Judges 7:1-25
“To big for God to use”
- Intro.
- Vs. 1-8 A heart and a head for the Lord
- Vs. 9-15 From frightened worrier to fearless warrior
- Vs. 16-25 See the invisible, choose the imperishable and do the impossible
Intro
To put Israel’s victory in perspective one sports writer put the odds at 450 to 1 and then went on to say it would be equivalent to a Jr. High school football team taking on the Super Bowl champions in a football game and beating them 49 – 0. Was this accomplished through “positive thinking”? The Frenchmen Emile Coue is the father of positive thinking when he first wrote the little ditty “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”. He claimed that a person repeating that phrase over and over would cure them of all sorts of ailments and accomplish great things. No doubt a good positive outlook can be healthier and helpful when compared to always being negative. In response to “positive confession” someone wrote this little poem: “We tackled the thing that couldn’t be done, with a will we went right to it. We tackled the thing that couldn’t be done, and we found we couldn’t do it!” The problem with positive thinking is not in thinking positive it is rather the object we are to think positive about which is usually miss directed into two categories:
- First it is in ourselves, our ability, our goodness
- Second it is in our situation, being according to our wishes
The positive outlook must be only in our relationship to the Lord and His goodness! This is what makes the 7th chapter of Judges such a great chapter for us as the Lord doesn’t pump Gideon full of “self esteem” he doesn’t put the odds in his favor so that he can count on the victory. No He reminds him over and over that he can be positive because God is in control and to do so He strips Gideon from anything that he could cling to apart from God! Have you notice that God often causes us to confront our weaknesses before He reveals His sufficiency to us?
Vs. 1-8 A heart and a head for the Lord
Vs. 1-3 God loves to work in the realm of the impossible, it is for this reason that He puts us in situations where we can’t see any way out, than He comes in and delivers us! Gideon’s men were already over matched (32,000 against 135,000 Midianites) facing 4 to 1 odds God says, “Gideon the odds are still too good that you will think that you did this on your own!” Oh how different God looks at things then us, to Gideon his army was too small yet to God it was too big. The first test whittled it down to 10,000 men.
In Chapter 8:10 we know that the Median army was 135,000 strong and here we are told that Israel set up camp in the Jezreel Valley which was the key to controlling the nation. Gideon and his 32,000 men huddled behind the spring of Harod or the “spring of trembling”. That made getting a drink a very interesting proposition as they would have to do so in full view of the enemy down the hill and across the spring. Based upon verse 12 they were as numerous as locusts, their camels were without number as the sand of the seashore. God had strategically assembled them with a view of the enemy and 22,000 of those that had gathered saw the enemy as being of greater size than they saw the God who had gathered them. Saints that is always the first test for our hearts if we see the victory determined by our numbers verses the obstacles’ numbers than we have our eyes on the wrong thing!
Imaging how Gideon must of felt when he told the 32,000 men that if any of them trembled they could go home, he might have expected a few hundred but 22,000? Does the loss of numbers cause you to become discouraged? Hey folks, God is the only one I know that can add by subtracting! God is interested in more than just giving you victory and prosperity, His desire is to teach you that you can trust Him! He is not about making us “self-reliant” He is into making us God-reliant. In 2 Chron. 26:15-16we are told of the defeat of Uzziah that “his fame spread far and wide, for he was marvelously helped till he became strong. But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction.” Oh how prone we are to insecurity and discouragement when we don’t feel very significant. Saint’s our significance is in the Lord not in ourselves!
Vs. 4-8 Having already reduced the army from 32,000 to 10,000 it now goes down from 10,000 to 300 as there were still too many for God’s purpose. When 22, 000 left then 9,700 the odds went from 4 to 1 to 14 to 1 at the first departure and by the time they were down to 300 the odds were 450 to 1 against! In 1 Samuel 14:6 Jonathan (Saul’s son) told his armor bearer, “Nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few.” Far too many churches and Christian’s measure effectiveness on statistics but such numbers mean nothing to the Lord! Based upon the promise of God in Deut. 32:30 where God says that one soldier would put to flight 10,000 all Gideon needed was 27 men to defeat the Midianite army of 135,000 but God gave him 11 times more than he needed.
God’s way of testing the 10,000 was to take them down to the water. There are many thoughts on this test; one is that a good soldier would take the water with his hands up to his face so he could see the enemy instead of drinking with his head down. If that is the case it appears that God eliminated the first 22,000 because their “heart” wasn’t in it and the 2nd 9,700 because their “head” wasn’t in it! How about it saints, is your heart towards the Lord and not upon the size of the enemy? Are you teachable; is your head on straight not on your immediate circumstances but on the horizon and the victory? The army was now less than 1% of its original size and the proportion was 400 Midianite soldiers to each Israeli soldier which meant that Gideon could now only trust in God.
Some say the 300 were chosen because they needed to drink but they never lost sight of the possibility of attack from the Midianites. Ah but it could be that these fellows were to broken down, too out of shape to get into the water, their backs were bad their knees wouldn’t bend and God was saying, “I want the cast offs, the old fellas that can’t bend over and give me 20, give me 300 the world’s casts offs, the unqualified I’ll take them!” Why is this a possibility? Well because God does great things with those whose hearts are right and their heads are on straight. Perhaps today your odds have gone from 4 to 1 to 450 to 1 and you are feeling like your doomed the situation has gone from bad to worse to impossible. Praise the Lord!!
Vs. 9-15 From frightened worrier to fearless warrior
Vs. 9-12 Fear once again grips the heart of Gideon as Gideon takes God up on His offer of confirmation to hear the dream that one of the Midianite tells another. Saints notice that God doesn’t condemn Gideon for his fear instead He commissions him.
Vs. 13-15a In the vision a Midianite soldiers sees a “a loaf of barley bread” tumbling into the camp. Gideon was likened to a barley loaf not a huge bolder barreling down the hill, barley wasn’t even the bread of champions it was the bread of slaves and animals. Barley bread was “barely bread” as only the poorest of folks would eat it so in the vision they see that the Midianites would be defeated by a humble few nobody’s. The camp of Midian saw what Gideon wasn’t able to see, that Gideon was the sword of the Lord. Gideon finds out that the Midianites are afraid of him even more than he is afraid of them. This guy who only a short time before was hiding out in a wine press now has a reputation that has spread throughout the whole Midian army of 135,000 men. Gideon the “frightened worrier” has become Gideon the “fearless warrior”.
Dear Christian do you know that your enemy satan is afraid of you, that you give him nightmares? When our eyes are on ourselves we fear the enemy but when our eyes are on the Lord we see in reality our enemy sees us. A person possessed by the Spirit of God causes satan and his buddies to tremble? So if you are being harassed, attacked and persecuted rejoice in the Lord as it means they are talking about the Spirit of the Lord clothing Himself in you. Ah but if you have none of the above you may start to pray as apparently they don’t know anything about you. 2 Tim. 3:12 that, “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”
Vs. 16-25 See the invisible, choose the imperishable and do the impossible
Vs. 16-18 Gideon is a Spirit-filled man according to 6:34 so the Lord must have given him the plan to divide the 300 into three groups. As a man of action as he tells his 300 do as I do, he didn’t say “You go”, he said “Let’s go!” He didn’t say, “Listen to me” he said “Look at me!”
Vs. 19-23 The Midianite soldiers awoke to an explosion of noise, light, and movement coming down on them from all directions as they no doubt thought they were being attacked by an army bigger than they were. Notice the phrase has changed as apparently they already feared Gideon and the Lord. The fight ended up being the Midianites against each other with the 300 picking up the spoils. There were several things that God had Gideon do that played into the Midianite defeat:
- They were very superstitious people and as such they were afraid of the dark
- They were a warring people and the people they fought the most was each other
Those two things played a huge part in their self defeat as suddenly in the dark they there is allowed crash and a shout coming at them from every direction. As they made it out of their tents they saw 300 torches and the military practice was that 1000 soldiers marched behind a single torch. All of this caused confusion and in the dark they thought each other was the enemy.
Vs. 24-25 Though God started the work with 300 who did little, it enlisted the 32,000 whose heart and head wasn’t in the right place. Isn’t that great that the Lord takes those of us whose heart and head isn’t where it should be to start with and through those who are where they should be God encourages then includes those who weren’t right. Vance Havner once said that a man of faith, “See’s the invisible, chooses the imperishable and does the impossible!” 1 John 5:4-5 says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” John Wesley said, “Give me a 100 men who fear nothing but sin, love nothing but God and God will shake the gates of hell!” Gideon is the story of God’s work in a man who was hiding in a winepress and ends up defeating the enemy in a winepress. What a lesson for us and the Church: God doesn’t need large numbers to accomplish His purpose. He doesn’t need especially talented people, big churches with big budgets and big buildings! No, He wants people who simply trust in Him. When the church starts to trust in what they have God turns away and looks for a Gideon!
This is a placeholder. Notes will be added