Sermon Bible Commentary
Judges 8:4
I. Faintness comes to the body by long travel. These men had come a considerable distance, and distance will vanquish the strongest in the end, if there is not adequate renewal of the strength by food and rest.
It is so with the soul. There is a mysterious spending of its substance and vitality day by day in thought, emotion, will, effort. And if, through long travel, the waste is more than the recruiting, then comes faintness. God takes forty, fifty, sixty years for the ripening of one soul. He takes seven, three, or only one for the perfecting of another. No man can measure God's work clearly in the soul of another, or even in his own.
II. Faintness comes to the body by rapid movement. These men had come fast as well as far. All earnest natures tend to go by rapid movements, and are in consequence subject to sudden exhaustion. The fainting is the natural fruit of the effort.
III. Faintness comes to the body by the difficulty of the ground that has been trodden, or of the work that has been done. Some Christians go to heaven by the way of the plain, and some by the mountain roads. The mountain men are often faint, and hardly "pursuing."
IV. Faintness comes to the body through lack of sustenance. The soul, like the body, will faint if it is famished. Jesus feedsHis flock like a shepherd.
V. Faintness may come to the body by sickness, by disease.
The soul sickens and grows faint when in any way, in any place, it inhales the poison of sin.
The grand word of the text is "pursuing." To pursue in weakness is even better, in some senses, than to pursue in strength. It shows that the life-purpose has taken full possession of the soul, and that God Himself is inspiring it.
A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting Places,p. 163.
References: Judges 8:4. J. Baldwin Brown, The Higher Life,p. 288; E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing,p. 31; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation;1st series, p. 83; Parker, vol. vi., p. 165.Judges 8:12; Judges 8:17. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 391.Judges 8:20. Parker, vol. vi., p. 165; Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 80. Judges 8:28. Homiletic Quarterlyvol. iv., p. 393.