be jealous of others—their pot may seem to be a little shinier, maybe a little taller, maybe a little stronger—or, conversely, proud of ourselves. And so it’s very, very important that we understand who we are as made by God and made in Christ.

It’s particularly apropos a congregation, a student body like this. It’s some years now since Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, made this observation: she said, “For 30 years the self-esteem movement told … young [people that] they’re perfect in every way. It’s yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.”[3] “No proper sense of inadequacy.”

The first time I saw an American football game was at an air force base in Bushey in Hertfordshire. It stands out in my mind because I had not a clue what was going on. The ball was the wrong shape as far as I could tell, and beyond that, it was just mystifying to me. The only thing that kept my attention was that I was introduced for the first time in my life to cheerleaders. And the cheerleaders did what cheerleaders do: they cheered. And the team was playing an air force team—a United States Air Force team—and they were being absolutely slaughtered by the air force. I mean, the score was going up exponentially: 7, 14, 21, 28, and all the way to the end. But the cheerleaders for this beleaguered little group kept up with their cheer. The only one I remember goes like this. See, they had these things they shook—pom poms or whatever. I don’t know what they are. And they were going like this: “You can do it! You can do it! You can! You can! You can do it! You can do it! You can! You can!”

Now, before the game started, that sounded okay. But by the time it got to about 28–0, you would have thought they would have come up with something else to say—like, you know, call it at the line of scrimmage: “You are rotten! You are rotten! You are! You are!” Something along those lines.

The great temptation is to believe in ourselves, isn’t it? Big views of ourselves and small views of God. It’s so good that we began as we did: by praising “the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.”[4] It is the almighty God who is overseeing the journey of his people as it is described here in Judges. And the record that is recorded for us in the book of Judges is a continuing cycle of the blessing of God, the raising-up of a leader, and then the people going south again. If you want to extend your homework assignment, you can read all the way from the beginning of Judges. But this is essentially it: “And all that generation [was] gathered to their fathers,” at the end of section one. “And [then] there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” And then it says, “And the people … did what was evil [again] in the sight of the Lord.”[5]

And the recurring cycle is straightforward: They rebel against God; God comes in retribution; they then repent; he comes in rescue; and then, when you would think they’re ready to go, the cycle repeats itself. And so there is this great discovery, then, in the midst of it of the importance of the servant of God understanding who God is.

Now, I’m not going to do this entirely for you. My old art teacher at Ilkley Grammar School—his name was Tommy Walker—he would give us assignments. We had to go home and draw a chair. I should never have ever been in the class. Nothing looked less like a chair than whatever I had put on the paper. He used to give marks out of five—out of five—and I would regularly get, like, minus two. And I would go up to him and say, “Mr. Walker, I can’t do this.” And he would always say the same thing: “Listen, Begg, I’ll get you started, but I’m not doing it for you.” Okay? So, I’m getting you started, but I’m not doing it for you—hence the homework assignment. The test of whether I’m actually communicating with you will not be that you know everything now about chapter 6 but that I have left so many unanswered questions that you’ve got to find the answer to them. Okay?

Let me summarize it. First of all, in verses 1–10, the people of God are in deep trouble. They’re in deep trouble. They’re hiding away in caves. They’re in the mountain passes. The responsibilities that they have for sustaining their lives with one another are under jeopardy constantly. They are oppressed, in verse 2, by the Midianites. The invasion that has come in verse 3 has impoverished them, as we see in verse 6. And the cause and effect of this comes across clearly: “And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out … to the Lord [for help].” They cried out to the Lord for help because they were aware that they did not have it in themselves to be able to deal with the challenge that they faced. They also recognized that it was God who had given them into the hands of the Midianites. That’s verse 1. In other words, God, in his sovereign plan, put them in this predicament—hence the hymn “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.”[6] Doesn’t he? Many times, when we say, “I wonder why this has happened to me…” The providences of God are seldom self-interpreting. We can’t usually determine just why this is happening. And it may not actually be about us; it may be about other people. It may not be about now; it may be about later.

Nevertheless, it was in their experience of weakness that they cried out for help to the Lord. And then we’re told that the Lord answered in verse 7. He sent them “a prophet.” “A prophet.” Now, when I was driving here this morning, I tried to follow carefully along 271, 71, 270, 70—and then I kind of lost interest in it. But imagine that I had broken down on 270, and I pressed the thing that you have in your car nowadays—which is both scary and wonderful. And as I sat by the side of the road, they sent me a librarian. A librarian! Now, I don’t want to be unkind to the librarian who’s here, or the librarians, but you don’t expect your car to be repaired by a librarian.

Nor did these people expect that God would send them a prophet. You see, God knew what they needed. And God knows what his people need. They knew that they needed deliverance from their predicament, and God knew that they needed somebody to explain to them why they were in the predicament in the first place. That was the key. “Get me out of this! I want out of this! Set me free from this! I don’t like this! We want to be in charge!” And so on.

The application is, I think, fairly straightforward, and we can move on from it. The word of God came to the people. The word of God comes to us. The word of God comes and says, “Remember what I did”—verses 8 and 9. “Remember what I told you.” And they were able to reflect on the way that God had ordered their steps, in the way that many of you will also be able to do.

Some of you, I think, listen to the music of Fernando Ortega. And what a wonderful job he does on that song “When all thy mercies, O my God, my rising soul surveys.” In other words, when I look back and I realize… He never sings the verse that is most striking to me. It goes like this:

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Your hand unseen conveyed me safe
And brought me up to man.

… Before my infant heart conceived
From whom these comforts flowed.[7]

So he says, “You remember, don’t you?” “Yeah! We remember!” What’s the problem? “You haven’t listened”—the end of verse 10: “But you have not obeyed my voice.” “Oh, you’re in the class. You’re doing the discipleship program. You remember, you remember, you remember. But you haven’t actually obeyed.”

And just when we might expect that the impact is going to be revealed in the anger of God, you notice that he sends an angel: “[And] the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash,” who was the father of Gideon.

A Good Question

And it is in that encounter that we have what I just wrote as a heading: a good question. A good question. What is that question? Well, the Angel of the Lord appeared and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” And Gideon said to him, “Excuse me? If the Lord is with us, why, then, has all this happened to us? I mean, if the Lord is with us—if the Lord is with us, we’re not supposed to have this stuff happening, presumably.” You see why it is that they need to have the explanation for their predicament.

Not only does he ask why, but he asks where: “And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us about being brought up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us. He’s given us into the hand of Midian.”

Now, do you see how important it is that these people have the interpretation of their circumstances given to them by the prophet, back up there in verses 8 and 9? It is vitally important that we allow God to interpret things for us. Just on Monday, I had the privilege of being with my friend Tim Challies down in Nashville for the launching of his book that he has written on bereavement. Because, as many of you who follow his blog will know, that his son, who was a student at Boyce College or Southern—I can’t remember—down in Louisville, at the age of twenty-one (the age of some of you here) dropped dead. In a moment, gone. No scientific or medical investigation subsequent to that has been able to give any indication at all as to why it was that his life was finished at that tender age. And as we worked together on Monday in front of this group and as he recounted some of the story, what was so impressive to me was he was saying, “I don’t have answers to those questions. But I trust God. And ‘God is his own interpreter.’”[8]

Wonderfully, too, it is to Gideon that the assignment is then given—an unlikely person from Gideon’s perspective but God’s person in God’s eyes. “And the Lord turned to him”—verse 14—“and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?’”

Well! He says, “Well, wait a minute!” “‘If now’”—verse 17—“‘I have found favor in your eyes’”—oh, you’re not going to believe what the Lord says?—“‘then show me a sign that it is you who speak[s] with me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.’ And he said, ‘I will stay [until] you return.’”

Do you get this? It’s got hints of Moses, doesn’t it? “Moses, you’re my man. I want you to go and speak to Pharaoh.” The response of Moses? “I’m not a good speaker. I can’t do this.”[9]

You see, it is only when we discover our inadequacy that we enter into the threshold of discovering the adequacy of God. It is only when we reckon with the fact that when we look around, we’re not as bright as we had hoped to be, not as tall, not as handsome, not as athletic, not as just about anything.

Some of you, like me, have known life standing by the radiators in the middle of the school day, having been transferred into a new place, feeling yourself to be alone, not having any friends. And when they pick the ad hoc teams for the soccer game, you’re about the last person to get picked. You say to yourself, “You know, I don’t know if I can do very much at all.” That’s good. The person that needs to be concerned is who is going around with or without his pom poms going, “I can do it. I can do it. I can. I can.”

It is only when we discover our inadequacy that we enter into the threshold of discovering the adequacy of God.

Well, you might, but probably not. Because the other paradox, of course, is that the way to up is down, and the way to usefulness is in the awareness of our own utter uselessness.

I’m encouraged by the response of Gideon. I think it’s perfectly understandable, isn’t it? He’s not immediately saying to himself, “Oh, this is fantastic! I had an angelic visitation!” No, it’s made him afraid. He’s afraid! And so he says, “Well, are you going to stay with me?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s the child’s question when you go in for surgery. Did you ever get your adenoids out or your tonsils taken out? And you go in there, and then they put you on that thing, that bed, and then they wheel you through those doors that go like that. And you go, “Oh, I don’t want to go through there!” And you turn, and you say, “Are you going to be…” And before you know, you’re gone, and the person you wanted with you is no longer with you. That’s what Gideon’s saying: “Are you going to be with me?” “Absolutely. I wouldn’t send you and then desert you.”

Obedient Action, Fearful Disposition

“So Gideon went into his house and [he] prepared a young goat.” He did as he was told and so on. And as a result of that—and that’s part of your homework—he’s then given this huge assignment. And the assignment is there in verse 25: “The Lord said to him, ‘Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order.” And the assignment you can read right there.

Now, that is preceded by another altar, which is there in verse 24: “Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and [he] called it, The Lord Is Peace.” So far, so good: “I will go wherever you want me to go. I will do what you’re asking me to do. I’ve now built the altar. I’ve built the altar.” He said, “Yeah, well, I’ve got one other thing about an altar still for you to take care of, and that is I want you to go and tear down the altar that your father has put up.”

Remember what Jesus said? That “no one that would ever actually come to me and follow me, if he was going to put the love of his family ahead of the love for me, he wouldn’t ultimately be able to be my disciple at all.”[10]

And so Gideon is confronted by this fact. The altar is representative of the pervasive influence of the surrounding culture. This is the problem all the way through the book of Judges. Here the people of God know the word of God. They know how they’re supposed to behave. They go along for a little while. Then they’re sucked into the vortex. Then they capitulate. Then they repent as a result of retribution. And then they’re restored. And then it happens all over again. And here they are in the midst of this.

Now, we don’t face this challenge in terms of physical altars. Of course we don’t. But the principle is straightforward, isn’t it? Again, Jesus said it: you can’t serve two masters.[11] You can’t worship at two altars. You can’t worship at the altar of a culture which flies in the face of God, which denies his Word, which rejects our hymnody this morning. Because we were actually singing about the doctrine of creation—that before there was time, before there was anything, there was God—living, as we do, in a culture that says we exist as a result of time plus matter plus chance; living in a culture that says you can define yourself in whichever way you wish, as opposed to the fact that the Bible says, “No, we were made by God, for God, in the image of God, to serve God.”

The two things are diametrically opposed to one another. This is no time for chocolate soldiers. No time for chocolate soldiers. Chocolate soldiers will always melt in the heat. They’ll always melt in the heat. And the more the thing wages against us, the more challenging the circumstances become, and we have to learn to do what God says, and we have to learn to do it when he says it.

You remember Augustine, in his Confessions, tells of how he made a royal mess of so much until eventually God grabbed ahold of him. But he prayed on one occasion, “Lord, make me pure, but not yet.”[12] “Make me pure, but not yet”—the challenge of purity in an impure world. I say to you as young people here this morning with your lives in front of you, there comes a time—there come times—when each of us must nail our colors to the mast, where we have to be prepared to take a stand.

I’m not supposed to admit to this in a context like this, but I’m going to do it: that as my car was doing what it was doing in Apple CarPlay—over which I have very little control once it is started, ’cause I can’t work things very well—but I was singing along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. And which song? Well, first one was “American Girl,” but the other one was “I Won’t Back Down.”

I won’t back down.
You could stand me up at the gates of hell,
But I won’t back down.[13]

Now, he was talking about something vastly different from what we’re talking about here. But that’s the challenge. That’s the challenge. And that’s the challenge that confronted Gideon as representative of the people of God. And the reason that the principle holds is because here we are as representative of God’s people in God’s world—a world that is upside-down, a world that is increasingly senseless. And the word of God comes to us: “Go!”

“So”—verse 27—“Gideon … did.” “Gideon … did as the Lord had told him.” Now, again, I’m encouraged by this. So Gideon decided, “I’ve got a trumpet and a bunch of guys. We’ll go out. We’ll take it on.” Duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh! Here comes Gideon and the boys! We’re all going, “Yeah! We’ll take these guys on!” No. No, not even close.

“So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him.” Safety in numbers, huh? Big, tough Gideon with his ten—whatever you call these people in American football—linebackers or something. “But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.” This is good! This is the servant of God, uniquely called of God—totally inadequate in himself, aware of that, clothed with God’s enabling, straightforwardly attacking the challenge. But if you got a chance to ask him, “How do you feel about this?” he would have said, “Phew! Hopeless! Frightened! That’s why I’ve got these guys with me. And by the way, I wasn’t going to do it in broad daylight. No, that’s why we did it at night.”

Dale Ralph Davis, in just a wonderful half sentence, says, “Evidently, obedience was essential [but] heroism [was] optional.”[14] That’s good. You don’t have to be a hero. Just be obedient. And then, in the little section that follows—which I’m going to leave again for homework—when the altar is destroyed and then a big brouhaha emerges from that, and the men of the town said to Gideon’s dad, to Joash, “[Hey,] bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and [he has] cut down the Asherah beside it.” Fact.

“But Joash said to all who stood against him, ‘Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself.’” This is fascinating! Because Joash was the guy who had erected the altar. His son tears it down, he realizes what’s happened, the people of the town come to him and say, “Your son deserves to die for this,” and somehow or another, Joash has a baptism of clear seeing, and he says, “Hey, do you have to support Baal?”

I mean, it’s like the prophets of Baal story, isn’t it, and Elijah?[15] You know: “If Baal is who he says he is, then go ahead and let him do what he does.” There’s only one God: the true and living God. Everything else is an invention. It’s a contrivance. It’s a falsehood. Gideon knows this, and he proceeds accordingly.

The Patience of God

Last thing I want to point out is the patience of God. And I haven’t really given you much of an outline at all. I acknowledge that. Maybe you can come up with a good one and give it to me, and I’ll use it on another occasion. But for now, again I’m greatly encouraged by this: “[And] then Gideon said to God…” What is this, verse 36? Yeah. Here he goes again: “If…” “If…” “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said…” That’s not really very good, is it? “If you will do what you’ve said…” This is God he’s speaking to, through the Angel! “If you will do as you have said…”

Now, don’t be critical of Gideon here, you smarty-pants in row 43: “Can’t believe it! I would never have said ‘If…’ I would have said, ‘Good! Here we go. Storm the Bastille. Let us take it on.’” No! You know, I understand the “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” I understand that. It makes a really good bumper sticker, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t always neatly cover the struggles of our believing, the struggles of our obeying, the fact that although we want to be obedient, we want almost to do it under cover of darkness. And even when we come right up to the point of it, he says, “Listen, if it’s okay, if you’re going to save Israel by my hand, as you have said…” (“What more can he say than to you he ha[s] said?”[16]) “[If you’re going to do it, then here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to lay] a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.” Okay. “And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water.” So, wet fleece, dry ground. That’s what he wanted. So we’re done!

When we ask of God things that appear to be faithless, he remains absolutely faithful.

Uh-uh: “Then Gideon said to God, ‘Excuse me? Just one more thing, God. Don’t get angry now. Let me speak just once more. I just want one more test, one more fleece. I want you to do it in the reverse order now: I’d like a dry fleece and wet ground.’” And God said, “Enough with you, Gideon, and your ifs and your buts and your questions and your disobedience and your inadequate uselessness! I’m finished with you!” No! “And God did so that night; and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.”

What an amazing God God is! How wonderfully patient! How encouragingly kind! A Father who stoops to our weaknesses. When we ask of him things that appear to be faithless (and often are), he remains absolutely faithful.

So, as you go into your day today, maybe the recurring thought will be, for yourself, “I wonder: Is it possible that the things that I regard as the debilitating factors in my life…” My weaknesses, if you like. I’m not talking about sin. I’m talking about “Well, if I was taller… If my hair was straighter… If I was brighter… If I was…” Maybe as you walk around today, you say to yourself, “I wonder: Is it just possible that those things that confront me by my weakness may be the very things that God is planning to use in his service?”

For example, you take a girl like Gladys Aylward. She was a tiny little lady. She was a little lady in China. She offered herself for missionary service in London. She was a housemaid. She lived in an attic. And the people who interviewed her said that she was too small, too dumb, and just too frail—too small, not clever enough, and too frail—and they sent her away. She went back to her room. Oh! I should just mention as well that she did not like her hair. She didn’t like her hair. She didn’t like how dark it was and how straight it was. She liked people who had blond hair, curly hair, wavy hair, red hair, any kind of hair, but not her kind of hair.

Nevertheless, she got down by her bed, she took her Bible, put it on the bed, knelt down by her bed. She said, “Dear Lord Jesus, as far as I can tell, you want me to go to China. Those people think I’m too small, too dumb, too whatever it is. But we’re going to go to China.” She sails to China. And there’s a wonderful piece in the book; I can’t remember where I read it. But as she stands on the deck as they’re coming into the harbor and she looks out, what does she see? All these tiny people! All these tiny people with jet black hair—not a blond in sight—and really straight!

She suddenly realized that the thing that she thought was an impoverishment to her was going to prove for her to be the person she was known throughout the community as: “the little woman” whom God chose to use in a way that surprised her. And God has a plan to use you, and he may choose to do it in a way that will surprise us all.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story tomorrow.

Let us pray.

We remember how Paul asked for the things that made him aware of his inadequacy and his frailty to be removed from him, and we remember how the Lord said, “My strength is made perfect in weakness,”[17] and how Paul then went on to say, “Well, then, if that is the case, I will all the more glory in my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”[18]

Thank you that you put your treasure in old clay pots, earthenware jars, that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to you, the living God, and to no one else at all.[19] Bless us as we go through our day, we pray, that we might live to the praise of your glory. In Christ’s name. Amen.

I’ll see you around!

[1] See 2 Corinthians 12:7–10.

[2] See 2 Corinthians 4:7.

[3] Peggy Noonan, “A Farewell to Harms,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124716984620819351.

[4] Joachim Neander, trans. Catherine Winkworth, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” (1680, 1863).

[5] Judges 2:10–11 (ESV).

[6] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[7] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712). Lyrics lightly altered.

[8] Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”

[9] Exodus 3:10; 4:10 (paraphrased).

[10] Matthew 10:37; Luke 14:26 (paraphrased).

[11] See Matthew 6:24.

[12] Augustine, Confessions 8.7. Paraphrased.

[13] Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, “I Won’t Back Down” (1989).

[14] Dale Ralph Davis, Such a Great Salvation: Expositions of the Book of Judges, Expositor’s Guide to the Historical Books (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 98.

[15] See 1 Kings 18:20–40.

[16] “How Firm a Foundation” (1787).

[17] 2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV).

[18] 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 (paraphrased).

[19] See 2 Corinthians 4:7.