071. Shamgar’s Ox-Goad

Shamgar’92s Ox-Goad

Jdg_3:31 : ’93After him was Shamgar, who slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad.’94

One day while Shamgar, the farmer, was plowing with a yoke of oxen, his commands of ’93Whoa! Haw! Gee!’94 were changed to the sound of battle. Philistines, always ready to make trouble, march up with sword and spear. Shamgar, the plowman, had no sword, and would not probably have known how to wield it, if he had possessed one. But fight he must, or go down under the stroke of the Philistines. He had an ox-goad’97a weapon used to urge on the lazy team; a weapon about eight feet long, with a sharp iron at one end to puncture the beast, and a wide iron chisel, or shovel, at the other end, with which to scrape the clumps of soil from the plowshare. Yet, with the iron prong at one end of the ox-goad and the iron scraper at the other, it was not such a weapon as one would desire to use in battle with armed Philistines. But God helped the farmer, and, leaving the oxen to look after themselves, he charged upon the invaders of his homestead. Some of the commentaries, to make it easier for Shamgar, suggest that perhaps he led a regiment of farmers into the combat; his ox-goad only one of many ox-goads. But the Lord does not need any of you to help in making the Scriptures; and Shamgar, with the Lord on his side, was mightier than six hundred Philistines with the Lord against them. The battle opened. Shamgar, with muscle strengthened by open air, and plowman and reaper and thresher’92s toil, uses the only weapon at hand, and he swings the ox-goad up and down, and this way and that; now stabbing with the iron prong at one end of it and now thrusting with the iron scraper at the other and now bringing down the whole weight of the instrument upon the heads of the enemy. The Philistines are in a panic and the supernatural forces come in and a blow that would not under other circumstances have prostrated or slain left its victim lifeless; until, when Shamgar walked over the field, he counted one hundred dead, two hundred dead, three hundred dead, four hundred dead, five hundred dead, six hundred dead’97all the work done by an ox-goad with iron prong at one end and an iron shovel at the other. The fame of this achievement by this farmer with an awkward weapon of war spread abroad, and lionized him, until he was hoisted into the highest place of power, and became the third of the mighty judges of Israel. So you see that Cincinnatus was not the only man lifted from plow to ruler’92s seat.

For what reason was this unprecedented and unparalleled victory of a farmer’92s ox-goad put into this Bible, where there was no spare room for the unimportant and the trivial?

It was, first of all, to teach you, and to teach me, and to teach all past ages since then, and to teach all ages to come, that in the war for God, and against sin, we ought to put to the best use the weapon we happen to have on hand. Why not Shamgar wait until he could get a war-charger, with neck arched, and back caparisoned, and nostrils sniffing the battle afar off; or until he could get war equipment; or could drill a regiment, and, wheeling them into line, command them forward to the charge? To wait for that would have been defeat and annihilation. So he takes the best weapon he could lay hold of, and that is an ox-goad. We are called into the battle for the right, and against wrong, and many of us have not just the kind of weapon we would prefer. It may not be a sword of argument. It may not be the spear of sharp, thrusting wit; it may not be the battering-ram of denunciation. But there is something we can do, and some forces we can wield. Do not wait for what you have not, but use what you have. Perhaps you have not eloquence; but you have a smile. Well, a smile of encouragement has changed the behavior of tens of thousands of wanderers and brought them back to God and enthroned them in heaven. You cannot make a persuasive appeal; but you can set an example, and a good example has saved more souls than you could count in a year, if you counted all the time. You cannot give ten thousand dollars; but you can give as much as the widow of the Gospel, whose two mites, the smallest coins of the Hebrews, were bestowed in such a spirit as to make her more famous than all the philanthropists who have endowed all the hospitals and universities of all Christendom, of all time. You have very limited vocabulary; but you can say ’93Yes’94 or ’93No,’94 and a firm ’93yes’94 or an emphatic ’93no’94 has traversed the centuries, and will traverse all eternity, with good influence. You may not have the courage to confront a large assemblage, but you can tell a Sunday-school class of two’97a boy and a girl’97how to find Christ, and one of them may become a William Carey, to start influences that will redeem India, and the other a Florence Nightingale, who will illumine battlefields covered with the dying and the dead.

There was a tough case in a town of England where a young lady, applying for a Sunday-school class, was told by the superintendent she would have to pick up one out of the street. The worst of the class brought from the street was one Bob. He was fitted out with respectable clothing by the superintendent. But after two or three Sabbaths he disappeared. He was found with his clothes in tatters, for he had been fighting. The second time Bob was well clad for school. After coming once or twice, he again disappeared, and was found in rags, consequent upon fighting. The teacher was disposed to give him up, but the superintendent said, ’93Let us try him again,’94 and the third suit of clothes was provided for him. Thereafter he came until he was converted and joined the church and started for the Gospel ministry, and became a foreign missionary, preaching and translating the Scriptures. Who was the boy called Bob? The illustrious Dr. Robert Morrison, great on earth and greater in heaven. Who his teacher was I know not; but she used the opportunity as it opened, and great has been her reward. You may not be able to load an Armstrong gun; you may not be able to hurl a Hotchkiss shell; you may not be able to shoulder a magazine rifle; but use anything you can lay your hands on. Try a blacksmith’92s hammer or a merchant’92s yardstick or a mason’92s trowel or a carpenter’92s plane or a housewife’92s broom or a farmer’92s ox-goad. One of the surprises of heaven will be what grand results came from some simple means. Matthias Joyce, the vile man, became a great apostle of righteousness; not from hearing John Wesley preach, but from seeing him kiss a little child on the pulpit stairs.

Again, my subject springs upon us the thought that in calculating the prospects of religious attempt, we must take omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence and all the other attributes of God into the calculation. Whom do you see on that plowed field of my text? One hearer says, ’93I see Shamgar.’94 Another hearer says, ’93I see six hundred Philistines.’94 My hearers, you have missed the chief personage on that battlefield of plowed ground. I also see Shamgar, and six hundred Philistines; but more than all and mightier than all and more overwhelming than all, I see God. Shamgar, with his unaided arm, howsoever muscular, and with that humble instrument made for agricultural purposes, and never constructed for combat, could not have wrought such victory. It was Omnipotence above and beneath and back of and at the point of the ox-goad. Before that battle was over, the plowman realized this, and all the six hundred Philistines realized it, and all who visited the battlefield afterward appreciated it. I want in heaven to hear the story, for it can never be fully told on earth’97perhaps some day may be set apart for the rehearsal, while all heaven listens’97the story of how God blessed awkward and humble instrumentalities. Many an evangelist has come into a town given up to worldliness. The pastors say to the evangelist, ’93We are glad you have come, but it is a hard field, and we feel sorry for you. The members of our churches play progressive euchre and go to the theatre and bet at the horse-races, and gaiety and fashion have taken possession of the town. We have advertised your meetings, but are not very hopeful. God bless you.’94 This evangelist takes his place on platform or pulpit. He never graduated at college, and there are before him twenty graduates of the best universities. He never took one lesson in elocution, and there are before him twenty trained orators. Many of the ladies present are graduates of the highest female seminaries, and one slip in grammar or one mispronunciation will arouse a suppressed giggle. Amid the general chill that pervades the house, the unpretending evangelist opens his Bible and takes for his text, ’93Lord, that my eyes may be opened.’94 Opera-glasses in the gallery curiously scrutinize the speaker. He tells in a plain way the story of the blind man, tells two or three touching anecdotes, and the general chill gives way before a strange warmth. A classical hearer who took the first honor at Yale, and who is a prince of proprieties, finds his spectacles become dim with a moisture suggestive of tears. A worldly mother who has been bringing up her sons and daughters in utter godlessness, puts her handkerchief to her eyes and begins to weep. Highly educated men who came to criticise and pick to pieces and find fault, bow on their gold-headed canes. What is that sound from under the gallery? It is a sob, and sobs are catching; and all along the wall, and all up and down the audience, there is deep emotion, so that when at the close of the service anxious souls are invited to special seats, or the inquiry-room; they come up by scores and kneel and repent and rise up pardoned; the whole town is shaken, and places of evil amusement are sparsely attended, and rum-holes lose their patrons, and the churches are thronged, and the whole community is cleansed and elevated and rejoiced. What power did the evangelist bring to bear to capture that town for righteousness? Not one brilliant epigram did he utter; not one graceful gesture did he make; not one rhetorical climax did he pile up. But there was something about him that people had not taken in the estimate when they prophesied the failure of that work. They had not taken into the calculation the omnipotence of the Holy Ghost. It was not the flash of a Damascus blade. It was God, before and behind and all around the ox-goad.

When people say that crime will triumph and the world will never be converted because of the seeming insufficiency of the means employed, they count the six hundred armed Philistines on one side and Shamgar, the farmer, awkwardly equipped, on the other side; not realizing that the chariots of God are twenty thousand, and that all heaven, cherubic, seraphic, archangelic, deific, is on what otherwise would be the weak side. Napoleon, the author of the saying, ’93God is on the side of the heaviest artillery,’94 lived to find out his mistake; for at Waterloo, the one hundred and sixty guns of the English overcame the two hundred and fifty guns of the French. God is on the side of the right; and one man in the right will eventually be found stronger than six hundred men in the wrong. In all estimates of any kind of Christian work, do not make the mistake every day made of leaving out the Head of the Universe.

Again, my subject springs upon us the thought that in God’92s service it is best to use weapons that are particularly suited to us. Shamgar had, like many of us, been brought up on a farm. He knew nothing about javelins and bucklers and helmets and breastplates and greaves of brass and catapults and balist’e6, and iron scythes fastened to the axles of chariots. But he was familiar with the flail of the threshing-floor, and knew how to pound with that; and the ax of the woods, and knew how to hew with that; and the ox-goad of the plowman, and knew how to thrust with that. And you and I will do best to use those means that we can best handle, those weapons with which we can make the most execution. Some in God’92s service will do best with the pen; some with the voice; some by extemporaneous speech, for they have the whole vocabulary of the English language half-way between their brain and tongue; and others will do best with manuscript spread out before them. Some will serve God by the plow, raising wheat and corn, and giving liberally of the proceeds of their farming to churches and missions; some as merchants, and out of their profits they will dedicate a tenth to the Lord; some as physicians, prescribing for the world’92s ailments; and some as attorneys, defending innocence and obtaining rights that would not otherwise be recognized; and some as sailors, helping bridge the sea; and some as teachers and pastors. The Kingdom of God is dreadfully retarded by so many of us attempting to do that which we cannot do’97reaching up for broadsword or falchion or bayonet or scimitar or Enfield rifle or Paixhans guns, while we ought to be content with an ox-goad. I thank God that there are tens of thousands of Christians whom you never heard of, and never will hear of until you see them in the high places of heaven, who are now in a quiet way in homes and schoolhouses and in praying circles and by sick-beds and up dark alleys, saying the saving word and doing the saving deed, the aggregation of their work overpowering the most ambitious statistics. In the grand review of heaven, when the regiments pass the Lord of Hosts, there will be whole regiments of nurses and Sabbath-school teachers and tract distributers and unpretending workers, before whom, as they pass, the kings and queens of God and the Lamb will lift flashing coronet and bow down in recognition and reverence. The most of the Christian work for the world’92s reclamation and salvation will be done by people of one talent and two talents; while the ten-talent people are up in the astronomical observatories studying other worlds’97though they do little or nothing for the redemption of this world’97or are up in the rarified realms of ’93Higher Criticism’94 trying to find out proofs that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, or to prove that the throat of the whale was not large enough to swallow the minister who declined the call to Nineveh, or apologizing for the Almighty for certain inexplicable things they have found in the Scriptures. It will be found out at the last that the Krupp guns have not done so much to capture this world for God as the ox-goads.

Years ago I was to summer in the Adirondacks, and my wealthy friend, who was a great hunter and fisherman, said: ’93I am not going to the Adirondacks this season, and you can take my equipment and I will send it up to Paul Smith’92s.’94 Well, it was there when I arrived in the Adirondacks, a splendid outfit, that cost many hundreds of dollars’97a gorgeous tent, and such elaborate fishing apparatus, such guns of all styles of exquisite make; and reels and pouches and bait and torches and lunch baskets and many more things that I could not even guess the use of. And my friend of the big soul had even written on and engaged men who should accompany me into the forest and carry home the deer and the trout. If the mountains could have seen and understood it at the time, there would have been panic among the antlers and the fins, through all the ’93John Brown’92s Tract.’94 Well, I am no hunter, and not a roebuck or a game-fish did I injure. But there were hunters there that season who had nothing but a plain gun and a rug to sleep on and a coil of fishing-line and a box of ammunition and bait, who came in ever and anon with as many of the captives of forest and stream as they and two or three attendants could carry. Now, I fear that many Christian workers who have most elaborate educational and theological and professional equipment, and most wonderful weaponry, sufficient, you would think, to capture a whole community or a whole nation for God, will have in the Last Day but little except their fine tackling to show; while some who had no advantages, except that which they got in prayer and consecration, will prove, by the souls they have brought to the shore of eternal safety, that they have been gloriously successful as fishers of men, and in taking many who, like the hart, were panting after the water-brooks.

What made the Amalekites run before Gideon’92s army? Each one of the army knew how much racket the breaking of one pitcher would make. So three hundred men that night took three hundred pitchers, and a lamp inside the pitcher, and at a given signal the lamps were lighted and the pitchers were violently dashed down. The flash of the light and the racket of three hundred demolished pitchers sent the enemy into wild flight. Not much of a weapon, you would say, is a broken pitcher; but the Lord made that awful crash of crockery the means of triumph for his people. And there is yet to be a battle with the pitchers. The night of the world’92s dissipation may get darker and darker, but after a while, in what watch of the night I know not, all the ale pitchers and the wine pitchers and the beer pitchers and the whiskey pitchers of the earth will be hurled into demolition by converted inebriates and Christian reformers; and at that awful crash of infernal crockery the Amalekitish host of pauperism and loaferdom and domestic quarrel and cruelty and assassination will fly the earth. Take the first weapon you can lay your hands on. Why did David choose the sling when he went at Goliath, and Goliath went at him? Brought up in the country, like every other farmer’92s boy he knew how to manage a sling. Saul’92s armor was first put on him, but the giant’92s armor was too heavy. The helmet was clapped on him as an extinguisher, and David said, ’93I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them.’94 And the first wise thing David did after putting on Saul’92s armor was to put it off. Then the brook Elah’97the bed of which was dry when I saw it, and one vast reach of pebbles’97furnished the five smooth stones with one of which Goliath was prostrated. Whether it be a boy’92s sling or a broken pitcher or an ox-goad take that which you can manage and ask God for help, and no power on earth or in hell can stand before you.

Go out, then, I charge you, against the Philistines. We must admit the odds are against us’97six hundred to one. In the matter of dollars, those devoted to worldliness and sin and dissipation, when compared with the dollars devoted to holiness and virtue’97six hundred to one. The houses set apart for vice and despoliation and ruin, as compared with those dedicated to good’97six hundred to one. Of printed newspaper sheets scattered abroad from day to day, those depraving as compared with those elevating are six hundred to one. The agencies for making the world worse, compared with the agencies for making the world better’97six hundred to one. But Moses in his song chants, ’93How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?’94 and in my text one ox-goad conquers six hundred uplifted battle-axes; and the day of universal victory is coming, unless the Bible be a fabrication and eternity a myth and the chariots of God are unwheeled on the golden streets, and the last regiment of the celestial hosts lie dead on the plains of heaven. With us or without us, the work will be done. Oh! get into the ranks somewhere, armed somehow; you with a needle, you with a pen, you with a good book, you with a loaf of bread for the hungry, you with a vial of medicine for the sick, you with a pair of shoes for the barefooted, you with word of encouragement for the young man trying to get back from evil ways; you with some story of the Christ who came to heal the worst wounds and pardon the blackest guilt and call the farthest wanderer home. I say to you, as the watchman of London used to say at night to the householders, before the. time of street-lamps came: ’93Hang out your light! Hang out your light!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage