Judges 7:16

Judges 7:16

Gideon went down into the battle with only three hundred men, with only trumpets, pitchers and lights for weapons, and the mighty hosts of Amalek and Midian fled before him, and were driven from the land. More than a thousand years afterwards St. Paul remembered this story, and said: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." St. Paul was writing of the sufferings which he and his fellow-workers had to endure. He and they seemed no better than earthen pitchers, but they were vessels carrying a Divine light, a life kindled by God, and a power which could not be destroyed.

I. This story brings the happy assurance to every heart who hears it, that even a child may be a vessel to carry the power of God. God can fill the weakest and most fragile with power for His work. He asks only that the heart shall receive His life.

II. More wonderful still, this is a picture of our dear Lord. He also, as a man, was but an earthen vessel. His enemies broke the vessel which contained His life, but by their cruelty they brought defeat and shame to themselves, and glory to Him.

A. Macleod, The Gentle Heart,p. 257.

The text illustrates the twofold elements of which man is composed, the material and the spiritual.

I. The mortal and material part of man is considered under the emblem of a pitcher containing within it a lamp or firebrand. (1) The first point of resemblance is that the pitcher is made of potter's clay, even as man was formed of the dust of the ground. (2) The pitcher's manufacture is brittle and easily shattered, and in this particular especially the comparison holds good between the earthen vessel and the body. (3) Notice, as a final point of comparison, the untransparent character of the earthen vessel. It is not adapted to the exhibition of a lamp.

II. Consider the light within the pitcher, the soul or immaterial part of man enclosed for the present within a material framework, the "breath of lives" breathed into the vessel of clay, (1) Animal life; a great distinction is to be drawn between the body, which is material, and the life of the body, which is immaterial. (2) Rational life; the life of the intellect. (3) There was a yet higher life breathed into man at the creation spiritual life. Each of these lives is in some sense a lamp.

E. M. Goulburn, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. i., p. 181.

References: Judges 7:16. Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 273.Judges 7:18. Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament,p. 54.Judges 7:20. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 264; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 413. 7-8:1-21 Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 145.Judges 8:1. Ibid.,p. 382.Judges 8:2. Ibid.,vol. ii., p. 265.