Gideon Part 1
Notes
Transcript
Good Morning!
Up until Thursday this past week, I thought we were going to be continuing our series in Hebrews. Hebrews has been an awesome book - we’ve looked at so much concerning Jesus, His role as our High Priest, our king, and how the Old Testament points to Jesus. I am grateful for the time we spent together in this book.
However, I don’t think that’s where we need to focus right now. I know that’s not where I feel my heart is right now.
I think, as I consider our church, individual hearts, and my own heart, we need to focus in on God’s mission for our church. I think we also need to recognize that at the moment, we need to continue what was started last week: building unity, and continuing to learn about who we are and where we’re headed. I also believe it is important for us not to just pretend like everything is fine in our church, when in this time we are experiencing some weakness. We’ve run into some serious conflict, and it’s caused issues here. I am grateful for the chances we’ve had to work through some of it. But I still do not want to just drop it and never talk about it again.
As I was praying about the message this week, I was lead to the story of Gideon:
Judges 7:1–8 (ESV)
Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.
The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.’ ” Then 22,000 of the people returned, and 10,000 remained.
And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water.
And the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.
And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.” So the people took provisions in their hands, and their trumpets. And he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the 300 men. And the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
The story of Gideon - which we will look at this week and next - is a raw story. We pick it up in Judges 7, so we miss everything that comes before it. All of Gideon’s testing and what he walks through. This part of the story we are looking at today feels somewhat close to ours. It deals with trusting God, and allowing God - through our weakness - to prove Himself faithful. All the variables in this story show us that by all accounts, Gideon should have badly lost the battle he fought with the Midianites. Yet they experience landslide victory. How is this possible? Because as we read even at the beginning of our passage, the battle needed to be fought and won by the Lord, not men. We will look at Gideon’s story in two parts. This first part that we have read deals with the acquiring of Gideon’s three hundred men. Sounds good on paper, until we consider that the Midianite forces were much, much bigger. This story for today tells us that
Our weakness drives us to God
Gideon’s story seems impossible. What is God telling him to do? However, as we walk through this passage together we will see two points on how our weakness drives us to God:
1-3 Improbability Breeds Trust
1-3 Improbability Breeds Trust
The story of Gideon actually starts a chapter earlier. Judges 6 gives us the well known story of how God calls Gideon, how Gideon takes a stand for God, and then Gideon laying down his fleece. Chapter 6 leaves us wondering what Gideon will do. Will he continue to seek signs from God? Will he lead God’s people?
Gideon himself is an oxymoron. The angel of the Lord shows up and says
Judges 6:12 (ESV)
“The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.”
Mighty man of valor? He’s from the least of the tribes of Israel, and his family is the weakest in the tribe. He’s the least of the clan! It’s improbable that Gideon would ever be a position of power within Israel. Much more impossible that he would be called on to take a stand for God and lead God’s people to victory. But that’s God’s plan. Gideon’s weakness, in fact, allows God to show up.
So we’re left with this question. Gideon puts out his fleece a second time, and God answers. What’s Gideon going to do?
Chapter 7 tells us that the people and Gideon got ready to fight. 32,000 able-bodied men. A respectable number. You would expect God to say something to the effect of “good job Gideon, with these numbers we are set to give the Midianites a good thrashing.”
That couldn’t be farther from what God says:
The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’
Wait, so the problem before them is the amount of men Gideon has? How can this be? These numbers are the catalyst, are they not?
In fact, God tells Gideon that such numbers would only serve to steer the people towards themselves, and not to God. It was not Gideon and his able-bodied men that would win the day, but rather God, and his might. Through the weakness of the Israelites their foe would meet the true God.
So Gideon is told to tell the people that all those who are afraid should go home. No shame, but if you’re afraid and want to head home, no problem. This is actually in keeping with Israelite law, as we read in Deut 20:8
And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.’
22,000 people take off.
I wonder what that felt like? Gideon lost over two-thirds of his force. A mass exodus of guys he was counting on. Perhaps he felt anger, hurt, despair. Maybe he felt simply trust that God had everything under control. Whatever the case, this mass exodus significantly decreases his forces.
Gideon goes from 32000 to 10000. Not impossible, but certainly improbable. That’s more than two-thirds his army, gone. Yikes. Still lots of guys left, but nowhere near what he had. How improbable would it be that God would ask Gideon to send home 22000 able bodied soldiers? Unlikely, yet reality.
So, out of the improbability of the situation Gideon must trust. Gideon has to make a choice: Trust God to do it with 10,000 even though it seems improbable, or reject God’s plan, and conquer the victory for themselves. Yet this is exactly the kind of pride God is warning against! Instead, in the weakness of humanity, God’s strength is made perfect. Not only does God “make up” for the seeming weakness here, but He actually uses it to proclaim His glory and work for the good of his covenant people. That required Gideon to trust God, even when it was improbable. No mater the doubt, Gideon and Israel had to trust God’s plan. But then it’s gets even crazier…
4-8 Impossibility Breeds Faith
4-8 Impossibility Breeds Faith
Ok, it was improbable, yet still possible that God would use 10,000 men instead of 32,000. Not ideal by any means. But still maybe doable. But then God makes another command.
And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ shall not go.”
Wait… what?? If 10,000 was improbable, how many more can Gideon possibly afford to lose? Yet God says that the people with Gideon are still too many. So they go down to the river, and the test is given. According to how the men choose to drink water from the stream shall Gideon’s fighting men be chosen. Great. So they all go down to drink water. The ones who brought their hands up to their mouths and drank were chosen to stay. Those who kneeled down were sent home. It seems quite arbitrary for fighting men to be chosen this way. In truth, it’s not fully known what God chose this method of figuring it out. It could have pertained to alertness. Those who continued to stand and drank from their hands would be more alert and ready. But it’s not really clear. The bottom line is that this is the metric God decided to use. The result?
9,700 men go home. 300 men and told to stick around.
Now we just went from improbable, to impossible. There is no way that a tiny little army - more like a squadron - could take on so great a foe as Midian. How could this be? Yet this is what God requires of his people, and Gideon. And so this is what Gideon honours. The 300 men who are left prepare for war.
This portion of the story teaches us a few different things. First, that in weakness we are driven to God. 300 men is all that Gideon has left. A pitiful sum. Yet from that place of weakness they have no other choice that to have faith in the One who is the ultimate commander of the army, and Israel’s defender: God Almighty. There is nothing wrong necessarily with the men that got sent home. Maybe it had something to do with them being alert, but we just can’t be sure. So again faith must be exercised to see how it was that God wanted to move.
Impossibility breeds faith. The writer of Hebrews tells us that:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
The author of Hebrews of course is talking about our salvation in Jesus Christ. That thought we do not see Him in the flesh in this time, we put our trust in Him and proclaim with assurance the truth that Jesus is coming again soon.
But our faith is also in God, as we are following His will, to look after the details, and fighting the battles. Gideon had to have faith: Assurance of victory in battle that he hoped for, and certain that despite the impossiblity of the situation God would come through. And indeed, as we will see next week God did just that. But that couldn’t have been easy. To make the tough call to send home so many of his men. To go ahead in battle anyway. Where Gideon was leading must have seemed really stupid. Certainly, they looked weak.
Conclusion
Conclusion
When we are weak, we have two options. We can say, “ok Lord, I will trust you, and place my faith in you to see this through.” Or, we can choose to try and do everything on our own. Guaranteed that will fail. But if we get out of the way, God can use that weakness to do powerful, amazing things for His glory.
As I said at the beginning, we need to continue building unity, focusing on our mission, and debriefing somewhat about the struggles we’ve faced as a congregation recently. Let me start there.
In the last few weeks, our church has walked through conflict. It’s been hard. Emotion, hurt, struggle, on both “sides” if I can use that term. I am grateful to our superintendent for his wisdom last week in helping us define where we stand as a church. This time has been a time of intense defining for our fellowship, and it is not over. It is a time of growth. But it’s also a time when we feel weak for many different reasons: fighting, lack of confidence in our direction, or leadership, or just general ability as a church to actually move forward. These times do come, and while necessary and even helpful, are still hard.
I cannot say for sure how you feel, but I will share with you my feelings. I will confess to you as your pastor that I am tired. Conflict, people getting hurt, making tough calls and decisions, having as a leadership even to bring some discipline is not what I thought I was signing up for. It’s certainly not what I had hoped for. I’ve struggled with discouragement, pain, and a vast array of thoughts and feelings. Now we sit as a church missing some who are not with us, and we don’t fully know what other changes could come.
Our current story is not unlike what we have read today about Gideon. I think, bigger than conflict is our position as a church. Here we are, a small church, in a small town, with big battles to fight. We have battles to fight spiritually. The longer I am in Leask the more conscious I become of the serious spiritual warfare that is here. There are battles inside and outside our church for many - physically, mentally, spiritually. We are a small church. In fact, we are smaller right now than we were even a month ago. This defining time we are in has moved some away from our church, and may yet move more. We’ve had to deal with conflict, which has caused some division in our church and has caused some to no longer be a part of our fellowship here.
Like Gideon, we still have a mission to accomplish, to proclaim the gospel, to reach out into our community, and to develop strong and passionate believers in Jesus. How are we to accomplish this? This first part of the story gives us four answers:
God uses who He chooses
We require unity, just like Gideon’s forces
In our weakness, His strength is made perfect
God-sized dreams require God-sized plans. Sometimes those plans are huge. Other times, they are as a small as 300 adequate soldiers against an entire invading force.
We’re focusing on Gideon in these two weeks because we have a mission to accomplish here in Leask, and right now it might seem like our church is too small, too weak, or too fractured to accomplish this mission. Those thoughts, and others have been on my mind a lot lately.
However, our weakness should drive us to God. What brings the unity here, what helps us to be strong and vibrant is not how much you like me, our pastor’s council, PAOC, or anything else. Ultimately what we need here is unity in the Holy Spirit, with bonds of peace. Are we a PAOC church, that has accepted different scripturally-based statements that help define our values and direction? Yes. Is it important for the congregation and their pastor to be united in ministry and mission? Yes. Do we need to define clearly what we value and where we feel God is leading so that we can be unified in direction? Yes. But ultimately that comes from each one of us spending the time seeking God’s heart, and being willing even to take risks, like Gideon was. To exercise faith, as Gideon did. And if we are going to accomplish God’s mission for us; move forward as a church that is on fire for reaching the lost and raising up strong, passionate Jesus-followers, we are going to have to realize that it will be accomplished by God, not by us.
It is easy when a church is big and full of different ministries, and seemingly unified to think “oh yeah, we’re good.” However, when we walk through times of conflict, times of financial struggle, times of unrest, transition, and spiritual battle - as we are currently in - it can be hard to feel like we are accomplishing much of anything. We feel weak, and we can get discouraged. No doubt Gideon looked around at his little band of guys and wondered what would happen. However, our job is not to rely on our own strength, but instead God’s strength and press forward in the mission - and identity - God has blessed this church with. At this juncture in the life of our church, we need to be driven to our knees, seeking God’s heart earnestly.
Right after this, we are going to eat together, and go and outreach in our community through our carol sing. This is our chance to move forward in the mission God has given us to proclaim the gospel - the best news that has ever hit us. I’d like to ask you to join me, and ask God to meet us here, in this time of weakness. Ask Him to show up during this time. We bring to Him our church, which we love but we know is experiencing a challenging time. We bring to Him ourselves in our brokenness. What I would like to do as we prepare for this afternoon is to ask that God would build unity here, and empower us to shine a light. What I’d like to do now is join together, and pray for this afternoon, and for our church. Let’s commit our weakness to God, and ask Him to build us into a strong body of believers who He will use to accomplish great things here in Leask. Would you join me?