Judges 7:9-15 KJV And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Arise, get thee down unto the host; for I have delivered it into thine hand. [10] But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host: [11] And thou shalt hear what they say; and afterward shall thine hands be strengthened to go down unto the host. Then went he down with Phurah his servant unto the outside of the armed men that were in the host. [12] And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude. [13] And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. [14] And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. [15] And it was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said, Arise; for the LORD hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
I. INTRODUCTION—SNEERS AND TRASH-TALKING
A. General
-Have you ever found yourself in that unenviable position of being sneered at? To be sneered at means, according to Merriam Webster:
1 : to be smiled or laughed at with facial contortions that express scorn or contempt; or
2 : to be spoken of or written about in a scornful jeering manner.
-At some point in your life, you have had to endure the criticism of a person who did not like you, or maybe even hated you. But to be sneered at is even more difficult when there is a bit of verbal intimidation mixed in with it.
-Some of the younger generation might say that you have been “dissed.” The first time I heard that I asked my kids what that word meant and they told me, “Dad that means you have been disrespected.” Ah, the joys of living in this twittering and texting generation that wants to cut down the King’s English to just a few grunts and funny hand signals.
-However, mixing that sneer with a bit of trash-talking, which Merriam Webster defines as disparaging, taunting, or boastful comments especially between opponents trying to intimidate each other. Usually the sneers and trash-talking has one more component to it that is intended to create problems and that is a swagger about them.
-To swagger about means, again according to Merriam Webster, to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially: to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.
-Often you will find that athletes resort to this kind of activity when they are opposing one another as they try to gain every advantage possible to beat their opponent. They use these words and statements to try to jostle their mind and destroy their confidence. There are times that this action can be effective and matches, games, and championships have been affected by the actions of these sneering, swaggering trash-talkers.
B. Biblical
-When you look in the Bible, there are a number of Scriptures that indicate to us that God’s people are often under the attack of withering crusaders who want nothing more than to destroy God’s plan and people.
-The Psalms are literally loaded with the cries of those many writers who found themselves attacked by bullies:
Psalms 57:4 KJV My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.
Psalms 57:6 KJV They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah.
Psalms 7:6 KJV Arise, O LORD, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.
Psalms 13:4 KJV Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
Psalms 62:4 KJV They only consult to cast him down from his excellency: they delight in lies: they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. Selah.
Psalms 27:6 KJV And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD.
Psalms 27:11-12 KJV Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. [12] Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.
Psalms 56:5 KJV Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
Psalms 69:4 KJV They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away.
Psalms 71:10-11 KJV For mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, [11] Saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him.
-With these references we hear the very heart of a man who is under the attack of a bully. But there are also some biblical characters that had to endure the dilemma of the attack of sarcastic enemies:
• David when going after Goliath—He heard the words, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?. . . Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field. . . Masterful intimidation!
• Nehemiah dealing with Tobiah and Sanballat—He heard the line, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall. . . Basically, “you ought to give up now!”
• Jesus had to endure it from the chief priest and scribes—He heard them say He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. . . Stacked with humiliation against Him.
-This is the way the enemy works on us. . . through fear tactics and intimidation. He is always working toward tearing the man of God down with fear and using it to disrupt our lives. Fear is one of his most effective tricks.
-This is the way of the terrorists. They thrive on fear.
Napoleon Bonaparte—He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
General George S. Patton, Jr.—All All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on.”
II. JUDGES 7
A. The Times
-By the time we get to Judges 7, 200 years have passed since Joshua and Caleb had led Israel into Jericho beyond the flattened walls. But much had changed since those times.
-Because Israel did not fulfill their responsibilities of emptying the land of the enemies they had begin to accommodate them and adapt some of their ways and it had contaminated them:
• Repulsive rites of heathen religions were being followed with zeal.
• Temple prostitution—male and female—was part of their culture.
• Base motivations of their lust was carried out in all sorts of ungodly ways—homosexuality, unbridled moral restraints, and perversion.
• Driven by greed and dishonest gain they pursued money.
• They were literally sinking into great expressions of immorality.
-It is amazing how that God had such great potential in store for Israel but they were doing everything in their power to squander that potential. This always happens when people allow the idolatry of life to consume them.
• Worship turns into waste.
• Inspiration spoils and becomes insolence.
• Purity goes to seed and becomes obscenity.
• Devotion withers and becomes idleness.
• Personal godliness becomes a slave to self-interest.
-This combination of things put them under the subjection of many attacks of the bullying nations around them, particularly the Midianites and Amalekites.
• They were cruel, wild and ruthless.
• They were warriors who never rested.
• Sweeping in from the eastern regions of the Jordan, they were like hordes of desert locusts.
• They were merciless soldiers who rode tall camels and beat down Israel into raw submission.
-The Midianites were the direct descendants of Ishmael, the original wild man, born to Hagar. Ishmael was a mistake and had been birthed when faith died in the heart of Abraham concerning the promise God had given to him. Treacherous and life-changing decisions are always made when we are under the pressure of doubt and feel the choke-hold of darkness concerning the promises of God.
-The Amalekites were the descendants of Esau. Remember he was the brother of Jacob and was the polar opposite of Jacob. In fact the Bible defines him as a profane man indicating that he was a vulgar man who treated sacred things with contempt and irreverence.
-So the spiritual enemies that are motivated by doubt and no respect for the things of God will always destroy the faith and the sacred things of worship.
-Gideon had to endure the intimidation of the Amalekites and Midianites who were some of the nastiest enemies that Israel had. Not only did they attack them in battles they also were cruel in their activities. Israel had been run out of their cities and towns and actually was making their homes in the rocky crags and caves of the mountains (6:2).
-They would come out periodically and try to plant a crop in the fields to sustain them. But so sadistic were the Midianites that they would come down and trash their farms so they could not even get the harvest. This caused the Israelites to go hungry but of even greater destruction it led to the death of much of their livestock (6:4).
-They are compared to a bunch of grasshoppers that come in and destroy the crop like a buzz-saw. These Midianites were intent on destroying these sod-busting Israelites who could not fight because they had lost their warrior mentality. Anytime a man loses his ability to fight, the aggressor with do his best to destroy everything about the man—his identity, his possessions, and his family.
-Just read down through those chapters beginning with Judges 6 and you get a pretty good composite of what those enemies of Israel looked like:
• Encamped against them—6:4
• Destroyed the increase of the earth—6:4
• Left no sustenance—6:4
• Came as grasshoppers—6:5
• Israel was greatly impoverished—6:6
-All of these attacks literally wilted the morale and shriveled their spirits. Hope was gone and they were filled with a fear and foreboding that never let true rest come to their bodies or minds.
-Then God determines to find a hero among the people and pulls out a very unlikely man who was a farmer.
B. The Man—Gideon
-When you look at this passage in Judges 7 and all of the other times that surround the life of Gideon, you have every one of these components at work—sneering, swaggering, trash-talking, and fear.
-But God needed a man to do His will. He needed to pull someone from within their own ranks and shape him to be a leader.
-When the angel of the Lord finally found him, he found him hiding in a winepress. So fearful was Gideon of the Midianites that he was sneaking around just trying to get the wheat for flour so he could have a loaf of bread.
1. An Illustration—Hopelessness
Following the Korean War, Dr. William E. Mayer, who later became the top psychiatrist of the Army studied 1000 American POW’s from the North Korean camp. Extreme psychological warfare was practiced there. The captivity was not cruel—no bamboo shoots pushed under finger nails, no beatings, nor water-boarding, or any other dark physical punishment had to be endured. They were given adequate food, shelter, and water.
There wasn’t barbed wire and there were very few armed guards watching the American POW’s. None of the soldiers ever tried to escape. In fact, they would turn on each other and at times form close relationships with the North Korean captors.
When the POW’s were finally released they were offered phones by the International Red Cross to call loved ones and family member but the majority of them never called anyone. When they got home almost none of the POW’s engaged in close friendships. Dr. Mayer described each man as living in a mental “solitary confinement cell without steel and concrete.”
Dr. Mayer described a disease in the POW camp—a disease of extreme hopelessness. Sometimes soldiers would go to their cells and look around forlornly and decide there was no use in attempting to live. They would sit down in a corner, pull a blanket over their head and within two days they would be dead.
The soldiers called it “give-up-itis.” The doctors called it mirasmus meaning a lack of resistance, passivity. If soldiers would have been hit, spit on, or slapped; it would have made them angry. Anger would have then motivated them to survive. But in the absence of motivation, they simply gave up and died. The death rate was 38%. This is the highest of any in US military history. They died because they gave up.
The North Koreans practiced mental techniques that denied the men emotional support that comes from interpersonal relationships. Four techniques were used:
Informing—They were offered cigarettes to prisoners when they snitched on each other. But no one was punished, the enemy simply wanted to break relationships and turn men against each other.
Self-Criticism—They would group the men in 10-12 and then make them tell all the bad things they had as well as all the good things they had failed to do. They were not confessing this to the North Koreans but to their own peers. This activity tore down the caring, the trust, and the social acceptance among the American soldiers.
Breaking Loyalty—This was directed toward their leadership and their country. They undermined the soldiers allegiance to his superiors. In one case, a colonel warned his men not to drink from a rice paddy because of the harmful germs in the water. One of the men looked at his colonel and said, “Buddy you ain’t no colonel anymore, you’re just a lousy prisoner like us.” That man died of dysentery a few days later. In another case 40 men watched as three of their extremely sick fellow prisoners were thrown out in the mud and left to die in the elements. No one tried to save them because it “wasn’t their job.” The relationships had broken down, they simply did not care anymore.
Withholding Positive Mental Support—This was the most malicious technique. If positive, encouraging letters came from home—they were withheld. All of the negative ones—death of a relative, a wife writing that she wasn’t sure if he was returning and she was going to remarry. Letters like this were delivered immediately. Overdue bills and from collection agencies were given to the soldiers until all of it literally beat them down.
They lost all of their hope. . . .
-That was about the point that Gideon was at when the angel found him. Just trying to make ends meet and get through the day was the mentality that he had.
-Now God was meeting with him in the secrecy of the winepress. It is one thing to have an experience with God in secret and another thing to stand up for Him in public. But that secret place was the turning point for Gideon.
-He left there and ripped down his own father’s idolatrous altar to Baal and then built an altar to Jehovah. But not only that, he then took his father’s special bullock that was probably in reserve for Baal and sacrificed it on that new altar.
-Even though Gideon did all of this in the middle of the night with the help of ten men, it was what stimulated the people into seeing him as a leader. There are perhaps three keys found to a revival in all of those actions.
• A secret prayer meeting.
• An idolatrous altar begin torn down.
• A special sacrifice being offered.
-I believe that prayer meetings, tearing down altars of the world, and then giving yourself to sacrifice can all bring about an unstoppable move of the Spirit. Sometimes our efforts seem so small compared to the size and activities of the enemy but we have to press on.
-We cannot ever afford to despise the day of small things. Consider a small acorn and with a period of time, it will turn into a mighty oak that will deposit acorns to the floor of the forest. Those acorns given time will also become mighty oaks. Give a little creek some time and hid it among the small streams of the forest and time and land will soon turn it into a roaring river.
-Be careful about the little tendencies of your heart that lean toward God, cultivate them, fan them, and God can do so much with so little. Respect the little virtues of the heart and stave off the small sins because both can have tremendous effects on us in the long run.
C. The Makings of a Conqueror
-God was moving Gideon into a place of attack. An army of 32,000 men rallied to his side but he was still doubtful of the victory that God wanted to bring to him. So he sent two fleeces out before the Lord and both times God answered; a wet fleece and dry ground and then a dry fleece and wet ground.
-With that action, you would think that everything was a go, 32,000 men to battle the Midianites but it was not to be. When Gideon told all of those who were afraid to go home, 22,000 got up and went. Now Gideon is down to 10,000 but God says, “Too much!” So they went to the water test, and only 300 drank from their hand and were left with Gideon, 9700 sent home. What to do now?
D. The Barley Bread Dream
-Gideon still grappling with his doubts about his calling took a midnight foray into the camp of the Midianites with Phurah.
-Sneaking about with Phurah, he heard something that stunned him:
Judges 7:13-15 KJV And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. [14] And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. [15] And it was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said, Arise; for the LORD hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
-Just to put it all together. . .
• God’s hands on this Midianite’s brain provoking this dream.
• Gideon and Phurah being there at the exact time to hear this dream being talked about.
• Dreaming brains and talking soldiers.
-Gideon suddenly becomes aware that he is in the invincible order of the barley bread eaters.
-That is exactly what came to pass:
• Three hundred men.
• Three hundred clay pots.
• Three hundred candles.
• Three hundred trumpets.
• Small tools but a big God.
-The Midianites were destroyed by something they despised!
III. CONCLUSION—IT IS NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK IT IS!
-Gideon found encouragement right in the heart of the enemy’s camp. Of all places to look for encouragement, this is the last place that we would expect to find it. In fact, I have a feeling that when Hell starts mentioning some of God’s saints, it is in this same sense of awe!
• We sometimes think that Hell is more powerful than it really is.
• We sometimes fear that we will never overcome our habits, weaknesses, failures, and sins.
• We sometimes think that the enemies of the soul are so strong and so secure.
• We are strongly given to overestimating the power they really have.
-The dreams of the Midianites are filled with terror. Gideon did not think much of himself but his enemies saw him in a much greater light than he really was.
Romans 4:20-23 KJV He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; [21] And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. [22] And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. [23] Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;
-Scripture says that Abraham staggered not at the promises of God. But when I look the Genesis account, I can see otherwise. It appears that Abraham staggered all over the place and he did, just like we do. But God can see us in a much greater light than we see ourselves. . .
We are part of the invincible order of the barley bread eaters. . .
• Let your fear give in to faith.
• Learn that strength often comes from strange vessels.
• Understand that there is nothing like giving your life to the purpose of God, no matter what it is.
Philip Harrelson
August 19, 2010
