Consider the simple faith expressed in this psalm to the Lord. A confidence that evil will be punished and that good will always prevail. The future is bright. There is no need to worry.

We might assume that the author was an idealistic youth - one who has never experienced pain or disappointment. Yet this psalm did not come from any naive child. It was written by a very old man, a man who had known incredible hardships. It is a psalm of David.

Think of David. Although from a shepherd he became king, he also knew hardship. As a youth he had to flee for his life from the jealous Saul. He felt the grief over being responsible for the death of his infant son. Later, as king, he saw his children rape and kill one another. He was forced to flee Jerusalem for his life, because his own son Absalom had rebelled. Then he regained his throne at the cost of his beloved Absalom's life.

David experienced intense pain. Yet he could advise us not to worry about those who do evil. All we need do is trust in the Lord and do good. Indeed, he claims that those who commit their way to the Lord will have everything they need, even if it be but a little in comparison with those who are evil. There is nothing in the future to fear. The good will be rewarded for their efforts.

Comparing this psalm with David's life, we may think that he had an unrealistic view of providence. But consider a similar teaching from the doctrines of the New Church: "When the Lord is present with someone, he leads him, and provides that all things which happen, whether sad or joyful, befall him for good; this is the Divine providence" (Arcana Coelestia 6303). Whatever happens - being promoted or fired, realizing our dreams or having them dashed - all result in good!

A difficult idea to accept - in large part because it seems like the Lord thereby is just manipulating us, causing evil to come into our lives.

But such is not the case. The Lord would never make anything bad happen. And He would prefer that we never suffer any pain. His providence is a gentle leading which causes good things to happen, and tolerates evil things. However He permits us to hurt ourselves and He allows others to cause us pain. Not as punishment, but as the result of free choices by individuals and groups.

One of the greatest stumbling blocks to sensing mercy in His providence is that when we feel pain or worry about serious problems we think that is all there is in life. We cannot see beyond the suffering, the hurt. But while we are occupied with worry, the Lord is already looking ahead - to what can come from the experience, to how He can lead us to grow in spite of the difficulty. For the Lord's view is eternal. He sees hope when we see none. He leads to happiness when we feel hurt.

The apparently random and purposeless events in life are described in the Heavenly Doctrines with pebbles. The Lord allows a person "to go here and there, so that the moments of his life appear like scattered pebbles. But the Lord then sees whether he fills up that space between them; He sees what is lacking and where; and then, continually, what is next in order, after a hundred or a thousand years" (Spiritual Experiences 4692[m]). The Lord's sight and providence encompasses eons of time. He sees all we are, and all we might become. He then gradually provides for it - not immediately, but over the course of an eternal lifetime. Whatever happens, whatever decisions we make, or whatever others do to us - the Lord eventually turns everything to good.

Unfortunately, our view is seldom as long. We cannot see how things will turn out in twenty, much less two thousand years. And when we are suffering our sight is even more limited. So we worry about what will happen. We may try to trust in His guidance, but we are more likely to feel abandoned by the Lord. Whatever He might be doing is both invisible and insensible to us.

In such a frame of mind we might wish we could see the future, be certain of how things will work out. If we were assured of the specific outcome, or knew exactly which path were the best to follow, we could really trust in the Lord - have confidence in Him to lead us.

Yet, in this, as in all other things, the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves. He does not hide the workings of providence from us as a test of our trust, or a puzzle for us to sort out. The Divine does not tease us. But the Lord is fully aware that if we were to know the future, or if we received the "right" answers to our specific questions by a voice out of heaven, we would wind up destroying ourselves.

Imagine what we would feel like if someone predicted every last thing that we would experience for the 24 hours. At first we would disbelieve, but what if the predictions started coming true? It would be disturbing, to say the least. And would we not begin to feel restricted, and try to prevent the predictions from coming true?

We value our freedom, our sense of self. We will protect it at all costs. When we are forced to do something, or if we are pressured into one course of action, do we not rebel, wanting to act against that pressure?

Such resistance is not adolescent or infantile reaction to authority. It stems from our inner freedom of thought. For us to be human beings we need to think things out for ourselves and then act in freedom. Whatever choices we make determine the kind of person we become - and whether our choices are good or bad, at least they make us who we choose to be, not who someone else forces us to be.

Yet, when we are confused or suffering, we have a tremendous yearning to see something of the potential the Lord sees for us and those we love. Unfortunately, if we were able to glimpse it, we would probably work against it. A paradox which can be frustrating and lead us to worry about the future.

It would be much better if we could just let go and trust the Lord to make the best of whatever we do. That is what the angels do. They have no memory of past events from their earthly life to trouble them. Nor do they have any desire to know what is to come. For they are content in the present. Imagine if we could be so fully engaged in our present activities, dealing with what we can do rather than what is beyond our power, that we had no time to worry about the future! It is a goal worth striving for.

But for now, we tend to worry. We tend to worry about our jobs, our health, our children, the international situation, our spiritual state. It can on go on and on. Certainly some amount of thoughtful consideration is important. We are meant to make plans for the future - use good judgment to provide for our families. And we can delight in looking forward to continued productivity or happier times. But planning and worrying about what might or might not occur can become excessive.

The Psalms admonish us: "Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret - it only causes harm" (37:8). Do not worry, it only causes pain. Thinking too much of the future can lead us to forget that the Lord's providence is silently guiding us. The doctrines of the New Church point out that, "a longing to know the future is innate with most people; but this longing derives its origin from the love of evil" (Divine Providence 179).

Anxiety about the future stems from a lack of confidence that the Lord can lead us to happiness. Since He works invisibly, we can think that we are the only ones who have any direct influence upon what happens. It is a subtle trust in self, and denial that the Lord can be relied upon. Certainly it appears as if we have to do all the work, but it is not the reality. For we could not have created ourselves. We can't even make ourselves happy!

So the Heavenly Doctrines describe the Lord's providence "as when one walks in thick forests, the exit out of which he does not know; but when he finds it, he attributes the discovery to himself, whereas providence meantime is as one who stands in a tower, sees the wanderings of such a person, and leads him without his knowing it to the place of exit" (Spiritual Experiences 4393). The Lord is in the tower, inspiring our thoughts, motivating our actions so that we can be led from darkness into light.

But His guiding can only be effective when we cooperate. We have to search for ways out of the forest. The Lord gave us the ability to think so we would use it. If we sit back and ponder our situation, how hopeless it may seem, little is accomplished. Can we add one cubit to our height by worrying about it? We also need to act. If we stand around and complain about how lost we are, or how unfair life is, it is very difficult for the Lord to lead us anywhere. He will not drag us out of our forests against our wills.

It is as the Psalm said: "Trust in the Lord and do good." Such simple advice, but so true! We cannot alter the past, but we can do something in the present, enabling the Lord to create a happy future.

There will still be times of selfishness where we long to know how things could possibly work out, and there will still be things happening to us which are not pleasant. We cannot control life. But we can avoid being defeated by it. We have been given the knowledge of how the Lord operates to bring about happiness in the long term. We have been given the freedom to act with reason. We have the basis for trusting in Him.

Let us then listen to the Psalm, not worrying about the future, not worrying about what is or what might be. Let us do the good that we can, and leave the rest to the Lord. After all, He should be able to do a much better job than we. Let us commit our ways to the Lord, trusting in Him, and He can give us the heavenly desires of our hearts.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 6303; Divine Providence 176; Spiritual Experiences 2178, 4393, 4692)

As this story from the Book of Judges begins, the enemy Midianites are encamped about 7 km north of Gideon and the people with him, who are in camp beside the spring of Harod. In Hebrew, the spring of Harod means the spring of trembling, which fits the story line, and which also fits the inner meaning, in this story line on our own lives.

This is Part 2 of a three-part study on the story of Gideon that Coleman Glenn and I have been doing. The sub-title we've given this series is “Weakness and Strength.” Throughout the story you see these themes coming through. In part 1, Gideon was called to lead his people against the massive Midianite enemy army. But he's not feeling strong; he’s hiding in a winepress when the Angel of Jehovah says to him, “Jehovah is with you, you mighty man of valour!”

Gideon asks for a sign - some proof - and the angel makes fire come out of a rock and consume Gideon’s offering. In the strength of that Gideon tears down the altar of Baal in the town, blows a trumpet, and gathers the people together for battle.

But then, he feels weakness. Gideon needs another sign that the Lord will really be with him. There’s similar weakness and strength in our early efforts at spiritual growth. The call of Gideon in us is some sense of a desire for something deeper, something spiritual, something more than the pursuit of pleasure that the Midianites represent.

The tearing down the altar of Baal is a commitment to do something for more than just our own pleasure and enjoyment. When we embark on trying to become a better, more spiritual, person don’t we also experience doubts - doubts about what it is that we’re going to do as spiritual people? Or doubts about our ability to actually follow through with our intentions?

That brings us to this story, in Judges 7. Gideon and the people are gathered together for battle but are at a place of trembling. What we’re going to explore today is how the Lord takes what we have, refines, mobilises and equips it with the power of His truth to go and rout the Midianites.

Finding the Right People for the Fight:

The first task, at this point in the story, is to find the right people for the fight. There they are, outnumbered 5 to 1, and Jehovah says something to Gideon that probably sounded crazy to him:

“The people who are with you are too many…”

Gideon may well have thought, “We were doing pretty well to get 32,000 people to come when the odds are this bad, and You want less?”

The Lord knew that if that many people went to battle and they won they would then think that it was because of them that the battle had been won. When we find ourselves with some motivation to change and become a better person we can have a lot of our self involved: “I’m deciding to do the right thing!".

That's admirable in one sense and misguided in another. We need to realise that it’s only through the Lord’s strength and the people He picks that we will have victory.

Round 1: “Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn back…”

In the story, there are two rounds of removing people from the army. First, Gideon is told to say,

“Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn back and depart at once from Mount Gilead” (Judges 7:3). “And twenty-two thousand of the people turned back, and ten thousand remained” (Judges 7:3). These are the people who get behind a cause - sort of. There are the people in the front of the group, leading the charge saying, “Yeah!!” And then there are the people who are just as happy to be somewhere towards the back saying, “Yeah…”. If you ask them, “Do you want to be here?”, their response might be, “Yeah… sure.” And if you ask further, “Actually, would you rather go home?”, their response is, “Yes! See ya!”

If we look within ourselves when we’re trying to change we’ll probably find that there are a fair number of ideas and thoughts that aren’t quite on board. If you imagine a natural example of someone deciding that they’re going to be a better student, they might say, “Yeah, I’m going to develop my study skills and be proactive and optimise my time management.” And you ask them, “What does that mean? What will that look like?”

They’d say, “Uhh…. I dunno. But that’s the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do, right?”

The number of people that turned back, 22,000, is significant. In the Word, 12 means fullness, completeness, all, like the 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, and 12 gates into the Holy City New Jerusalem.

The number 11 is almost but not quite 12, not fully there, not completely integrated into a whole. The 22,000 is a multiple of 11, and has a similar meaning. Those religious ideas that we don’t fully get or buy into are not going to be effective against the Midianites, so it’s better if they just go home.

Round 2: “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps…”

So what in us IS fit to fight against the Midianites? Jehovah says that the 10,000 soldiers still with Gideon are still too many. This is the sort of description that just screams that there must be some sort of deeper, symbolic meaning in the story. Otherwise all these weird-seeming details would be just the whims of a bizarre god.

The people are commanded to go down to the water and, though it’s not exactly clear from the text what it looked like, those that drank like dogs were the ones who were selected. The teachings of the New Church provide this explanation of the significance of this difference.

In Apocalypse Explained 455:9, it says, “Midian” here means those who do not care for truth, because they are merely natural and external; therefore Midian was beaten by those who “lapped the waters in the hand with the tongue like a dog,” who symbolize people who have an appetite for truths. From a natural affection, they seek to know truths, a “dog” meaning appetite and eagerness, “waters” truths, and “lapping them with the tongue” to have an appetite for and to eagerly seek.

This lapping represents the part of us that really wants to know the truth, the part of us that is so eager that we’re bouncing up and down as our Master brings the water dish. You might think, “I’m not sure that there’s much of me that is that eager to learn the truth.” There were only 300 men out of an original 32,000. That’s not much, and it's probably just a small part of our minds, but it’s enough. It's what the Lord selects in us.

To identify the part of you that is represented by these 300 men, I find it’s helpful to think of people who just love a certain subject area and lap up any new information they can get on it. Think of a kid who memorises tons of facts about rugby or cricket and can tell you what the final score was from a game from the 1970s. Or a teenage girl who knows everything about her favourite band. There are times when we just love learning more about a certain subject.

Do you know any people who have that sort of passion about truths from the Word? It can be helpful to try to pick up their infectious enthusiasm and eagerness. I had a professor in university who taught ancient history - not the most exciting of courses to the average college student. She had such genuine, infectious enthusiasm about her subject area that it would rub off on her students. People would say, “I never knew that someone could care so much about an old broken pot.”

Think of those people in your life who have that sort of passion for learning from the Word and look for that in yourself - even if it’s just 0.9% of yourself (which is what you get if you divide 300 by 32,000). That part of you that’s eager to learn the truth - that’s what the Lord will use to rout the Midianites.

Seeing the Camp and Overhearing the Dream:

After the second round of winnowing, Gideon has the group that Jehovah has approved for him to take into battle, but there’s one final thing that Jehovah has him do before the battle to give him the courage to attack. He says, “afterward your hands shall be made firm to go down against the camp” (7:11).

At nighttime He tells Gideon to take his servant, Purah, and sneak down to the camp of the Midianites. One thing that happens in this part of the story is that he sees the enemy as a whole for the first time and it’s overwhelming. “Now the Midianites and Amalekites and all the sons of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the lip of the sea in multitude” (7:12).

This is what the life of external pleasure can look like. It’s everywhere - like the sand of the beach - consumerism and self-absorption and this pandering to people’s lowest desires - it’s just saturated throughout the world we live in. And we can feel like, “Who am I to think that I won’t get caught up in all that stuff?”

But then, they go down to the camp and they overhear one man telling another about a dream he had about a baked loaf of barley bread overturning and collapsing a tent. A dream at nighttime means a dim perception of something - not a clear sight but some sense of something. This tent being knocked over and collapsing means the camp of Midian, which seemed to have such a solid hold over the children of Israel, no longer having any dwelling place there. This means us getting to have some sense that the focus on just having as much pleasure and fun as possible just doesn’t have to have as much of a hold on us as before. With the Lord’s help, we can look down on it from above and see it for what it is and say, “I don’t actually want that.” Gideon hears the interpretation that the other man gives that this dream means that God has given Midian into Gideon’s hand. Then he worships the Lord, returns to the camp and musters his men for battle.

Torches and Trumpets:

Gideon divides the men into 3 groups, gives each of them a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch to go inside the pitcher. They surround the camp, blow the trumpets, break the pitchers so the torches can be seen, and yell, “The sword for Jehovah and for Gideon!”

Eagerness for the truth leads us to learn the truths that we can use to combat the enemy—trumpets and torches. The Word can seem to us like an empty pitcher sometimes—like it’s meant to hold water but it’s dry and there’s nothing there. But when we’re eager for the truth we can sometimes see that it’s actually got a torch inside it, burning and shining.

The trumpet can blast and announce the arrival of the power of Jehovah in the situation. Think about the desires for a life of pleasure and then think of these words of the Lord from the Sermon on the Mount blasting through the air like a trumpet and shining down onto where those ideas are camped:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:31-33).

“Every man’s sword against his companion….”

After they smash their pitchers and blow their trumpets they don’t attack: they just stand there and the Midianites destroy each other. This reveals something about Midian: it seems to be this cohesive group that is working together, like all the ideas out there about pursuing having a good time above all other things seem to be all one message. But Midian’s name in Hebrew means strife or contention.

We might think of people who pursue pleasure as being happy and fulfilled but a life that’s focused on pleasure actually is not peaceful at its heart. It’s competitive. It’s a craving, desperate want for more - for better experiences or better stories than everyone else... a cooler car, a nicer house, better clothes - more better clothes - never satisfied with what it has, always anxious that someone else has something better. It doesn’t want to commit to doing one thing because what if something better comes along? And then, even while doing something fun, there’s FOMO, fear of missing out on what other people are doing. And there’s bingeing - bingeing on TV, food, alcohol, whatever - underneath all of that is not peace and contentment but stress and unhappiness.

With the Lord’s help we can see that we don’t have to worry about that stuff. We worry about earthly treasures getting stolen or damaged but heavenly treasures can’t be stolen or broken. And we don’t need to worry about who has the best clothes and house and stuff. All those conflicting external ideas about what we should do and say and wear and go to etc. they can keep on fighting it out. We can focus on seeking first the kingdom of God and his justice.

Getting Reinforcements to Pursue the Enemy:

Then the enemy flees and Gideon and his men pursue them. Gideon calls in reinforcements. It seems that it’s fine to have extra people involved at this point. Given that some of the men he called were from the same places he’d called them from before, it seems likely that some or even many of the original 32,000 may have been involved.

The principle seems to be that as long as eagerness for the Lord’s Word leads the way, then other, less motivated or integrated ideas can fall in behind and help out. It’s important that they pursue the Midianites, to kill as many of them as possible and drive the rest all the way out of the land. When we notice that selfish desires for just having a good time are losing hold in our lives, it’s important to really drive them all the way out, to really examine ourselves and where we still have Midianite tendencies lurking.

Because Gideon's army pursues the Midianites, and calls in the help of the men from the mountains of Ephraim, they manage to even capture the two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. These princes symbolize the ruling falsities that have been in charge of our pleasure-seeking. Oreb means raven, which is a black bird with a harsh cry that in the Word is a symbol of falsity that has no interest whatsoever in what the truth is. Zeeb means wolf. A wolf in sheep’s clothing looks innocent but is actually destructive of innocence, just like certain kinds of pleasure seeking can seem like harmless fun but actually lead to destroying things that matter. It’s good that the men caught these princes and killed them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when we look out at the world we see a lot of secularism and consumerism and people who just seem so shallow and obsessed with pointless stuff. When we compare that to the few religious people we know, the odds seem to be against us. We can think, “How is our small group ever going to have an impact against the overwhelming cultural trend?” How are my children ever going to get to adulthood without being totally corrupted and having everything good and religious stolen away by pleasure-seeking Midian?

Probably for most of us, if we’re honest, we can look inside ourselves and see that there’s part of us that buys into it - part of our minds and hearts that wants it too. We want to have the most fun, see the coolest things, have the coolest stuff. That’s when it can be so powerful to remember this story of how 300 Israelites routed 145,000 Midianites. Even the smallest bit of eagerness for the truth has the power from the Lord to win against worldliness every single time - in our lives and in other people’s lives. The Lords truths, when eagerly taken in, can allow us to see pleasure-seeking for what it is - an infighting, anxious turmoil - that we can rise above, shine the light on and drive out of our lives with the Lord’s help.

(References: Gideon: Weakness and Strength, Part 3 of 3)