Verses 1-31
Othniel
A GREAT prayer marks a historical point in the life of any man or any people. We know when we have prayed. The people who ask questions in a controversial tone about prayer never prayed themselves, and so long as they are in that spirit they cannot pray. This exercise is not to be explained to outsiders; this is an inner mystery. The publican knew that he had prayed when he said, "God be merciful to me a sinner." He needed not to ask any man whether a prayer had been offered, for he himself, the contrite suppliant, had the answer in his heart before the last word escaped his lips. We are dull indeed if we do not know when we have struck a full chord. Something in us says, That is right. We have uttered many words, and at the end we have said, That is not prayer; the words are devout, the phrases are devotional, they would read well in print, some good spirits might turn them into prayer, but we who uttered them did not pray. Why then debate about this matter, or talk about it as if it were subject for analysis and definition and formal treatment of any kind? We know when we have touched the hem of Christ's garment by the healing that instantly takes place in the spirit. Answers in detail may require long time to work out, but the great answer is in the healed heart, the comforted soul, the quieted and resigned spirit. Other replies there may or may not be, all these must be left: the great answer to prayer is an answer to the soul which the soul only can hear and apply.
"When the children of Israel cried unto the Lord " an energetic term is that "cried." It was a piercing shout of the heart. The words did not come out of the mouth only; they were hardly in the mouth at all; they shot from the heart within the burning, lowly, broken heart. We know a cry when we hear it or when we utter it; there is fire in it, a touch of immortality, a strange ghostliness. Truly in such case the voice is the man, the tone is the prayer. There are calls to which we pay no heed. We say they are calls expressive of merriment or folly, or intended to play upon our credulity; we know them to be hollow and meaningless; but there are cries we must answer, or get somebody else to answer: they come so suddenly, they strike the very soul so truly, there is so much of real earnestness in them, that if we ourselves are frightened by their energy we tell the next person we meet where the trouble is, where sorrow cries for help, where weakness pleads for assistance. You cannot talk about prayer in cold blood. This is not a subject to be discussed in current conversation, passing along the thoroughfare, or upon some quiet occasion: you have dragged the subject to a base level; you are speaking about it as if you were masters of the situation: you can only speak about prayer whilst you are praying, and then you will never speak about it controversially but sympathetically and confirmingly; and when the heart has really cried that sharp cry which cuts the clouds you will know that the heart in its agony has touched God's love. Turn away, then, from those who would make prayer a matter of controversy and inquiry and analysis and vivisection; it is not to be so treated; it is a secret masonry with a password all its own between the soul and the soul's God.
The prayer was answered: "The Lord raised up a deliverer." The answer came in a human form. That is a remarkable circumstance. The answer might have come otherwise; but God delights in incarnations. He aims at something in all these human leaderships; he is conducting a process of evolution. Many a man bearing the title of Leader has come before us, and each has, so far as he has been faithful to his vocation, been an incarnation of God's thought and purpose and will. The matter cannot end here. All these are temporary incarnations, but charged with infinite suggestiveness, and always leading the mind to higher expectation subtler, deeper yearnings for some broader and brighter disclosure of the divine personality. But we must not anticipate. The Bible is given to us in pages, and every page must be read, and there must be no vain haste. This is still God's method, to answer by incarnation. A friend is sent who has the key of the gate which you cannot open; a brother is met who speaks the word your poor heart most needed to hear; an occasion is created suddenly or unconsciously, and it shapes itself into a temple, becomes a holy sanctuary, a sphere of radiant revelation. This is what we mean by providence. Why has not every man an equal influence over us? Because every man is not sent to our life with a special message. There are men who can sing, there are men who can preach, there are men who can read the Bible and read it as it were into inspiration as to its influence upon the hearer, these Othniels are God's creations; in a sense, God's presence, divine incarnations.
"The Spirit of the Lord came upon him." There is no mistaking that Spirit. It was not an awakening of anything that was in the man himself, but a descent from heaven of the Supreme Influence. Othniel, a common man yesterday to all observation, is today an inspired man, "a little lower than God." As a consequence the man was not vainglorious. No inspired man can be conceited. He does not know that he is great He knows that he is the instrument of God. The most inspired of men have said, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." Inspiration means modesty; genius means retirement, self-obliviousness, disregard of circumstance or applause. The inspired life is the unconscious life. To us who look on, the inspired man is great, wonderful, we cannot understand the miracle; to himself he is but a child in God's house, quite a little one, hardly able to walk, asking questions by his looks of wonder, praying himself into ever-deepening lowliness. The poet does not know that he is a poet in the sense which is applauded by those who understand not his spirit; he breathes his poetry. Paul breathed his Christianity; to him to live was Christ, to breathe was to pray, to look was to rejoice. We shall know when the Church is inspired by its lowliness. Find men who are fretful, peevish, always susceptible to offence, complaining men, "ill-used" men; and you will find men who know nothing about the Spirit of Christ: their money perish with them; their patronage would be a great shadow laid upon the Church. The Church must be healthy in her goodness, mighty in her inspiration. Othniel could not communicate his power. Inspiration is not an article of barter. Nor could Othniel keep his inspiration without conditions. Everything we have we hold upon certain understandings of an eternal kind: they need not be expressed; they are unwritten, but indelible; they cannot be seen with the eyes, nor can they be blotted out by the hand: they belong to the necessity of things, the fitness and harmony of the universe. Whatever we hold we hold upon our good behaviour. We are tenants at will. The greatest Othniel in the Church would be cast out of heaven if he allowed his purity to be spotted, his honour to be stained, his stewardship to be tampered with. Not one of us is essential to God. The first archangel holds his mighty wings on his good behaviour: let him lie, or touch the forbidden tree, and his great wings would fall powerless, his eye would be smitten with death. "Once inspired always inspired" is no doctrine of the Scriptures. We stand or fall by our spiritual relation to the divine. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;" and let the chief of the apostles keep himself in constant check lest when his mightiest discourse is ended he himself become a castaway. We live in character. Our immortality blissful, heavenly is in our relation to Christ. We have no independence, no charter entitling us to invent a morality of our own; we are measured by eternal standards, we are judged in the court of the Infinite Righteousness.
Othniel had a special work to do: he was raised up to deliver Israel, to destroy the power of the king of Mesopotamia; and having done that work he died. When shall we come to know that every man is called to one work, particularly if not exclusively?
Herein do we not judge one another harshly and unjustly? The work of Othniel was not a manifold work; he was not a multitudinous genius, able to see behind and before, on the right and on the left, and to be equally strong by day and by night; he was not so much a statesman as a deliverer; he was mighty in war, he might be but second in counsel. Each man, therefore, must find out his own faculty, and be just to it; if he fail in discovering it, then he will be unjust to his true self. If you are aiming to be some other self, you will fail and be unfaithful to God's purpose. One man is sent to do business, to show how business ought to be done, to make commerce a religion. Another man is sent to sing, to make us glad, to show us by tones that there must be some other world to touch our highest sensibilities and move our noblest impulses, and comfort us in our distresses and make new stars for the darkness of the night; let him keep his singing robes on, rising high up in the sky so that everybody may hear him and answer him with electric joy: he has a great vocation, has that singing man; he helps even the commerce of the world. Another man is sent to pray. He must live upon his knees. He knows how to speak human want in human words. He never says one word too much, never one word too little; he knows the measure of the sorrow, he knows where the burden presses most heavily, he knows where the heart's sore is most painful; and his is surely a holy vocation. Let him keep at the altar; never let him rise from his posture of prayer. He will do us good, and not evil. He, too, though seemingly so far away from the world's real strife, is helping the world in its most prosaic servitude. When the Church acknowledges this doctrine, the Church will receive more from her leaders, teachers, and supporters. We must not live a divided life: "This one thing I do" must be the motto of every man. Nor must there be judgment of one another, saying, You should do this, or do that Let alone! Touch not the prerogative of God!
We, too, needed a deliverer. We had given up the idea of self-emancipation. Once we thought we could break our own manacles and fetters, and set ourselves free, and sing the songs of liberty. We tried, we tried often, we all tried, we failed, we all failed. When there was no eye to pity and no arm to save, God's eye pitied and God's arm wrought salvation. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." It is the joy of the Christian Church to believe that there is only one Redeemer, one Lord, one Christ, one Advocate, one Paraclete. This is the gospel. This is the good news itself. When we preach it, we shatter all idols of a selfish kind; we say to Invention, to Genius, You are of no use here: you cannot break a link, you cannot shed a light upon this infinite gloom. Preaching Christ, we denounce all other helpers and deliverers, except in some secondary and related capacity. There is one Son of God; there is one Cross; there is one atonement; there is but one hope. We read history, and recognise deliverers, and are thankful when they appear, and we doubt not the reality of their deliverances: why should we in the presence of Jesus Christ forget to adore and forget to trust? They who have known most about Christ have most to say in his favour. Those who have not known Christ are not asked for their opinion about him. We do not ask the blind to pronounce upon colours, or seek from the deaf a criticism upon music: Christians alone can testify in this court, and their evidence is conclusive because it is sustained by character and can be tested and appreciated. Who is looking for a deliverer? let him turn his eyes to the Son of God. Who is saying in the bitterness of his soul, "O, that I might be saved from this horrible distress and delivered from this unfathomable abyss "? let him turn his eyes to the Son of God. Who is mourning sin, having felt its bitterness and seen its abominableness? let him turn his eyes to the Son of God. He came to deliver, to emancipate, to save: "this Man receiveth sinners." He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. Let us feel this, believe this, and commit our souls unto Christ as unto a faithful Creator.
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