The odds weren’t very good to start with, and then they got worse. Or better, depending on whose side you were on. He was just a farmer, and unlike some farmers he had no desire to be anything more then a farmer. He never political ambitions, he never dreamt of being a military leader and yet God had a different plan for his life.
The Israelites had been delivered from Egypt and have settled into the promised land, and during that time they were ruled by men and women called Judges. And if you read through the book of Judges in the Old Testament you discover that the people of Israel kind of bounce back and forth from being faithful and obedient to God and being disobedient. And it was during the times of obedience that God showed Israel his favour and during the times of disobedience that God removed his blessing from Israel.
And so historically if we were to put things into perspective, here is Joseph being sold into slavery, here is Christ’s death and resurrection, here is the exodus from Egypt 400 years later after Joseph went to Egypt and here is where David established his kingdom, you know the whole David and Goliath thing, and this is where our story happens. After 40 years of peace and prosperity the people began once again to wander from God’s will and as often happened their moral decline was followed by military oppression from the outside. This time is was the Midianites who were putting a whuppin’ on the Israelites.
The Midianites were a nomadic people who, if we pull up a map roamed the desert here in what is modern day Saudi Arabia. And the Midianites would wait until the people of Israel had finished planting their crops and they would sweep down upon them stealing their crops and herds and destroying what they couldn’t take with them. Well this went on for seven years and it was starting to get a little old, and so the people cried out to God to deliver them, and He called someone to lead His people, firstly out of military oppression and secondly out of moral oppression. And that person was a man named Gideon, and if we know anything about Gideon it’s that went around putting Bibles in Hotel rooms. Which helps us make sense out of what Zsa Zsa Gabor said ”Conrad Hilton was very generous to me in the divorce settlement. He gave me 5, 000 Gideon Bibles.”
Actually as we alluded to before Gideon was a farmer, and an the Angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and informed him that he was to deliver Israel from the Midianites. Well after a little convincing Gideon issued a call across Israel to arms and they responded and as they came Gideon began to get a little nervous. It was one thing for a farmer to say he was going to lead an army into battle it was another thing for a farmer to actually lead an army into battle. Especially when you have 32,000 men and the other guys have 135,000 men. And so our hero got into a little discussion with God. He said “ Tell you what God, if this is what you really want me to do you have to give me a sign, so here’s what we are going to do. I will put out a sheep’s fleece on the ground tonight. If in the morning the ground is dry and the fleece is wet then I’m your guy.”
Next morning Gideon gets up, the grounds dry as a bone but the fleece is sopping wet. Still not wanting to rush into this thing, his mother may have raised him a coward but she didn’t raise him a fool. Gideon again prays and says “I don’t want to get annoying, but let’s try it the other way, I’ll leave the fleece out again tonight and in the morning if the ground is wet and the fleece is dry then I’ll know that I need to listen to you.” He gets up the next morning, and sure enough the ground is covered in dew and the fleece is completely dry. And so Gideon begins to think, “God must be serious here.” By the way if you ever hear someone talking about putting out a fleece to validate the will of God this is what they are referring to. But remember this scripture isn’t supporting that concept, or even endorsing it, it is simply reporting what happened.
This is where the story gets really interesting. Gideon is psyched now, God has told him that he, Gideon, son of Joash would lead the Israelite army to a great victory over the Midianites, and then confirmed it through this entire fleece thing. So Gideon calls for all the men who have come and he looks out at this army of 32,000 men and thinks “this could be cool, we can do this.” And God says, “Not so fast Gideon. You’ve got too many men.” Too many men, how can you have too many men, I mean sure if you had 60 men in a 50 man life boat then you might have too many men, but going into battle you can never have too many men, am I right? Especially if you are already outnumbered 4 to 1.
God obviously didn’t think so. You see God wanted this to be a God thing, and Gideon wanted it to be man thing. And you really can’t blame Gideon for that. But God said “You have too many warriors and when they win they are going to think they did it all by themselves. So tell them that whoever is afraid can go home” So Gideon gets up makes the announcement and 22,000 guys leave. 22,000 gone, phit just like that leaving Gideon with 10,000 men. And just as Gideon’s kind of got his head wrapped around what has happened God says, “Still too many” “Still too many!” and so God tells Gideon to get the men to go down to the river for a drink: those who get right down on their knees and lap the water like a dog were to go into one group and those who cupped the water into their hand and then drank from their hand were to go into another group. Only 300 of the soldiers drank from their cupped hands and I’m sure that Gideon was thinking, “Oh boy I hope I get the puppies.” Alas, it was not to be, God told Gideon to keep the men who drank from their hands and to send the rest home.
And there he was stuck with three hundred men, the only thing they had going for them was that they drank politely. So what are you going to do. Now at this point I’m not sure that Gideon was all that convinced of the validity of the plan and so God told him if you don’t believe I can do it sneak down to the enemy camp and see what they are saying. And that’s what he did, he took one of his leaders with him they snuck into the Midianite camp and eavesdropped on a conversation going on around a campfire. Two guys are talking and the first said “I had the strangest dream last night, I dreamt that a loaf of barley bread rolled down the hill into the camp and flattened one of our tents” And that second guy says “you dream can only mean one thing, Gideon and his men are going to whup us.” Now it’s a good thing that I wasn’t there because I’m really no good at all with the dream thing and I probably would have said, “That means that instead of a soldier you ought to be a baker.” Which wouldn’t have been any encouragement to Gideon at all. Instead Gideon took the dream and the interpretation as a sign from God and went back to the camp to rally the troops.
He divided his three hundred men into three groups, that would be a hundred in each group, I didn’t go to college for nothing. And he gave each man a horn and a clay jar with a torch in it. Great idea huh? Just after midnight they surrounded the Midianite camp and on the given signal they blew their horns, broke the clay jars revealing the torches. The Midianites panicked, the Israelites blew their horns again and the Bible tells us that the Lord caused the warriors in the camp to start fighting each other, and those who weren’t killed fled in confusion.
As a friend of mind said “I love it when a plan comes together.”
So that’s the story of Gideon, what are the lessons of Gideon?
The very first mention of Gideon in the Bible is in Judges 6:11 Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites.
That’s it, no big fan fare, and no big build up, he was nobody special, he was just Gideon son of Joash. And he was just threshing wheat, minding his own business doing what had to be done.
First lesson: You Don’t Have To Be Somebody Special To Do Something Special
One of the biggest lies of the devil is that God only uses special people. And like all lies of the devil this one is based on a half-truth. God does use only special people, God doesn’t use them because they are special, they are special because God uses them. Listen to the word of God 1 Peter 2:9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
You understand how special you are don’t you? You are special enough that God was willing to send his very own Son to die for you. You ever think that was a cop out? You know if God loved us that much he’d come himself? If you are a parent then you know the difference, there are many people here today I’d lay my life on the line for. But there isn’t one that I’d give one of my kids for. And yet that is exactly what happened and because you are so special Jesus Christ willing came to this earth, lived thirty three years and died on a cross, was laid in a borrowed tomb and after three days rose from the dead. Willingly he did that not because he had to but because you are that special.
Special has nothing to do with how you look, or what you can do, or how smart you are, special has everything to do with the fact that you were created as very unique individual by none other then the master of the universe. The same God who drew rainbows across the rain washed skies, the same God who paints the morning sunrise and the evening sunset, the same God who scooped out the Grand Canyon with his fingers, who moulded the rocky mountains with his hands and threw the milky way into the midnight sky, that same God created you.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it isn’t our ability nearly as much as our availability that is important to God. It was Stevie Wonder who said “We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.” And Zig Ziglar said “You are the only person on earth who can use your ability.”
As parents we want our children to do the very best they can and there is nothing wrong with that but we can’t do the very best for them. God looks down at his children and he wants us to be the very best we can be and to do the very best that we can do. But we have to do it. And I am sure we must frustrate God so much, if God can be frustrated when he looks down knowing completely well what we are capable of and we aren’t doing it.
Look through the Bible at the people that God used: Gideon was a farmer, Moses and David were shepherds, Peter was a fisherman, Matthew was a tax collector, a tax collector for crying out loud. And God used them all, not a superstar in the bunch.
Just Because You Have Questions Doesn’t Mean You’re Disobedient. You ever get the impression from some preachers that God never wants you to question, never wants you to think, just wants you to jump when spoken to. What I think they are really getting at is that they never want you to question, they never want you to think, they want you to jump when spoken to. And that’s just plain wrong. God didn’t make us a bunch of brain dead androids, he gave us the ability to reason, they ability to think and yes the ability to question.
But, here’s the catch: you have to realize that God doesn’t have to answer all your questions. After all He is God and we aren’t. As parents there are times that we just can’t answer our children’s why questions. Either because “A” They don’t have to know “Why are you doing this or why are you doing that?” or “B” They wouldn’t understand. They might understand later. Like the story of the little boy who asked his mother “Where did I come from?” She hadn’t thought the question would come up so early but bravely she ventured and told her son how when a man and woman love each other, etc. etc. When she was all through the kid looked at her and said “Oh, Tommy said he came from Calgary.”
And so there are times there are times the best and most appropriate answer we can give our kids is “Because” or “You will understand later” and there are times the best and most appropriate answer God can give his kids is “Because” or “You will understand later”
The verse after Gideon is introduced to us an Angel appears to him and says Judges 6:12 The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the LORD is with you!”
And listen to his response to God’s call on his life: Judges 6:13 “Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.”
That’s three questions without taking a breath. And listen to God’s response in the very next verse Judges 6:14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
That’s not an answer, that’s another request. But then again Gideon probably already knew the answer, God didn’t move the Israelites did. I’ve told you the story before about the old farmer and his wife driving along in the pick up and she says “How we don’t sit close to each other all snuggled up like we used to?” to which he answered “I haven’t moved.” God hadn’t abandoned the Israelites the Israelites had abandoned God. And it took the hard times for them to come back to their God and sometimes it takes hard times for us to come back to God.
The Bible is full of questions and question marks. Abraham asked “How will I father a nation when I haven’t fathered a son” Moses asked “How can I confront Pharaoh when I don’t speak well” if you read through the Psalms you’ll see that David could have been a reporter he was always asking God, how, why, when, where. Mary asked “How can I have a son, when I’m still a virgin” Even Jesus when he hung on the cross asked “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”
God doesn’t ask that we come in and check our brain at the door, but understand God is God and you are a people so you might not understand the why, and you might not agree with the why. But God is still God and you are still just a people.
Remember Who’s Supposed To Get The Credit What a ride. 300 men and they send 135,000 warriors packing. The temptation must have been so great to say “Look what we’ve done” “We are so good” “Where’s Gideon? He such an awesome leader” “Hey Gideon, you the man”
And how would you have felt as Gideon? “Well yes, it was a great idea, and I knew it was going to be a tremendous success.” Listen to what happens after the victory: Judges 8:22 Then the Israelites said to Gideon, “Be our ruler! You and your son and your grandson will be our rulers, for you have rescued us from Midian.”
From farmer to King, that’s not a bad career move. But listen to Gideon’s response, very next verse: Judges 8:23 But Gideon replied, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son. The Lord will rule over you!
Let’s always be careful to give God the credit. That doesn’t mean that you pretend you had nothing to do with it but understand where your talents and abilities came from.
When things go well the temptation is there to say “Look what we’ve done” but it’s not what we’ve done, it’s what he’s done. Are you willing to be a Gideon, to allow God to do great things through you?
Free PowerPoint may be available for this message, contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
