Judges 6-8: God Makes a Warrior Audio Transcript
Judges: Scandalous Saviors
05 – GOD MAKES A WARRIOR – Toby Beck
Intro
Amen. Go ahead and be seated. Waiting upon the Lord, as far as I understand it, means giving Him your attention and saying, all right, Lord, what now? What are you wanting to do in me? What are you doing around me? Help me to get in step and in line with you.
And so that’s why we’re opening the Bible. We want to get in step with the Lord. Judges chapter 6 is where we’re going to be this morning. I want to begin by just thanking God publicly for a servant of the Lord who has blessed countless people. Really, it’s hard to guess how many people this man has encouraged.
John Piper and his debilitating fear
He certainly encouraged me, Pastor John Piper. He’s one of the most respected and influential preachers in America today.
I don’t think that’s an overstatement. He has preached countless messages to thousands and thousands of people in many different venues. Primarily for most of his years, he was the preacher at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota. But through his preaching, God has brought people to faith in Christ, has deepened the faith of many believers, has equipped pastors.
I have had the privilege of going with several of our other pastors just before COVID to their pastors equipping conference. It was so beneficial. Many people are serving on the mission field today because God spoke to them through a sermon or message or book.
He’s written over 50 books. And so he’s had such a profound impact on so many people, including myself, which is why I found myself somewhat surprised when I learned, as he was sharing a testimony that I was listening to, that as he was growing up, he was deathly afraid of public speaking.
Yeah. And now I know, just so you know, depending on which survey you read, fear of public speaking is way up there. It’s right close with fear of heights and fear of spiders, snakes, and dogs and those kinds of things. It’s way up at the top. So it’s not unusual for a person to be really afraid of public speaking.
But for him, it was absolutely debilitating.
He shared that it began somewhere around middle school. And he found that when he was called upon to speak, even in just a small little group of like a portion of his class, his mind would go blank. His heart would absolutely race. He could see his chest thumping under his shirt.
His emotions would overwhelm him. And he would just almost go catatonic. It was so strong. He, even in high school, took to extreme measures of trying to avoid having to speak in front of the class to the point where if the teacher was going around and calling on people, he would excuse himself, go to the bathroom, and stay there.
Literally, in high school, there was a class, he recalled, where giving in front of the class a short little thing that you could read that was required.
It was like half your grade. And he took a barely passing grade in order to avoid having to do that. It was such a strong phobia for him. And so then he goes to college, and he chose his classes very carefully. I’m gonna make sure I choose ones that don’t require any speaking in front of other people.
It was his sophomore year at Wheaton College, he recalls, where near the end of the term, the chaplain of the school asked if he would give just a brief prayer to open a chapel time. And he said before he even knew what happened, he heard himself say yes.
And then like, ah, what did I just say? And to this day, he said, I cannot recall, why did I say yes to that?
Like, I know I hate that, and don’t feel like I can do that. And yet, he says, maybe it was because I realized someday I have to get through this, or maybe God just made him say yes, whatever it was. He said yes, and then he stuck. And as the chapel date approached, he was just getting more and more terrified.
Day of, he is pacing outside, praying out loud to God, and he says he made a vow to God. One of those, he describes it as an Old Testament type vow. If you, God, do this, then I’ll do that. It was one of those kind of vows. He said, and here was the vow.
If you get me through the next 30 seconds, if you get me through this prayer, I promise, I vow, I will never say no to a speaking opportunity out of fear.
Now, that was one of the scariest promises he could imagine making, but that’s what he felt like. If you get me through this, then I will accept whatever you put in front of me. I won’t reject it out of fear. And God got him through. And he has made good on his vow.
He has been preaching his whole life. What’s interesting is he acknowledged, I still get nervous. And he had, at the point this interview was given, he had been preaching for decades. He says, I still get nervous. It’s not as bad as it was, but I still get nervous, but God has equipped him to do what God made him to do.
Now, I share that story, one, just to celebrate a guy who has been, well, I call it the forging of a preacher. God forged a preacher.
It’s not like he just naturally wanted to and was good at it. No, he was naturally not good at it, and God forged a preacher. Today in the text, we’re looking at God forging a warrior and a leader out of a person who is not naturally courageous or ready to lead, felt exactly the opposite.
Judges: Scandalous Saviors
We’re looking at Gideon in Judges chapter six. Now, today, we’re looking at Gideon. Chapters six, seven, and eight are the target. I’m just gonna tell you, I’m not gonna make it. I mean, hopefully we’ll survive the day, but I’m just saying we won’t cover all of the material.
It’s too much material. We’ll cover six, we’ll briefly cover seven, and we’ll just wave at eight as we’re wrapping up. And so I’m just letting you know now.
For the sake of time, I’m just gonna do a little bit of an intro to cover the first 10 verses. They begin like the rest of them have begun, right? And again, Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, right? That’s, oh, here we go. Back through this cycle again.
Another lap around Mount Sinai, as they say. And so they sin. The next step in the spin cycle is oppression. This time, not from the local Canaanites, but from Eastern peoples, the Midianites and Amalekites, who would come invade the land every year around harvest time.
It says they would come in and they would descend on the land like locusts. Like they would just cover the land. There were so many of them, and they would absolutely devour everything of value.
They would eat all the crops. They would take all of the animals. And the Israelites, when they would come, would literally run for the hills. They would go up, it says, and they would find caves and places that they could shelter while the land was dominated by these Eastern invaders.
And they would just hang on until they finally left, having eaten everything. Then they’d come back down and find that there’s nothing left. And so Israel was starving. They were brought so low, the text says, that they cried out to God in their misery.
God then sent not a deliverer. Interesting. At this point, every time they’d cry out, God would send a deliverer. This time, God sent a prophet, which was not what they were hoping for, not what they were crying out for.
You can imagine their disappointment when they wanted a deliverer, and instead a prophet shows up. It’s like your car breaking down and calling for a mechanic. Instead of getting a mechanic, you get a counselor to talk you through your car troubles. Not what you’re hoping for.
But they actually needed it, right? The prophet comes. We’re not given the prophet’s name, but the prophet comes and basically declares, this is what God says, the Lord, Yahweh, the Lord Almighty, I brought you out of Egypt. I rescued you already from your oppressors.
I brought you into this land, and I defeated the Amorites. I just told you don’t worship their gods, but you have not listened. And I hear in this prophet’s message the voice of the father, a parent to the child, the chronically disobedient child, basically saying, aren’t you tired of this yet?
Aren’t you tired of this cycle of doing wrong and suffering the consequences? And then back around again, aren’t you tired yet? I am. And you as a parent might just know that if you’ve got a kid or more than one kid that has been just sort of stuck in a really rebellious pattern, it’s really wearying.
It’s no fun for them. You can see it, it’s all over their face and their life, and it’s no fun for you either. And this is, God is like, I am so tired of this. Nevertheless, after giving them this rebuke, God sends a deliverer. And we pick it up in verse 11.
Judges 6:11-16
If you’ve got strength to stand, I’d invite you to stand with me in honor of God’s word. Read about the deliverer that God sends. His name is Gideon. Verse 11. The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abizrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior. But sir, Gideon replied, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, did not the Lord bring us out of Egypt?
Now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength that you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you? But Lord, Gideon asked, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I’m the least in my family.
The Lord answered, I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites together.
Let me ask for God’s help. Father God, thank you. I thank you for, I just, I’m so excited for what I see in this. Your people were so broken and prone to unfaithfulness and yet you graciously kept coming to them and telling them of their real root problem and also delivering them from the consequences that they brought on themselves, Lord.
And we see, even as you come to Gideon here, he had a lot of things he didn’t understand and you are helping him to understand. Lord, I am confident Gideon’s not alone in that and we need your help this morning as well. Would you meet us? Would you open our hearts?
Help us to be in step with you as you train us and teach us. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
God Makes a Warrior
Go ahead and be seated. Judges 6, 7, and 8 are the story of how God takes a man who is pretty much hopeless and scared and forges him into a faithful warrior, a warrior for the Lord. And I wanna remind you that God doesn’t just tell us stories here to entertain us or simply to inform us.
God tells us stories. These are in here to train us. God is not just simply interested that we know what happened to Gideon. The reality is we will all of us at times feel ill-equipped to handle what’s in front of us, facing whatever troubles or difficulty is in front of us and you’ll feel like, I can’t handle this.
I am not enough for this. And God knows that very, very well. And so his purpose this morning in this particular text, I am absolutely confident of it is to say, yes, that is a common and familiar experience to feel like I don’t have enough for what is in front of me and I am showing you that I can equip you.
It’s not about you, it’s about me. I will be with you. And so just understand that this is not just a story about Gideon, this is a story about you. It’s a story about me and about God meeting us where we are at and to forge us into the warriors to fight the battles that he has given us.
So it begins with a calling. God calls Gideon as we just read.
God Calls Gideon
Verse 11 again, the angel of the Lord came and sat down. The angel of the Lord. So it’s very easy. You see the word angel and you think, shiny guy with wings, right? That’s the natural default, but you understand there’s nothing in this text that indicates this being, this person, I’m gonna say person because it describes it as a man.
It just looks like a man. Gideon doesn’t see any telltale signs that this is anything other than a regular guy that comes along that he doesn’t know, calls him sir. And he sits down like normal guys sit down on a rock or whatever. And so, but it says it’s the angel of the Lord, angel of Yahweh.
And I have remarked before where we saw this being enter that I believe this is actually Jesus.
This is God, the son. Why do I think that? Many reasons. One of which is when we get to verse 14 and following, the author dispenses with the angel terminology and just says Yahweh. And then Yahweh said to Gideon. And so we’re clearly, we’re talking about God.
God comes to Gideon here. God in the form of a man. Well, that’s Jesus. And so commentators just wanna acknowledge they’re not unanimous on this, but at least all acknowledge it’s very possible. Some more convinced than others, I tend to be very convinced.
So I believe this is Jesus coming to Gideon. Regardless, it is God coming to Gideon and starts by correcting his thinking.
God corrects Gideon’s thinking
Yahweh is with you, mighty warrior. More on the mighty warrior in just a moment. But first, Gideon notices most, not what the angel calls him, but notices that promise, Yahweh is with you. And he says, wait a second. If Yahweh is with us, then look around.
Do you see any evidence that God is with us? Why is all this happening? And then he goes on to say, if God is with us, then it should look a lot more like it looked, like I heard about in the olden days when Moses was leading the people and mighty miracles were happening.
That’s what I would expect to see if Yahweh is really with us. I don’t see any of that happening. That’s a paraphrase of what Gideon is saying.
In fact, what I really see is evidence that God has abandoned us, not that he is with us. Now, it’s so easy to read a story and critique it from our comfortable place post, right? Like to look back and go, I know how this all goes in poor, deluded Gideon.
But how, like, can you acknowledge how easy it is to feel like God, you know all your theology perhaps, but it feels like God is not around. It feels like he left. I don’t see him doing the things that I’ve heard that he does and that I believe that he does, but I don’t see him doing those things.
So for practical purposes, if I feel abandoned, I hope that you can acknowledge that if you’ve not felt that way, it’s not hard to feel that way.
And you will bound to feel that way more than once in your life. We know from the scriptures that God has promised in so many different ways, I will never leave you or forsake you. I won’t do that. I promise I am with you always, Jesus said to the very end of the age, I’m with you.
His presence is promised again and again, but when we don’t feel it, when we don’t sense it, when we can’t perceive it, what do we do? Well, one of the things I want us to do is look at Gideon. His circumstances said God is not around, and yet literally God was sitting 10 feet away.
And to take comfort from the fact that even though you cannot perceive it, he is there. And God was coming faithfully, not just to be there, but to work in Gideon, to correct his thinking, including to declare his purpose.
God declares Gideon’s purpose
I have a purpose for you. God is with you. Yahweh is with you, mighty warrior. Some of you are chuckling, and I used to think this was sarcasm, and it might be. There’s debate on this. Is God sort of poking him a little? Because what’s he doing at the moment?
The mighty warrior is crouched down in a little wine press, sifting his wheat so that he doesn’t get caught, doesn’t look particularly courageous, doesn’t look particularly mighty. I used to think that this was sarcasm, that God was kind of poking fun at him.
I don’t actually think that, it’s possible, but I actually think that God is speaking, here’s what you are, and when I’m done with you, this label will fit. Right now, it might not look like it, but I can see who you’re going to be, not just who you are now.
I believe God is speaking who Gideon really is going to be as God works in him to become a mighty warrior, and by the way, I will say that the person who goes out and scavenges his food when enemies are around is actually quite courageous, and it’s not stupid to hide from enemies, okay?
So this might be courageous. So let’s possibly look at it that way. And so Gideon’s like, well, okay, thanks for the compliment, but what we really need is someone like Moses. Perfect, verse 14. Go, just like God said to Moses, in the strength that you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand, am I not sending you?
This is so reminiscent of Moses. Moses, who back in Exodus chapter three, fully agreed with God, yes, we need a rescuer, fully disagreed with God that he could be the one, right?
No, no, no, no, no. And remember, very famously, Exodus three and four, Moses has a whole list of reasons why this is a bad plan, God. I am not the guy you’re looking for. And similarly, Gideon, wait, no, I’m the, my clan, my family’s the smallest one in our tribe, and I’m the smallest one in our family, like you just keep getting small, small, you know, the nesting dolls.
I’m the very smallest. I can’t be the mighty warrior that you’re calling me to be. Notice that God does not argue the point with him. Oh no, Gideon, you’re much stronger than you think you are. You just need to believe in yourself. No, that’s what an American prophet would tell Gideon.
No, no, no, God doesn’t argue that he’s strong. God just says, I’ll be with you. I am with you. I’m the difference maker, not you.
Gd confirms his presence
I’m the difference maker. If I’m with you, then you will be victorious. God’s presence is the decisive factor, which means then, is God really with me? That is the critical piece, and Gideon would like some confirmation of that. So he says, beginning in verse 21, or no, 20, where am I at here?
Yes, verse 17, actually. If I’ve found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it’s really you. Because remember, you think, well, what more do you need? Here I am talking to you. But he means, give me a sign that you’re really God, because you look like a regular guy.
Do you see what he, that’s like, I understand that. That seems valid to me. He’s not glowing, he doesn’t have wings.
He hasn’t done any miracles yet. They’re just having a conversation. And so Gideon says, will you wait while I go prepare an offering? You bet, I’ll wait right here. So he goes, and it takes a while. He’s gotta prepare a young goat. I assume one that was running around moments ago.
So he’s gotta go through a whole process of preparing that goat, cooking it, and then also breaking bread, unleavened bread. Picture, I think this is reminiscent of offerings that would typically be made at the tabernacle, and bring it back. Offerings typically brought to God at the tabernacle.
If you’re God, then I’m bringing it to you right here. Angel of the Lord says, go ahead, arrange things on the rock. Did so, and then the angel of the Lord takes the staff in his hand, touches the end of it to the offering, and now suddenly, it bursts into flames, consumes everything, everything is suddenly all burned up, and then the angel of the Lord, the guy, just vanishes.
Gideon’s convinced. Gideon goes from doubt to, oh, man, I’m in trouble. Why, because I just saw God face to face, and he knows, he remembers what it says, what God said to Moses, nobody can see my face and live. God says, ah, sovereign Lord, verse 22, I have seen the angel of Yahweh face to face.
I think I’m going to die, and God speaks. He’s vanished, but he continues to speak peace, that one word, peace, shalom, shalom, you’re not gonna die. It’s not why I came, and so Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it the Lord is peace.
This is so powerful, and there’s lots I would love to say. I want to say the most important thing, though.
I’ll limit myself to this, and that is, do you have that? Do you have shalom with God, or to use our English word, peace with God? I don’t mean, do you have a peaceful, easy feeling about God, that can come and go, depending on whether or not it’s raining outside, or whether or not the children are behaving, or a thousand other factors.
Do you have peace with God? Do you recognize that your sin naturally makes you an enemy of God? It does. Whether your sin is sensational or common, your sin makes you an enemy of the most high God, but that God, in his mercy, says, I would like to bring you near and make peace with you.
How? Because God the Son, this very same God, because God the Son, this very same Jesus, went to the cross, he alone has righteousness that pleases the Lord, and he says to us, each individually, I will take your sin, which makes you an enemy of God, and I will take it on myself, and receive the wrath for it, and I will give you my righteousness.
It’s the great trade. I will give you my righteousness, so that when God looks at you, he sees my righteousness, and then we have peace with God. Romans chapter five says it the most succinctly, right? Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the one that brings us near so that we may be at peace with God, have shalom with God, and the question is, do you have that? Because if you don’t, everything that follows after this is irrelevant to you. You cannot be forged as a warrior of God until you are a child of God.
It begins with relationship. So ask yourself, Lord, where am I? For Gideon, God came to him very specifically to forge this relationship. I believe this is the moment that Gideon actually gets saved. He is now at peace with God. He has seen God, he has accepted God’s invitation, he is at peace with God.
Have you?
Because, and I don’t just assume because you’re in the room, of course you must. No, there’s plenty of people that will come and hang around God’s people, but may not yet directly deal with God and say, God, do I actually belong to you? Have I acknowledged my sin?
Have I turned from it? Have I accepted the righteousness that is mine as a gift of grace from Christ? Have I? Even now, don’t even wait until we get to the end. Even now, yes, Lord, say, it is a transfer of trust. It is a submission to the one who has made peace with God for you.
It’s Jesus. That’s the foundation. Once you do that, then God says, all right, you belong to me. Child of God, let’s go. I’m gonna teach you how to be a warrior.
God Trains Gideon
Gideon’s training began that night. That same night, verse 25. That same night, Yahweh said to him, take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old, tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it, and then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on top of the hill.
Use the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down and offer the second bull as a burnt offering. Can you imagine Gideon saying, wait, I thought I was gonna be fighting Midianites. I thought that was the problem that we’re gonna work on. No, we’re gonna deal with the root issue first, God says.
God deals with the root issue
The big problem in Israel was not the big bad Midianites.
That was a symptom only. The real root issue was their idolatry. Now, here’s something. Here’s a word, an important word to know here, syncretism. It is the melding of multiple religions or worship practices, and that’s what’s going on here because they were still, the Israelites, maintaining some form of worship of Yahweh.
I assume the tabernacle was still standing somewhere. I assume people still went there sometimes and made offerings. Clearly, we know they are still talking about Yahweh. How else would Gideon know the stories of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt and all of that?
So they know about Yahweh, and there’s probably some form of worship of Yahweh, but at the very same time, right up on the hill, Dad’s got his big altar to Baal and the Asherah pole right next to it. So they’re just putting them together and assuming that everything’s going to be fine, and God is insisting, no, I will not share myself with the other gods, the false and pagan and disgusting gods.
I will not do it. It’s like a wife whose husband is beginning to wander, saying, I won’t share you with other women. You will be mine alone or not at all. God is insisting on faithfulness. So he is leading Gideon to initiate the cleansing of the idolatry.
Go tear your dad’s idol down. Now, how do you think Gideon’s gonna feel about that? Like, take my dad’s? Like, I’m trying to put it in our modern cultural terms. It’s difficult to do. Take your dad’s most expensive things and go tear down your dad’s most precious things, the things that he cares most about.
And by the way, not just him, all the townspeople as well. Okay. So he’s definitely got his hands full there. He is leading the way. God is calling Gideon to lead the way in repentance. That’s another important word you need to know. Repentance means literally, if you look at the word repent in Hebrew, it means simply to turn.
Repentance is not feeling sad about sin.
Repentance is actually turning away from it, getting rid of it, going a different direction. That’s what repentance is. And so it’s not just simply, hey, we need to be sorry about our idolatry and keep right on going with it. No, we gotta get it gone.
The New Testament talks about repentance and gives clarity to that. Worldly sorrow is where you’re just sorry about the consequences of your sin. You feel sad that your life is difficult and the consequences of sin have caught up with you. But godly sorrow brings repentance, meaning you actually turn away from your sin and that leads to salvation, which leaves no regret.
And so Gideon said, all right, I’m called by God to lead the way in repentance, not just saying sorry about the idols, but actually getting rid of the idols.
And so he takes and tears down his father’s altar to Baal and the Asherah pole. By the way, it says he’s afraid of the townspeople. So he does it at night. Takes 10 of his friends and they go do this deed at night. I don’t blame them. They do it at night.
They chop up the Asherah pole, which Asherah, if you know, is likely a pornographic image. It’s a pornographic statue. And so literally chopping it up, it’s a good image of dealing with sexual sin, of actually, if there’s stuff to get rid of, then absolutely destroy it.
Get rid of the thing. Now, idolatry happens in the heart, but if there’s physical, tangible things that go with it, then get rid of it.
This is the picture here. And so he chops up the Asherah pole, uses that as firewood to offer the bull as a sacrifice to the Lord. In the morning, everybody sees what has happened. Everybody’s aghast at what has happened. And eventually the word gets out, it was Gideon and they come for his head.
So he was right to be afraid. He knew that people aren’t gonna like this. And they come to his house. Dad answers the door. Your son ruined the town idol and the town altar. He’s gotta die. And dad suddenly is forced to choose between loyalty to his own idols and his son.
Thankfully, dad chose to be loyal to his son and gives a brilliant answer.
If Baal’s a God, shouldn’t he be able to take care of himself? You can’t argue with that logic. At least they couldn’t and they didn’t. And so they said, all right, we’ll let Baal deal with him. They started calling Gideon Jerob Baal, meaning let Baal take care of Gideon.
Baal never did anything. Not, please notice, not because Baal has no power. It’s demons they were worshiping. They have power. They just have no power in comparison to God. God is with him. Therefore, the idols couldn’t touch him. So it’s really important.
It’s easy to kind of poo-poo false gods as if they have no power. They have lots of power. They just have no power in comparison to God. And so Gideon’s in good hands as he begins to lead the way with the root issue. Notice the next thing that God does to prepare him to be a mighty warrior is fills him with his spirit.
God fills him with his Spirit
Verse 34, then the spirit of Yahweh came upon Gideon and he blew a trumpet summoning the Abizrites to come follow him. And I just, I can’t linger here long, but just you need to know what a unique and special thing God is doing for Gideon right here. If you read through the whole Old Testament looking for people that are filled with God’s spirit, it’s an exceptional thing.
It’s an unusual thing. It wasn’t common. Sometimes it didn’t happen to that many people and it wasn’t always permanent. A lot of times it happened just for a moment where God would fill a person with his spirit to do a particular thing. That’s what’s happening here.
And I want you to marvel at the fact that in the New Testament, post Acts chapter two, suddenly, instead of just a few people for special occasions getting God’s spirit, all God’s people receive God’s spirit.
And I am convinced we don’t really know the gift we have. We’re told that it’s game changing. Jesus said it’s game changing. And I think we are like, it sounds great. I wish I understood more of it. At least that’s my attitude. And I hope to understand more of it.
So the reality is we need to marvel that what happened to Gideon has happened to you if you are in Christ. And I think you should just be on consistency saying, God, I want to fully understand what it means that you’ve given me your spirit. Because I don’t want to just leave gifts sitting on a shelf that should be actually put into practice.
Secondly, I want you to notice, when did the spirit get given? I don’t think it’s any accident that it was after he took the step of tearing down the idols that the spirit was given.
You want to see the spirit’s presence and activity and power in your life more significantly? Then look around for any idols or sin, abiding sin that’s in your life and say, well, I’ll start by cleaning house. Maybe then God will be more free to work.
I think that is a biblical model. So the good news is Gideon is filled with God’s spirit. He’s torn down the idols. He’s filled with God’s spirit. He blows the trumpet, summons the Israelites. 32,000 men show up and say, all right, we’re ready. Let’s go fight.
The bad news is the enemy had more than four times that many. And Gideon is starting to worry about whether or not this is really going to work. It’s time for the famous Fleece of Gideon. How many of you know the famous Fleece of Gideon? OK, lots of you.
If you don’t, this is the biblical model for how to know God’s will. Wink. So I will give proper disclaimers. This is what Gideon did. This is not necessarily prescriptive, OK? So Gideon’s worried. Is this really going to work? My army is so much smaller than the enemy army.
God responds to fears with patience
And so Gideon said to God, verse 36, if you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised, look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. And if in the morning there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground around it’s dry, then I’ll know that you’ll save Israel by my hand as you have said.
So basically, you’ve made me a promise. In fact, he acknowledges, you’ve promised me that you’re going to do this.
But I’m not sure you’re going to do this. So here’s how I’m going to know that you’re going to do this. Make the fleece wet, the ground dry in the morning. Now, God had every right to say, I keep my word. I don’t have to do anything to prove my faithfulness to you.
He had every right to say that. And yet, he grants Gideon’s request, which to me shows that God is far more patient than I even realize. God responds to this request with patience. And in the morning, sure enough, the ground was dry and the fleece was not just damp.
It was sopping. They wrung out a bowl of water from this fleece that he had. And Gideon was still seeking assurance, right?
OK, God, you know, let’s flip it, how about? In the morning, make the ground wet and the fleece dry. If it’s really true that you’re going to do this. And he says, please don’t be mad. Please don’t be angry. He knows he’s pushing it. He knows he is needing extra, or at least craving, extra reassurance.
And God, again, graciously said, OK. Now, I marvel at that. I joked that that’s the way you know God’s will when you’re really puzzling over it. You just put out a fleece of some kind. I heard a great story this week. If you know the former pastor of this church, Stan Scholl, and his wife, Audrey.
I learned from Sharon, who’s in the office here, their daughter, that Audrey put out a fleece when she was trying to find out from God, am I supposed to marry him?
And she was very insistent. So let me – Audrey, if you’re watching … It was not just a, hey, my marriage sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll throw out a fleece. And if this happens, then I’m clearly … no, it was a very reverent process, lots of prayer.
And so I don’t want to give the idea that she was very flippant about it. But she really did have a, I’m really uncertain. And so she put out a fleece. I can’t tell you the full story. It’s a good one. You can ask me after. I’ll share you the details.
But ultimately, I take that. She was young. I take that as God meets you where you’re at. And even though he has the right to say, you don’t need this, he sometimes will accommodate this because he knows this. And he cares about it. He said, I will give you extra help.
Why? Because I’m a good father, and I love you, and I’m equipping you, I’m training you.
And so God responds to the fears with patience. Now, how are we doing? We’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. So it’s finally time. He’s been called. He’s been trained, or at least he’s in the process of training. So now it’s time. The enemy is out there.
God Sends Gideon
The Midianites, the Eastern peoples, have come again. They’re covering the land. It’s time to take these 32,000 soldiers and go to battle. So Gideon sets out. And as they draw near to where the Midianites are camped, God calls a halt and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve got a problem.
God removes his self-reliance
You have too many men. I hear the record scratching my head. Wait, they have too many men? No, no, no, you, Gideon, have too many men. They have way more than us. Yes, you have too many men. Verse 2, you have too many men, lest Israel boast over me, saying, my own hand has saved me.
If you go with 32,000 against 135,000, you might think that you’re awesome. And that would be tragic, because it’s not about you. You don’t actually have power. I want to illustrate this. One of our really excellent children’s ministry workers said, here’s how you can illustrate this.
So I have this for you. This is so fun. All right, so got some army guys, all right? This red one here represents the Israelites. I know you can’t see, but just imagine. So that’s the Israelites. And so at this current state, every Israelite soldier is going to have to take out four of these army guys here, four of these enemies.
And it’s going to be even harder, because this red guy only has a bugle, and these others all have guns. So it’s really not going to go well for the Israelites here. But if you’ve seen enough movies, you know that sometimes one can take out four, right?
And God is probably thinking, you guys, if you guys end up winning, you’re going to think you’re all ready for the movies and can. Sorry, I’m being a little silly. A lot silly. But God seems concerned that this ratio is not yet severe enough. And so he says, verse 3, announce to the people, anybody who trembles with fear may turn back and leave.
22,000 left, 10,000 remained. Good news, bad news. Good news, you have 32,000 soldiers. Bad news, 2 thirds of them are scared and want to go home. God said, let them go home. Don’t want those that are afraid. So now it’s 10,000 who remain versus 135,000.
Every Israelite, here’s the next, has to defeat 14 of these enemy guys. You want to help me set these guys up? Come on, I need some help. You array the enemy in fighting posture. All right, one against 14. Now you’ve got to realize, even in the movies, one doesn’t beat 14.
I mean, except in very rare occasions.
But you’re not going to get that to happen with all 10,000. And here’s what’s remarkable. God says, yeah, one against 14, still no good. We’ve got too many men still. Let’s head down to the creek. I’ll sort out the ones you need to keep. So verse 5, thank you for this.
I really appreciate that, actually. Last night, I fumbled around with it for a long time and went, that was stupid. I should have got help. So thank you for help. Verse 5, Gideon took the men down to the water. Then the Lord told him, this is so crazy, separate those who lap water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink.
I’m not even kidding. It’s the kneelers and the lappers. So those who get down on their knees and they just stick their face right in the water and slurp it out versus the ones who kneel down, cup the water in their hands and drink it.
And so that’s how you’re going to know the difference. Now, some commentators, and it’s very interesting, it’s not quite half, who read, basically, the ones who just knelt down, they were the upright, trustworthy, moral integrity guys that you want with you.
They’re alert and vigilant. And everybody knows they’re a good soldier. Why? Because of how they drink. And those other guys who just stick their face in the water and cravenly indulge their thirst, shame on them. And I think about that verse every time I’m out in the woods and I’m drinking from like, I better be the kneeler.
I better do it this way because I don’t want to be one of those guys that’s a terrible person and get sent home.
I’m just saying, I don’t think there’s moral virtue in the way they drank the water. God could have just as easily said, just put the left-handers over here and the right-handed guys over there, send the right-handers home. I think it’s random. I could be wrong, but I think it’s just random.
But regardless, God is now satisfied because only 300 knelt down and drank water, sent the rest home. Now we got 300 against 135,000. God says, perfect, perfect. That’s the ratio I’m looking for. And so in case you want to visualize, then every Israelite soldier would have to basically destroy 450 guys.
Doesn’t that help you visualize? It helped me.
Who knew I’d get to play with army guys today? Yeah, now God says we got them right where we want them. I think the whole point is God says, I don’t want you feeling self-reliant, and I’m confident it worked. Gideon is not thinking, oh, we got him now.
He is actually feeling the opposite. He’s feeling, oh my goodness, what is God doing? We didn’t have a chance before, and now we have no chance, at least visibly speaking. And God knows he’s feeling that way and says, OK, in case you’re feeling afraid, oh, yeah, just theoretically speaking, in case you’re feeling afraid, God is going to strengthen his reliance on God.
God reassures his God-reliance
Go down with your servant. Remember, it’s the middle of the night. They’re going to attack in the morning, at least he thinks. So go down to the camp here in the night and listen to what they’re saying. I think you’re going to be encouraged. So verse 13, they sneak down to the camp at night, and Gideon arrived, it says, verse 13, just as a man was telling a friend his dream.
So these are the two enemy soldiers talking. I had a dream, the man said. A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed. And his friend responded, well, this can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon, son of Joash, the Israelite.
God has given the Midianites and the whole camp into his hands. That’s what he heard.
So suddenly, Gideon goes into the enemy camp and realized, these guys are hearing from God by dreams and properly interpreting them. Maybe if they’re believing God, I ought to believe God. That’s his conclusion. Gideon, it says, when he heard this, he fell down and worshipped.
Gideon worshipped God. OK, God, this, by all accounts, looks crazy. But you’re commanding it. So it’s obviously you’re in it. And you’ve just confirmed it. Even the pagans know that you are going to win victory. And so he went back and roused the 300.
Get up, he says. The Lord has given the Midianite camp into your hands.
God empowers his weakness
And so they get up, get ready to fight. And God empowers now their weakness. These 300, these are not 300 superheroes. These are 300 regular guys who are not particularly good at battle. And God is with them. He empowers their weakness. He divides them into three companies.
It doesn’t mean they have no strategy at all. He divides into three companies. Reading between the lines, it seems like they spread out to sort of surround the camp. They’re probably up a little bit, elevated. The Midianites are in a valley. So they probably get up a little bit.
So they have a little bit of height advantage. They get around. And it says, at Gideon’s signal, what do they do? They blow their trumpets, all of them. They smash the clay jars that they’ve got. They lift their torches up in the air and they shout their war cry, which is a sword for Yahweh and for Gideon.
And what it says is they don’t run down into the Midianite camp. They just hold their positions on the outside while, verse 22, Yahweh caused the men in the camp to turn on each other with their swords. God says, yeah, you don’t have enough of you. I’ll actually have them do part of the job.
Then they all began fleeing, and that’s when Gideon sends out, if you continue reading, Gideon sends out the word to the rest of the Israelites, probably the guys that had already gone home, saying, all right, hey, by the way, the battle is, the decipher’s blow has been struck, so you guys can come on out and help us with the mop-up.
And so that’s what happened. All I can do is just basically say they do end up winning, just as God said.
God is vindicated as a God who keeps his word. Gideon has learned that God keeps his word and has been forged into a warrior. There is a very tragic postscript, which I will mention as we think about application. But for now, I just wanna turn the corner and just say, remember, as entertaining it is to play with army guys in a sermon, God is not just trying to entertain us.
Invite the Spirit to Help You Fight
He’s ultimately trying to train us. God equips his people, but with his spirit, for the battles that we face in this life. And I want us to think about that. We are a church, I think, that if we make an error or when we make an error, we tend to under-appreciate the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Obviously, we’re a lot of people here, so it’s not just the same for everybody. But I think as a church, as a whole, that is our tendency. And so I just wanna push against that and say, have you asked the Holy Spirit to empower you for the things that are in front of you?
Are you in the habit of doing that? Do you lean into God’s promises in scripture that have to do with his presence and indwelling presence in you by the Holy Spirit? How, what does it look like to do that? I wanna encourage you to think about ways to pray about this, because I’m gonna give you some time to pray.
First, let’s go to that last slide. Learning to fight as God’s child. Remember, this is so absolutely critical. You cannot be a warrior for God until you are first a child of God.
He doesn’t equip just people in general. He equips people who are no longer enemies because they have accepted his offer of peace. And the offer of peace was brokered by Jesus. You have to come to Jesus first. And so I just, again, I put out that call.
If that’s not you, today is the day of salvation, the Bible says. How about today? Lay down your independence from God and say, I accept your terms of peace. Jesus is my savior. Jesus is my Lord. Or if it’s maybe uncertain, make it clear. In fact, one of the best ways to make it clear is you get baptized.
That’s what the Bible says. You give your life to Christ, you get baptized. We’re having a baptism coming up a little bit later in the spring. And if you wanna get baptized, we would be glad to baptize you as a testimony.
I belong to God. My faith is in Christ. Also then, once you’re a child of God, then focus on your own sin. Make it a priority. It’s, if you’re like me, it’s much easier to see other people’s sin than your own sin. And you feel generally much stronger about the problem when it’s somebody else has got the problem.
You feel like we’re more prone to give ourselves kind of a pass. Yeah, I do that, but it doesn’t have the same heat when I see somebody else like, ah, that crazy person. Right, and so turn that around. So you say, where are the idols, God, in my own life?
Ask like David did. Ask for the help of the Spirit. The Spirit, one of the Spirit’s roles is to convict us of sin. Show me my sin so that I can turn from it.
Show me the idols, because sometimes they hide in plain sight. Thirdly, learn to fight with real faith. What I mean by that is learn to fight like Gideon did. Learn to fight to repent of the idea that God only does amazing miracles in the olden days in the Bible.
A faith that only believes in miracles that are in the past, but doesn’t believe that God still works in miraculous ways in the present is not a fully developed faith. So pray, God, help me not to fall in the trap of Gideon, saying God doesn’t really do anything anymore.
Help me to trust you for whatever you have intended to do, we don’t coerce God into miracles, we simply make ourselves available for these huge battles. And the miracle, I’m not talking about the parting of the Columbia River, I’m talking about finally letting go of your bitterness.
I’m talking about the restoration of a totally shattered relationship. I’m talking about defeating a sin that’s been dominating your whole life. I’m talking about, you see what I’m saying? And I’m not saying it can’t be spectacular miracle stories. Those, I believe, still happen as well.
But it’s about what is in front of you? What are the obstacles and the battles that God has called you to fight? That’s where he will show up in his presence. So fight with real faith and fight to the end. Fight to the end. I’m gonna invite the worship team to come up as I explain that last piece.
To the end of your life, the tragic story is that some people fight as warriors for God and then quit and slide into idolatry. Gideon, after winning this amazing battle by the power of God, ended up making a new idol and worshiping it himself and leading and all the other people worshiped it.
It’s horrible. And I’m kind of glad I don’t have time to talk about it. But I need to point at it. Because just because you fought faithfully for a long time doesn’t mean you’re done. And I think about that more and more the older I get. I’ve been preaching for a long time.
How horrible would it be to not finish well and to sort of forget and slide into sin, like just ruin God’s testimony in my own life. I look at John Piper and he says in his testimony, one of his greatest prayer is that he will finish well. And I echo that.
And for you as well, like, God, where am I at? And help me to continue and to not give up fighting. So I’m just gonna be quiet now, give you a moment to pray to the Lord on whatever is the thing that you need to pray over most.
So be aggressive here. Pray, don’t just be quiet until music starts. Pray on what God would call you to pray and ask him about. And then we will worship the Lord together.