Judges 7: Gideon

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0:00 Okay, for the rest of us, we're talking about these stories of people in the scripture who were called by God to do stuff. And it's not an exhaustive list. One of the things that struck us collectively in me, throughout the story of scripture, we occurred to us there at the hill of Galilee when Jesus is getting ready to ascend. And he says, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me, so I send you.

0:34 And it's striking that God has all authority in heaven, that he holds all the power, and yet doesn't wield it himself, but gives it away to the people to use. And that we see that all throughout the story of scripture then, God is working in the world through people. And it's not always clean. It's certainly not perfect. Actually, people make mistakes. We were looking at the one story in Acts where people misunderstood baptism, and they got stuff wrong.

1:08 And throughout the church, of course, it's not hard to find examples of the people of God blundering the work of God in the world. And so on some level, it seems a little bit foolhardy for the one who has defeated death, accomplished the resurrection, to stand on the hill of Galilee and trust the work of God in the world to these eleven dudes who will undoubtedly mess it up.

1:40 And then to continue, once they mess it up, to continue just one down through one generation to the next, trusting people. And the thought has been perhaps God would work in the world through you, that God is at work in the world and invites you to join him in that work. And we've been looking at the story to see that this is a theme throughout the whole story of scripture, whether we're talking about Joseph or Bezelel and the Holy Ab. This week we're going to talk about Gideon and the book of Judges, if you want to follow along.

2:12 The story starts in, let's see, maybe Judges chapter seven will start. And this period of Israel is kind of crazy. If you want to read a crazy book, read Judges. It's a brutal time, ancient Near East. They're all doing the best they can. They're all afraid for their life. They're over there in the ancient Near East. They're like raiding each other all of the time.

2:43 It's brutal. They're having to live behind walled cities to try and protect themselves from raiding armies. And Israel at the point of Judges has moved into Canaan, the fruitful land of milk and honey where there's vineyards and fertile grass for their herds. They've come out of the desert, so you remember the history, they were prosperous in Egypt for 200 years, slaves for 200 years, and then wandered in the desert for 40 years where a generation died off.

3:14 And then this group of former slaves walks into fortified cities and takes them, a whole section. And they go there then, and they don't really have a king. They were led across the Jordan River by Joshua. He was appointed by God, but Joshua didn't have in mind that he would set up a throne and arbitrate all the cases and decide the move of justice. He did that some. But then after Joshua died, they just kind of slowly appointed different judges.

3:46 God would speak through the prophets and bring different judges to bear. And they would decide what was appropriate, and then they would marshal troops sometimes if an enemy country came against him. And Gideon, the story of Gideon in chapter 6 and 7 is one of these stories of the judges. And in chapter 7, Gideon is going against the Midianites, which is a neighboring tribe.

4:17 And if we were to take the time to read the whole story about the Midianites, you would see that any time the Israelites planted crops, just as it was coming up and producing food, the Midianites would run over and take it all, and just take all their food. And so, like, actually, when Gideon gets, the first time he has a conversation with the angel of the Lord, he's threshing wheat under this like hidden wine press cave that they have. The Israelites are having to hide their preparation of food so that the Midianites don't come and take it from him.

4:52 Right? And so Gideon's now, at this point in the story, marshalling a group of troops to go take over the Midianites, to go kick them out so that they quit bothering him. So, chapter 7, verse 1, then, Jerubabel, that is Gideon, and all the people who were with him, rose early and encamped beside the spring of Herod, and the camp of the Midian was north of them by the hill of Moray in the valley.

5:30 And the Lord said to Gideon, that people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into your hand, lest Israel boast over me saying, My own hand has saved me. So, Gideon has gone around to all the different tribes. Remember, there's 12 tribes, there's settled all throughout Canaan, he's like, guys, we've had enough of these Midianites taking all of our stuff, let's go kick them out. Come on, bring all your fighting men with me, let's go. Gideon rounds up a whole troop and they're camped now and they're getting ready to move to the north and take the Midianites

6:04 and in the evening when Gideon's hanging out, God comes to him and says, you've got so many people, because right now, if you conquer the Midianites, they're just going to be like, Israel is strong. He's like, and I'd rather them see that God is strong. And so, he's like, tell in the morning, get up and tell all of your guys that are afraid, just go home now, it's fine. If you're trembling and you don't want to be here, just leave. So, he does. And Gideon tells everybody that's afraid to go home.

6:36 And 22,000 dudes leave, leaving 10,000 behind. Not great if you have an army and two thirds of your army is too afraid to fight, but it is what it is. So, they've got the 10,000 brave left, right? We're like, we'll do it. And then God comes to Gideon and is like, hey Gideon, nice I see you thinned out the troops. Still, there's too many. There's 10,000 of you against these Midianites.

7:07 It was hard to find out how many Midianites there are. It doesn't really say. But 10,000 is too many. He has this weird thing. He's like, go and have them drink. And whoever drinks this certain way, keep those and whoever drinks a different way, send them home. So, they go and he sends them, tells them to go drink from the water, get ready. Of the 10,000, 300 drink the way that they're supposed to save. And God's like, this is perfect. 300 is perfect.

7:40 He had 32,000. And he's got 300. I think that's like 10% left. Is that number right? 10%? Or 1%? 1%? I'm not a man. 1%. That's not very, that's a lot less. I mean, that's a lot less, right?

8:14 And what is too many really? Like, they're going to a battle. And like, if you have too many, I think that's probably good, right? It's overwhelming, it's intimidating. You can handle it. But Gideon goes through this process of thinning out the crew and they go with 300, 1% of what he thought. And of course, I mean, they preserve the story.

8:46 There are a few stories of Israel's failure, but this is in the scriptures, but this is not one of them. I won't take the time to read it to you, but you can look at it. I'll describe it to you. God's like, great, you've got 300 perfect. Now I'm going to give the Midianites to your hand, go ahead. And when you read the story, that's it. God's like, the Midianites are yours, go take them. It's like dark still. Just go take them. And Gideon comes up with this strategy. He's like, okay, there's 300 of us. Let's divide into three.

9:18 So we'll get a three sides of him. And then he says, take your torch, put it in a pot. And then take a jar that will break with us. Or no, a trumpet will blow and take your, they call it a jar, but it's like a pottery. So you put your torch inside this pottery jar and then bring a trumpet. So they're going to battle. He says, they've already given you the Midianites. There's 300 of them. Now they're in groups of 100. And they're in three places around the camp. And he says, now you other groups of 100 watch with me and my 100 do.

9:49 And at just the right time, we'll break the pot and we'll blow our trumpets. Cool? And they're like, cool. So he goes, and it took me a minute to figure it out, but if it's still dark, and they've got the torches, and there's the clay pot over it, then if all 300 of them break it at the same time and blow trumpets, it goes from dark to light really fast. And it looks like a lot when you, if you wake up to the sound of 300 trumpets being blown and all these torches coming up,

10:19 and you figure, this is an army coming against us, and no army would be stupid enough to have everybody carry trumpets. They would be carrying swords. So if there's 300 trumpets, how many swords are there? The Midianites go crazy. They start fighting against themselves, and then they flee. And Israel chases them across the Jordan River and routes them, and they're done. Right? 300 defeat thousands. Okay. Great. Right?

10:50 I mean, why bother with this, right? I mean, God defends Israel because God's reputation is at hand, but it's kind of a weird way to do it, and why does he do it to Gideon? If you look back in Judges chapter 6, you see where I was mentioning. You remember Gideon was threshing the wheat underground to hide it from the Midianites? That story is in Judges chapter 6 verse 11.

11:29 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the Terrebinth at Ophra, which belonged to Joash, the Abersite, while his son Gideon was beating out the wine, was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.

11:59 I don't know. We don't know. It doesn't say what Gideon might have done to be a mighty man of valor, but a visit from the angel of the Lord is the big deal. We've talked about it. This is the guy who appears to Joshua, the angel of the Lord, before they take the battle of Jericho. The angel of the Lord is the only angel in the story of Scripture who lets people bow down to him. Gabriel doesn't let people bow down. The only other person in the Scriptures who let people bow down to him is Jesus. So a lot of people think the angel of the Lord is the Word of God walking around in the world.

12:30 And so the Word of God comes to Gideon, calls him a man of valor and says the Lord is with you. Hey, Gideon, man of valor, O mighty man of valor, the Lord is with you. And then verse 13, and Gideon said to him, please sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us? Saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and has given us into the hand of Midian.

13:07 And the Lord said to him, go in this might of yours then and save Israel from the land of Midian. Do not I send you? I think it's interesting. The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and doesn't command him anything. The angel of the Lord just comes and says, hey, Gideon, you are a mighty man of valor. Good to see you. The angel of the Lord says that. And Gideon goes right away and do a thing that's bothering him.

13:41 He encounters God and Gideon, I mean, it's almost like they've had conversations before. Gideon isn't like, usually when you see the angel of the Lord, you're terrified. Joshua was terrified. Moses is scared at the burning bush. Joseph and Mary are scared when they run into Gabriel, who's not even the angel of the Lord. Gideon doesn't even pause. The angel of the Lord comes to him in the wine press, where he's hiding from the Midianites and comes to him and says, hey, mighty man of valor, the Lord is with you. And Gideon's like, if the Lord is Midian, why is all this going on?

14:14 Angel of the Lord, why are the Midianites having their way with us? And the angel of the Lord says, amen. If it's bothering you, go deal with it. Isn't that? I mean, that's essentially what he says. Hey, if the Midianites are bothering you, you're a man of valor, go solve the problem. So the first question that I had with this business about defeating the Midianites with the pots and the jars is why does he do it?

14:50 And to me, it seems like Gideon, God defeats the Midianites through Gideon, because Gideon is interested in kicking the Midianites out. And so it makes me wonder, can you guess? What are you interested in? What? If the angel of the Lord, the Moloch Yahweh, appeared to you today and said, oh, Robin, William, woman of valor, the Lord is with you.

15:33 What problem would you launch into? What injustice would unsettle you to the point that you would bring it up in front of God? Remember when the disciples see the 5,000 families and it's getting to be dinner and they're like, Jesus, all these people are going to be hungry, and we're out here in the wilderness, and there's nothing to feed them. So before we get a ride on our hands, maybe send them away, and Jesus is like, if it's bothering you so much that they should eat, why don't you feed them?

16:10 Jesus, we don't have anything. Give me what you have. Oh, the Moloch Yahweh, hey, Gideon, mighty, man of valor, and then he lists out all these things. Hey, you have done all these great things before. Why are these Midianites bothering us? Verse 14, and the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Do not I send you? And he said to him, please, Lord, how can I save Israel?

16:42 Behold, my clan is the weakest of Manasseh, and I am the least of my father's house, and the Lord said to him, but I'll be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man. Oh, hey, if the Midianites are bothering you so much, why don't you handle it? Oh, mighty, man of valor.

17:12 Me, he said, that's about it, right? Oh, me? I don't think I could handle that. I don't think I could handle that. We're from the least of these. We don't have enough money, we don't have enough weapons, we don't have enough power, we don't have enough reputation. The problem is beyond us. I can see the problem enough to complain about it, but Lord, for heaven's sake, not enough to do anything about it.

17:44 And God says, well, look, I'll be with you, and it'll work out. It makes me think of this one little section from Paul. God is the same yesterday today and forever. Paul is writing a letter to the church in Corinth in like 60 A.D. Long after Gideon. And he's writing this letter back to the church in Corinth. The church of Corinth has been a particular problem for Paul.

18:16 It's the place they run him out of town if you read it. The silversmiths get mad at him and they don't like that he's disrupting their commerce. Right around there on one of those journeys is where he gets stoned. The Corinthian church is a problem for him, but in the midst of the problem, the place continues to grow. So yes, it's a mix of Israelites and Greek all coming together. It's a wealthy city that he gathers offering there to take back to the poor Christians in Jerusalem.

18:46 And he writes him this letter. And in this letter, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, we'll start at verse. I can't see the verse 20. He says, where's the one who is wise? Paul said, where is the scribe? Where is the debater of his age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since the wisdom of God, for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.

19:16 They didn't encounter God through their own thinking or intellect. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For the Jews demand signs and Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

19:48 He's saying it's ridiculous to say that one who's defeated and killed by the Romans would actually be the one who could save you. We don't think about it as folly because we've heard the story so many times. But when you hear it the first time, if you're in Corinth, you say, excuse me, the one whom the Romans crucified, like a common criminal whose body you cannot find, is one who you are hoping will deliver you from the emperor and all the evils of the world. Paul says yes, as a matter of fact.

20:20 Though it sounds foolishness, it is the great wisdom of God. Though he appears completely weak in his weakness, he defeats death and all enemies that come. In his weakness, he's strong. In his foolishness, there is wisdom. And then he goes on, for consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards. Not many of you were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.

20:53 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. So that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He said, Paul said that this is the way God does it.

21:25 When he wants to defeat the Midianites, he takes the weakest from Manasseh. I was at a particularly challenging point. I was in my little kind of career over the last 12 years. I realized when I was chronicling what the work I've been doing for the last 12 years that in about 12 years,

21:56 my salary came from at least four different places. And there was multiple times where I had about a couple months advance on whether or not it was going to come through or not. It was kind of stressful. And there was a particular stressful point where I was complaining to a friend of mine who I thought would know what it's like. And I was complaining. I said, I wish that it wasn't so unpredictable that I knew how bills would be paid.

22:29 I wish I knew that more often than I do. And he's like, yeah, yeah, get it. He told me. He had been on this road much longer than me. He said, yeah, I get it. He said, and I have a lot of friends who their whole adult life have never worried about a bill being paid. He's like, which is cool. He's like, and also they're missing an aspect of God that I know.

23:04 He's like, they know intellectually that God is their provider. He's like, I know in my heart and soul that God provides for me because it has come through. I have been out on limbs where the only way it works is when God comes through. This wisdom, this foolishness, this like inverted upside down logic, a lot of us never come across. I'm saying. Because we don't go with 300 against thousands.

23:43 We don't put our torches in pots and hold a torch in a pot in one hand and a trumpet in the other and go to battle. Sometimes a calling that God might, when the angel of the Lord comes to Gideon and is like, hey, mighty man of valor, God is with me. And he has something burning in his heart that's bothering him and injustice, a misapplication of the way of God in the world.

24:15 And he's saying that God is deeply wrong. And it bothers him to the point that he blurts it out, perhaps improperly, to the angel of the Lord. And the angel of the Lord responds, hey, man, do something about it. And like a lot of us would be like, yeah, right, great idea. I'm going to go back to threshing my wheat and wait for someone else.

24:46 Go back to threshing my wheat and wait for someone else. It's God's problem. And God's like, dude, you don't know how I work. I'm going to work through you, man. You want to go? I'll go with you. He said, I'll go with you. What I didn't catch before in Judges chapter 6, I've known the sort of Gideon since I was little. He had the fleece and the thing with the wet and dry and signs about God, and I thought that was cool. But when you go back up just one chapter and read two chapters instead of one, you get a little bit more story.

25:20 So Gideon has this encounter with the angel of the Lord hidden in the winepress, threshing the wheat. And he has this problem, and God says you go deal with it. And then Gideon does something next. He said, wait right here, angel of the Lord, I'm going to go get something to give you. So he runs home and butchers an animal takes the meat, does all the right things for the right sacrifices, a bread offering and a sacrificial offering.

25:52 Comes back, puts it on the stone, says angel of the Lord, if this is you, man, here's my offering to you. And the angel of the Lord, fire comes out of the rock, consumes the offering. Okay, fascinating. Gideon is threshing wheat, has an encounter with God, and occurs to him that there's something wrong, and then that he might do something about it. But he, God didn't tell him to make an offering. He told him to go defeat the Midianites, but it's a big leap to go from like threshing wheat and feeling like the angel of the Lord.

26:28 Told you you were a man of mighty valor to go take on the Midianites who were tormenting the Israelites. So he goes one little step and makes an offering, just him and God. He moves towards the God who he thinks is calling him and moves towards him with open hands and says, look, I think this is the right thing to do, and makes an offering. And between him and God, the offering is accepted. And Gideon recognizes he has had conversation with the angel of the Lord.

27:02 So then he goes a step further, and he does a little bit more, he does two more things. One, after that, then he cuts out the worship to Baal and Hashera. Then he goes and publicly destroys and alter to Baal that they have, and in Hashera pull. Because he's like, I had a conversation with the angel of the Lord. He goes one step further. He does a private thing with him and God. Then he does a public thing a step further to see is God really going with him.

27:36 Not only is now God going with him, but people are responding to him. If Gideon is going to go take the Midianites, he can't go by himself. He's going to need a bunch of people. And at first he thinks he needs tens of thousands of people. And so when he defeats, when he knocks down the Baal and the Hashera pull, and then now he's got people's attention, they recognize him as a man of valor, a man of justice and bravery, who will stand up to the foreign gods, make him move. And then after that, he assembles his thousands.

28:10 And by then he knows God well enough. I don't think, you know, definitely he's going in at night against the Midianites with a trumpet and a torch and he's trembling. But he's done enough. He's done the sacrifice. He's destroyed the altars. He's done the fleece. He knows God is with him. So he's willing to risk.

28:42 Look, the God of Judges is the same as the God of Corinth, where Paul recognizes that God is working in the world through these people who were not great but for God's own renown, is the same as God today. God defeats the Midianites, seems like, because Gideon was willing to go with him.

29:20 Where would you go with God? What would you set right? God will work in the world on God's size scale. You don't need God's size strength. He brings the strength. God will work in the world on God's size scale with you, if you'd like. He does not compel or force Gideon. But Gideon, if that's bothering you, let's go do something about it.

29:50 And then for the rest of his life, Gideon can tell the story of the time 300 snuck up on the Midianites and routed them out of Israel forever. Why not live that way? That's the place I've come to, as I was complaining to my buddy about wanting more predictability. Why not be the people who can rout armies with 300 with torches and trumpets? I think that you all are creative, compelling, networked, powerful, resourced.

30:30 The capability in this room is uncanny and uncommon. And I feel like if some of us uncovered passion like Gideon or a small section of it, we could collaborate with God for work that is worth it and live into stories we'll tell for the rest of our lives.

31:02 Because God goes with us. Let's pray that we could be people who take up the gift of faith and work with God in the world. Hey Lord, thank you for the story of Gideon. Thank you for your promise to work in the world. Thank you for the work of your son. That makes it possible for us to join you. Or come with us. And with us overwhelm our failures, our insecurities, our fears. And take us on to adventures with you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.