Dwindling Numbers

Well, I invite you to turn to Judges and to chapter 7. I’m not going to ask for a show of hands for those who’ve done their homework. I don’t want to embarrass you or to be a cause of your self-congratulation. So I’m going to take it that the song has prepared us and the prayer has guided us and expressed our dependence upon God as we turn to the Bible.

Judges 7:1:

“Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.

“The Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, “My own hand has saved me.” Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, “Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.”’ Then 22,000 of the people returned, and 10,000 remained.

“And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, “This one shall go with you,” shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, “This one shall not go with you,” shall not go.’ So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.’ And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water. And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.’ So the people took provisions in their hands, and their trumpets. And he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the 300 men. And the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.

“That same night the Lord said to him, ‘Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand. But if you[’re] afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant. And you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.’ [So] he went down with Purah his servant to the outposts of the armed men who were in the camp. And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance. When Gideon came, behold, a man was telling a dream to his comrade. And he said, ‘Behold, I [dreamt] a dream, and behold, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it so that it fell and turned it upside down, so that the tent lay flat.’ And his comrade answered, ‘This is no other than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp.’

“As soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, ‘Arise, for the Lord has given the host of Midian into your hand.’ And he divided the 300 men into three companies and put trumpets into the hands of all of them and empty jars, with torches inside the jars. And he said to them, ‘Look at me, and do likewise. When I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then blow the trumpets also on every side of all the camp and shout, “For the Lord and for Gideon.”’

“So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch. And they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. They held in their left hands the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow. And they cried out, ‘A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!’ Every man stood in his place around the camp, and all the army ran. They cried out and fled. When they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord [sent] every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army. And the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah.”

And I’ll leave the rest of it to you. It’s got some unpronounceable names that you can work on, on your own.

Well, one of the questions that is posed when we do something like this—and that is turn to not just the Bible but turn to a story in the Bible, a record of what has happened—sometimes people will say, you know, “Why would you spend time studying such material that is so far away geographically and so long gone historically?” And the answer to that is many and varied, but the verse that I would point anybody to is Romans 15:4, where Paul says there to his readers, “The things that happened and were written in the past were written down so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”[1]

So in other words, what we’re doing this morning is directly related to what Paul is saying there two thousand years ago in writing to the church at Rome. And only the Word of God is able to accomplish something like this—that here, you twenty-first-century dwellers, considering material that’s thousands of years old, prompted by the exhortation of Paul, if you like, to make sure that we understand this… Because the Bible is a book about Jesus, and when we take our eyes off Jesus, we lose our way around the Bible.

The Bible is a book about Jesus, and when we take our eyes off Jesus, we lose our way around the Bible.

Now, I don’t know how many of you will know the name Chuck Colson. Some of you will. If you do, you know that he was known as Richard Nixon’s (the president of the United States) henchman. He came to faith in Jesus Christ as a result of the work of a friend and someone whom he admired, and he also was sentenced to jail because of his participation, involvement, in what became known as the Watergate crisis. He went to jail. When he left jail, he said to the prisoners, “You know, one day, I will come back to you.” And they said, “We’ll hold you to it.”

And in a wonderful little book called Loving God, it opens up with an Easter Sunday when Colson, fulfilling his promise to return to the prisoners that he had left behind, finds himself seated on the platform and about to address them. And then this is what he writes:

As I sat on the platform, waiting my turn at the pulpit, my mind began to drift back in time… to scholarships and honors earned, cases argued and won, great decisions made from lofty government offices. My life had been the perfect success story, the great American dream fulfilled. But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious—all my achievements meant nothing in God’s economy. No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure—that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation—being sent to prison—was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life; He chose the one experience in which I could not glory for His glory.[2]

Now, I remembered that as I was thinking about this morning, and I was able, actually, to find it. (Parenthetically, if you’re planning to go into pastoral ministry, make sure that you begin your filing system today—not tomorrow or the next day but today. Because after a while, you will never be able to find anything without a good filing system. Whether you are old-school like me, with bits of paper and pens, or whether you are a modern person like most—either way, just in passing, it’s vitally important.)

Our Inadequacy, God’s Sufficiency

Now, I begin in that way because the key to this study and the key to chapter 7 is actually in the second verse. Because the Lord there said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand.” Why? Notice: “lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘[We did this.] My own hand has [done this].’”

Now, it’s not difficult to make application of that, is it? Because we are tempted—either as individuals; certainly as churches, as congregations; perhaps, I could even say today, institutions—to rely on numbers, methods, personality, past successes, supposed influence, and to say, “On the basis of all of this, we have a great future before us.” It is only in realizing our own inadequacy that we actually ever come to discover the sufficiency of God.

And the lesson that God is teaching the people of Israel in this section is very simple: God wants them to know that they can’t so that they can discover that he can. If you think about it, the principle makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If dependence upon God is the objective, if leaning is the objective, if trusting is the objective, then weakness is an advantage. Weakness is an advantage. Because when you’re weak, then you say, “May I lean on you? Could you help me carry this?” Otherwise, you say, “I need nobody to lean on. I can carry everything.” So the key is there in verse 2.

The picture is dramatic, isn’t it? Because the numbers of the Midianites—they’re described “like locusts in abundance.” In other words—this is a pretty big group here, but I wouldn’t ever say that you look like locusts in abundance. You actually look very good. But if you multiply this by many thousand times, from a vast distance, you would say, “They didn’t even look like humanity, there were so many of them.” And “their camels were without number.” So the vastness of it is what makes the incident so striking. The opposition is vast. It is apparently powerful and influential.

And the Lord said to Gideon—the Gideon that we were dealing with yesterday, Mr. If: “If you’re going with me… If… If… If…” And now, having gone through his fleece experience, he’s wakened up in the morning, and the Lord says to him, the Lord said to Gideon… “Yes?” He says, “You’ve got far too many people in your group.”

Now, he had thirty-two thousand. And perhaps he was wondering whether the thirty-two thousand would be sufficient against the vast numbers represented in the Midianite force. Even the events of the previous chapter had not actually prepared Gideon for what he was hearing: too many! Now, surely it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense! “You have so many people here, and we’ve only got thirty-two thousand.” Again, you see the principle: God’s purpose is that his people will trust him and depend upon him entirely.

If dependence upon God is the objective, if leaning is the objective, if trusting is the objective, then weakness is an advantage.

Now, I’m not going to keep reiterating it. I think the point stands for itself. The reason that he does so is so that the people will understand—so that, in turn, we might understand—that God wasn’t concerned to avoid defeat but to ensure that they knew the sense of the victory. He didn’t have any concern about avoiding defeat. He’s God. We just read from Romans. He’s God.

And so the word is given: “You can let the people go. If anyone’s fearful and trembling, let him return home.” Now, if you know your Bible, you know that that is directly related to the book of Deuteronomy. You can read it in chapter 20, when on the occasion of marriage or on the occasion of various things, the people of Israel could be exempted from military service.[3] And one of those criteria is met in these circumstances, and so he says, “If there’s any of you who are fearful and trembling, then you can go home.”

And then twenty-two thousand people returned. That’s not exactly what you’d call a trickle. That’s a mass exodus. That’s two-thirds of the army. You imagine Gideon standing there going, “I want to give just an opportunity. Maybe there’s one or two of you a little fearful about this. I know I’ve been fearful in the past, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” And then he just watches: The whole place exits! Two-thirds of the operation is gone. All these big, hairy soldiers, off they go.

Now, the reason that the exemption was given (Deuteronomy) is so that if these people remained in a half-hearted perspective—the man thinking about his new bride or thinking about difficulties that have been left behind—if they were then half-hearted, then it created the potential for discouragement amongst the rest of the army; and therefore, it is better that they go home and go about their business than that they stay here and be a jolly nuisance to everybody that’s involved.

Just in passing, you see, you don’t want somebody like this in your locker room, in your basketball team. You don’t want somebody that’s either stuck on himself or stuck on herself or preoccupied with this or preoccupied with that. I don’t care if they’re a genius; let them go. Let them go. Because the wholesale unity of the force is far more important than any accolade that may come to that individual or any support system that needs to be put in place to help him or help her get through her anxieties. That sounds rather difficult, doesn’t it? May even sound a little harsh. It’s the very principle that is here that allows these people to leave. The morale of the army is more important than the size of the army. That’s the point—at first.

Well, then “the Lord said to Gideon,” with his ten thousand now—a nice manageable number, round figure. “I’ve got ten thousand.” “And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people are still too many.’” Now, I don’t know. I can’t imagine that Gideon said, “Terrific!” you know, or “Yes!” I think he’s—knowing what we read in chapter 6—he said, “Wait a minute!”

Now here, as I told you yesterday, you’ll hear a lot of sermons on the fleece, most of which are bogus. And you’ll hear a lot of sermons on the lappers which fit in the exact same category. All right? If you’re in a church and the fellow starts to explain to you about whether they’re lapping like a dog or licking with their hands or shooting—whatever they’re doing—go to the bathroom, because it will really be fairly worthless. When you come to a passage like this, if you find yourself asking why lapping was the sign of a better soldier, you can pretty well guarantee you’re on the wrong tack in relationship to the thrust and the emphasis of the passage.

It’s not uncommon. I’ve heard it taught in such a way as to suggest that God was reducing the numbers till he finally got the marines, if you like—till he finally got the three hundred that really knew what they were doing. So, you know: “Don’t be like the 22,000 that went home. Don’t be like the other 9,700 that had to go back, and their wives said to them, ‘Oh, you’re back a bit early today! Why have you come back so soon?’” He says, “Frankly, I haven’t got the foggiest idea. We’re supposed to get a drink of water. I got a drink of water. I obviously got it the wrong way, and he sent me home.” Wow! What is going on up there? What in the world is God doing?

Do you ever say that? “What in the world is God doing in this? It doesn’t seem to make sense. It seems totally illogical. It seems completely upside-down.” Here we are!

It raises, incidentally, in historical terms, the great question of the expansion of the church in the early centuries, and then the conversion of Constantine, and whether the convention of Constantine making it kind of mainstream was a plus or a minus for the development of the church, which has ramifications for political discussions right up until today.

No. God’s focus wasn’t to try and make sure that Gideon had the toughest, wisest fighting force possible to go against this immense army. No. His focus wasn’t on a particular kind of person but a particular number of them. He wanted to get it as small as he possibly could—a number so small and so patently inadequate that when victory came, they would know: “This is the Lord’s doing; [and] it is marvelous in our eyes.”[4]

Our Fearfulness, God’s Graciousness

How gracious is God! How patient with his servant! Because he knows exactly what Gideon is like. And he says—verse 9—“Go down against the camp, for I[’ve] given it into your hand. But if you are afraid to go down [to the camp]…” That was very gracious of him, wasn’t it? I mean, the Lord knew he was scared to death! He wasn’t exactly real strong at the end of chapter 6—and now, you know, his army’s reduced to three hundred people. “If you’re afraid”? I mean, he wouldn’t have been able to speak properly. His voice would have gone up so high in its register: “No! No, I’m not afraid! No! No! No, no, I’m cool!” Yeah. “If you are afraid to go down to the camp, take your buddy with you. Take Purah with you.” And so off he goes.

I’m encouraged again by Gideon here, because he doesn’t immediately go into his bumper sticker mode—you know, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” “If you are afraid…” “Yes, I’m afraid.” God knows his children. That’s why it says we can cast all our cares upon him, because he cares for us.[5] That’s why it says that we should bring our anxieties and leave them with him[6] and so on. Why is there so much in the Bible about that? Because the Lord knows us. He knows that we’re frail. He remembers that we are dust. He is the everlasting God. It’s his steadfast love that never fails.

And the more I am aware of my own finitude and the frailty of my existence, the more the wonder of the passage that we just had read for us before we sang is increasingly wonderful. Nothing will separate us![7] “Not because of the grasp that I have of you but because of the hold that you have of me.” He holds me. You know, when you walk across the road with your children, or now with your grandchildren, you take their hand. You put their tiny hand inside your big hand. You hold them. You don’t walk across the road asking them to hold on to your pinky: “See if you can hold on to me.” No: “I’ve got you.”

And what God is saying to Gideon here is exactly that: “Gideon, I’ve got you. And I want you to go down. And when you go down, you will hear what they say.” Isn’t that interesting? “You will hear what they say.” When you’re studying the Bible, look for things like this. Because this is all about seeing at the moment, isn’t it? You could see the camels—so many. You could see the numbers were so many. You could see all the soldiers going away. You could see the armies being reduced. “Go down, and you will hear what they’re saying.” And so he says, “Well, off we go.”

“And you [will] hear … and afterward[s] your [hand will] be strengthened to go down against the camp.” And so he went down. There you have it—verse 11, verse 12. And there they were. That’s the description, again, of the vastness of the camp. And “when Gideon came, behold…” When you read “behold” in the text, it’s always like it’s a big flashlight shining up, saying, “Boo!” “Behold, a man was telling a dream to his comrade.”

You say, “Of all the places he could have ended up in the vastness of the camp, isn’t it fascinating that he ended up right there?” I mean, there were tons of people. How was it that he heard the right person saying the right stuff? Well, God is providential. It wasn’t that God moved him around like a pawn on a chessboard: “Pawn to king four.” No. He just went down. He exercised his prerogative, his individual responsibility. In retrospect, he would have had occasion to say, “You know, God ordered my steps.” “A man’s heart devise[s] his way: but the Lord direct[s] his steps.”[8]

“Go down.” That’s what God said. So he went down. When he got down, this is what he heard.

“I was dreaming,” says one soldier to the other. You see them on parade or on watch, or whatever they’re doing—guarding. You got to talk about something. “Well, I had a dream last night.”

“Oh yeah? How was it?”

“[Well,] a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it so that it fell and turned … upside down.”

Now, my response to that would have been “Did you have a cheese pizza before you went to bed?” I mean, are you kidding me?

But no. Again, the guy says, of all things, “You know what? I don’t think this is anything other than the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp.”

So God uses a dream and the interpretation of the dream not by one of his people, not by someone of Israel, but by a Midianite—if you like, a pagan. So an overnight occurrence, interpreted by a pagan, heard in the ears of Gideon and his friend Purah is the confirmation that Gideon needed in order to proceed as per God’s purpose for him.

And so, as you look at the text, it says, “Oh, I can’t wait to post this on social media! Oh, I can’t wait to tweet this out! Oh, I can’t wait to put this on Instagram! Oh, I can’t wait the whole world to find out what’s going on here!” None of the above! Look at the text. What does it say? “[And] as soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped.” “He worshiped.” He says, “God, you are so big. You are so mighty. You are sovereign over everything—even the dreams of the pagans.” And “he worshiped.”

What that meant I don’t know, in terms of its actual expression. We understand worship: looking from ourselves to God, declaring all that he is, acknowledging all that we are before him and our need of him. I imagine he would have said, “O God,” you know—especially after chapter 6—“I’m surprised that you would be so gracious to me, so kind to me, that you care for me.” God does, you know. He does. Don’t be too quick to tell your story before you’ve gone to your bedroom and worshiped—before you’ve got in your car and driven away and parked it and spoken to God about the wonder of his grace and of his goodness.

And you don’t need to tell anybody about what’s going on there. All we have is “He worshiped.” Americans always ask me, “Tell me about your devotional life.” I say, “No.” “No.” Why? I don’t think you would be impressed. I don’t think you would be depressed. And frankly, it’s none of your business. “He worshiped.”

Humble Leadership, Not Diffident Leadership

And after he worshiped, “he returned to the camp of Israel.” And then he gives the directive—after he worshiped. Fearful, fragile, unlikely leader pours out his heart before God. And when the people saw him and heard him, he would not be diffident. He would not be diffident.

There’s a very important balance in this, you see. If you’re going to lead people, the strength of leadership is found in the awareness of inadequacy before God. When you then stand before the people, they don’t expect you to come out and say, you know, like Uriah Heep, you know, “I am an ever so ’umble man, Master Copperfield,” you know? “I’m helpless.” No! That’s not help at all. People will never follow that kind of leadership.

Gideon knew what he was. God knew what he was. And when the people heard him, they were struck by the fact that he knew what he was doing. Now he knew what he was doing. And his directives are clear. They’re imperatives: “Get up!” “Get up!” he says. “Get up! All three hundred of you, get up. Get organized, and do what I do.” Again—and I say it to you purposefully—behind the scenes, we ponder how he approached God in his frailty. And now, in his public persona, he leads with great clarity.

And then, of course, you have the plan. “Here’s the plan: Blow the trumpet, break the jar, and shout. That’s what we’re going to do. I’m splitting you into three groups. I’ll be with one of the groups, then there’ll be two other groups, and our program is straightforward.” And maybe he had them practice it. “But don’t break the jars! We’re just doing a practice, like… You know, you can blow the trumpets, see how that goes. But don’t smash the jars, ’cause we’ve only got a limited number of jars.” And so that’s how it goes.

The Meek, Not the Marines

Now, let’s go back to the idea that is sometimes taught: that the three hundred are the marines. “These are the people that you need, you see. This is how God’s kingdom advances. Never mind the 22,000. Never mind the 9,700. We’re just looking for the high school cheerleaders. We’re just looking for the quarterbacks. We’re just looking for the people who really know what they’re doing!” No, we’re not! History says we’re not. “Does that mean that you can’t be used by God if you’re a quarterback?” No, I guess not. I’ve never been one. And I certainly am not going to be a cheerleader.

But I do know this: What is striking to me in this is that the command involves no military skill at all. You don’t have to be a marine to get a toot out of a trumpet or smash a jar or wave a torch. I mean, it’s pathetic, isn’t it? That’s the way the world looks on the church: a bunch of trumpet-blowing, jar-smashing torch bearers, useful little segment of humanity in the great mainstream of the world. They don’t know! They don’t know who our Commander-in-Chief is! They don’t know who Jesus is! It’s not our job to take them on at their own game.

God uses illness, frustration, disappointment, failure as the very instrument of his rule.

The weapons of our warfare are powerful for the bringing down of strongholds.[9] What are they? Prayer and the preaching of the Word of God. Prayer and the preaching of the Word of God. Do you believe in the preaching of the Bible? Do you believe that the Word of God does the work of God? Are you confident in that? Are you confident enough to trust him in that and to do it? That’s exactly what’s happening here.

Unlikely methods, for sure! But that’s God again, isn’t it? That’s why I began with Colson. You know, he was a marine, he was a graduate in law, his office was next to the president of the United States, and he says, “Isn’t it truly amazing that with all of those accolades, the thing that got me the opportunity was the fact that I was a convict—that the one thing that I couldn’t point to as my own achievement and success, my own glory, was the basis for the glory of God?” God uses illness, frustration, disappointment, failure as the very instrument of his rule.

Who would have thought that against all odds… And we stop here, don’t we? I mean, we know the rest of it. They smashed the things. They blew the things. The only swords that were doing anything were the swords of the Midianites slashing each other in mayhem as they tried to get out of the predicament, unaware of the fact that what they were running from was actually the almighty God.

Strange, isn’t it, that God would use such a scrappy force? Strange, isn’t it, that when God became flesh, he would be “one from whom men hide their faces”?[10] That when God stepped down into time, the second person of the Trinity “did not think equality with God something to be grasped but made himself of no reputation; and being found in the form of a servant, in the likeness of man, he became obedient, even obedient to death on the cross”?[11] And people would have looked at him and said, “Oh dear, oh dear!”—that it was nothing that looked powerful about that bloody sight on Calvary. Who would have thought that God would use a scrappy force? Who would have thought that God would act in this way? Who would have thought that God would reach the world through the likes of us?

So, when I’m tempted to push myself up to the front, when I’m tempted to suggest that I know how everything needs to be done, I need to remind myself that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. And this story, of course, is not about Gideon. “Well,” you say, “Gideon’s in it.” Yeah! But beware when you teach the Bible, it’s like, “Gideon did a really good job, and you should be like Gideon.” No. That’s not the point. Because Gideon died. And if you read on in Judges, forty years after Gideon, it was all goofed up again. And the book of Judges ends with a singular statement: “There was no king, and the people did whatever they felt like doing. They did whatever was right in their own eyes.”[12] And then the people begin to say, “Well, if only we could get a king like the other nations have a king, then we would be great!”[13]

And then you know the story that goes into 1 and 2 Samuel and the promise that is given to David: that “from your seed will come one whose kingdom will never, ever end.”[14] And who is that person? Well, it is the King who comes. How does he come? Triumphant, beating down the forces of politics? No! “Gentle and riding on a donkey.”[15] The only crown he wore was a crown of thorns. What a strange way to reach the world! What a strange way to defeat the enemy! How fantastic it is that God includes us in that program! I mean, it’s amazing to me. I am amazed to be here to speak to you today.

I woke up this morning with a phrase from a hymn in my mind. I thought it was a hymn that had been written by a Brit, but it wasn’t. It was written by an American—and actually a guy from Ohio, as it turns out. And it begins, “Jesus! What a friend for sinners!” That wasn’t the line that was in my mind. The line that was in my mind when I woke up was “Jesus! What a strength in weakness!” And I didn’t know if I’d invented that or if it was somewhere. So, thankful for Google, I went and found it. It goes like this:

Jesus! What a strength in weakness!
Let me hide myself in him.
Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing,
He, my strength, my victory wins.[16]

And so I say to you, as you face today and tomorrow and all the tomorrows that God gives you: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”[17]

Father, thank you that your Word is fixed in the heavens,[18] that it accomplishes its purposes.[19] Thank you for the record of your dealings with your people in the past. Thank you for your care for us. You know us. You made us. Our DNA is distinctive. Help us, Lord. Save us from despondency or from jealousy. Turn our eyes to the Lord Jesus Christ, and let us, as the hymn writer says, hide ourselves in him.[20] We commend one another and those whom we love to your care. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Romans 15:4 (paraphrased).

[2] Charles W. Colson, Loving God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 24.

[3] See Deuteronomy 20:1–9.

[4] Psalm 118:23 (ESV).

[5] See 1 Peter 5:7.

[6] Edward Henry Joy, “All Your Anxiety” (1920).

[7] See Romans 8:35–39.

[8] Proverbs 16:9 (KJV).

[9] See 2 Corinthians 10:4.

[10] Isaiah 53:3 (ESV).

[11] Philippians 2:6–8 (paraphrased).

[12] Judges 21:25 (paraphrased).

[13] 1 Samuel 8:5, 19–20 (paraphrased).

[14] 2 Samuel 7:12–13 (paraphrased)

[15] Matthew 21:5 (NIV). See also Zechariah 9:9.

[16] John Wilbur Chapman, “Jesus! What a Friend for Sinners!” (1910).

[17] Ephesians 6:10 (ESV).

[18] See Psalm 119:89.

[19] See Isaiah 55:11.

[20] Augustus Toplady, “Rock of Ages” (1776).