Gideon: Learning How To Trust

5/19/02 | Brian Bill | Judges 6-8 |
Series: Keeping the Story Alive

I grew up reading comic books about superheroes. I liked Superman, Batman, The Hulk, The Green Hornet, Aquaman and Spiderman. I always dreamed about being a superhero and would often run through the house wearing a cape (I think it was my way of escaping from having four sisters!). I was always intrigued by how the nerd was transformed into macho man and somehow the geek always ended up with the gorgeous girl.

Superheroes are still popular today. I haven’t kept up with the new action figures (because I have four daughters), but I’m happy that the old standbys are hitting the big screen. The recently released “Spiderman” has become the fastest grossing movie ever.

Let me see how you do with this superhero quiz.

Q: Why do the Hulk’s tulips look so healthy?

A: Because he has a green thumb.

Q: Why won’t Captain America use the metric system?

A: He refuses to support a foreign ruler.

Q: Why was Aquaman angry with Aqualad?

A: His grades were below “C” level.

Q: Why didn’t the Joker join the Penguin’s club?

A: He thought it was for the birds.

Q: Where does Spiderman go for information?

A: The web.

This morning we’re going to look at a guy named Gideon who could be classified as a geek when we’re first introduced to him. He goes through a significant metamorphosis, but instead of getting bit by a genetically altered spider, his life is transformed by an encounter with the Almighty.

In Hebrews 11, we find the “Hallowed Hall of Faith,” a listing of God’s spiritual superheroes. Gideon’s name is found there, along with people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Samuel, Samson, and David. While God greatly used these individuals, it wasn’t because they were strong and without faults. Verse 34 reminds us that their “…weakness was turned to strength…”

God loves to use ordinary people like Gideon to accomplish extraordinary things. That means He wants to use people just like you and me.

Gideon’s Good News

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the older testament book of Judges. We’re going to work our way through Judges 6-8, as we focus on Gideon’s “Top Ten Ways to Trust God.”

1. God uses tough times to get our attention (Judges 6:1-10). When we come to Judges 6, we find the nation of Israel, in typical fashion, having turned their backs on God once again. This would often happen after a period in which things went well. The bills were paid, the kids were obeying, and the camels were not in the shop. But then they became self-sufficient and pushed God away. Before long, an enemy would come in, and tough times spilled over into everyone’s life.

Verse 1 tells us that because they did evil in the eyes of the Lord, God’s people were given into the hands of the mighty Midianites. They were extremely powerful and oppressed the Israelites mercilessly. Because things were so bad, the Israelites had left their homes and were living in caves and strongholds, fearing for their lives. With few fortified cities, their only protection was to hide out in the hills. The Midianites were nomadic people, and would invade Israel every year at harvest time. Verse 5 mentions that they would come in like locusts and would ravage the land. What they couldn’t carry with them they destroyed.

Finally, after seven long years, the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. It’s beyond me why they would linger this long to turn back to God. It’s as if they waited until they couldn’t take it any longer. Actually, we do the same thing, don’t we? We know God is trying to get our attention but we hold out, thinking that we can handle it on our own. Even when God allows bad stuff to percolate through the pores of our life, we often refuse to repent and return to Him. Friend, God wants to use the tough things you are going through right now in order to get your attention! Charles Spurgeon said, “The Lord does not permit His children to sin successfully.”

I love verse 7 because it shows that when we cry out to God, He will respond. In this case, He sends an unnamed prophet to remind them of their history and heritage. God expects total surrender and full devotion in verse 10: “I am the Lord your God…” Anything less is rebellion that will bring consequences.

When tough times come, instead of looking at them as if God is punishing you, try to see them as God’s gift of grace. Proverbs 3:11-12: “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” He loves you too much to let you keep living the way you are. He treasures you. He longs to be at the center of your life. He sees you going down a path of destruction and He’s trying to get your attention. Don’t tune Him out. C.S. Lewis has said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it’s His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Is God shouting to you today?

2. God always sees more than we do (6:11-12). I love this next scene. Geeky Gideon was threshing some wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. The Hebrew word used here expresses the idea of hiding. A winepress was made out of stone and was built underground. Normally they would carve out two cisterns, with one slightly below the other. The upper area was used to tread out the grapes. The liquid would then drain into the lower vat. Gideon was probably down in this lower area.

When someone would thresh wheat they’d normally do it out in the open so that the wind could blow away the chaff. But Gideon is afraid of the Midianites and so he’s whacking the wheat with a stick. I picture him pulling some branches over the winepress so no one could see him. The mighty “Gideonater” is a hero in hiding. He’s defeated and discouraged, filled with doubts and fears.

Verse 12 tells us that the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon immediately looks behind him for the mighty warrior. He looks all around but doesn’t see anyone but an angel.

God always sees more than we see. When He looks at you, He sees a hero in hiding. When God looks at Gideon, He sees a strong soldier. In once sense, God is speaking prophetically because He knows what Gideon is about to accomplish. But on the other hand, God is speaking a positional truth. Right now, at this very moment, because the Lord is with him, he is a mighty warrior.

Just as Gideon did not see himself as a mighty warrior, many of us don’t fully understand who we are. Some of us have an image of ourselves that is not only unhealthy, it’s not biblical. We need to reframe our understanding by allowing the truth of God’s Word to impact our identity. Let me go over a few of them right now. If you are a born again believer…

God knows who you are even if you don’t. One of the biggest lies we can tell ourselves is that God only uses special people. This is actually a half-truth. God does use only special people, but they’re special because He uses them.

3. God confirms His priorities with His presence (6:13-24). After being called a mighty warrior, Gideon questions God out loud, wondering why a bunch of bad things have happened to his people. Verse 14 reveals that God “turned to him,” which literally means that He turned, looked at Gideon and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” Gideon responds by saying that his resume isn’t very impressive. He comes from the weakest link in his clan, and he’s the youngest in his family. He doesn’t have any authority to call out the cavalry from his own tribe and family, let alone from the other tribes.

God confirms His priorities with His presence in verse 16, “I will be with you.” Gideon is given a commission but is also promised the companionship of the Lord Himself.

Gideon then asks for the first of several signs just to be sure. He wants the Lord to wait for a few minutes while he runs off and bakes some bread and throws a goat on the grill. An ephah of flour is about half a bushel, which would make ten flat cakes ten inches in diameter, and would have been a very generous portion, especially during the hard times they were experiencing. The meal is placed on a rock for the angel and then is vaporized by fire. When Gideon realizes that He is in the presence of the Almighty, he cries out in verse 22: “Ah, Sovereign Lord!” Gideon then built an altar to the Lord.

Gideon needed to understand who he was, but more importantly, He needed a personal encounter with God. Napoleon’s soldiers used to say, “When Napoleon takes our hands and looks at us, we feel like conquerors.” When the Lord turned and looked at Gideon, he must have had an overwhelming sense of the peace that can only come from being in the presence of God. Likewise, the most important thing we can do is to get to know God. Take his hand and look “full into His marvelous face.” Once we do, we’ll sense His presence, we’ll understand His priorities, and in the process, we’ll be fired up to do what He’s calling us to do.

4. Private faithfulness is a prerequisite to public usefulness (6:25-32). Before Gideon can be used publicly, he must first take care of some things at home. He needs to clean up some bad stuff in his own backyard. The Lord gave him the assignment to take his dad’s special seven-year-old bull and tear down his father’s altar to Baal. Only a few bulls were necessary to sustain a herd, so only the best stock would be kept for breeding. To kill this bull would cause the family grave financial difficulties and put Gideon at personal risk.

Not too surprisingly, Gideon would rather do this demolition job at night because he knew how his dad would react. Incidentally, several guys this week demolished the old portable just to the west of our building. I don’t think they used a bull, but they may have had a bulldozer!

God’s people had allowed their worship to become polluted and Gideon had to confront the breaking of the first and second commandments in his own family. Friend, if you want to learn how to trust God then you must first set the affairs of your own house in order. Before God can use you mightily, He must be magnified in your home. Is He? Is there anything you’ve been holding on to? Is there any sin that you’re clinging to? Let it go. Confess it. Deal with it. And knock down any altars you find.

5. God is patient with our faith process (6:33-40). When we come to verse 33, we read that the Midianites and a bunch of other “ites” are getting ready to make their annual raid. Verse 34 tells us, “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.” Gideon had taken a huge step of faith in his private faithfulness and now God’s Spirit is empowering Him publicly. People and clans are rallying behind him and his faith is growing as he marvels at what God is doing when 32,000 men show up.

Listen. Even though he has had an encounter with the Almighty, even though he was obedient to clean shop at home, and even though the Holy Spirit was empowering him, he still had some doubts. Sounds like us, doesn’t it? God had told him what to do but Gideon wanted to make sure. Look at verse 36: “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised…” I love how loving, tender, and patient God is with us. Gideon is making a deal with God. He knows that God has promised to save Israel through him and yet he wants to set up a test.

This test is what Gideon is most famous for. First, he places a wool fleece on the threshing floor [demonstrate] and says, “If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” Even here he’s admitting once again that God had said He would do this. When he got up the next morning, that’s exactly what happened. The fleece was full of moisture and the ground was dry.

Apparently this wasn’t good enough for Gideon. He knew that wool tended to absorb water so this was really no big deal. He doesn’t want God to be angry with him in verse 39 when he says, “Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece [he’s being pretty polite here]. This time make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew.” This would be a miracle because if the ground was wet and the fleece was on the ground, then the wool would be wet as well. The next morning, the ground was soaked and the fleece was dry. God was gracious with Gideon’s growing faith.

6. Success is determined by God’s power, not ours (7:1-8). Gideon’s now ready to rumble but God has other plans. In Judges 7:2, the Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her.” Gideon must have wondered what was going on. He already knew they were outnumbered but his guys were pumped. Maybe they could defeat the bad guys. God then does some sifting and tells anyone who is “trembling with fear” to go home. Amazingly, 22,000 men boogied and only 10,000 remained. I think the 22,000 were the honest ones because they were all probably scared!

As Gideon is getting ready to go into battle, God says in verse 4 that there are still too many men. He tells Gideon to take them down to the water and let them drink. Gideon’s job was to watch how the men drank from the river and then to divide them into two groups. 300 men made cups out of their hands and filled them with water and lapped it with their tongues. And 9,700 kneeled on the shore and stuck their faces right into the water in order to drink. Commentators have suggested that those who made cups with their hands were more prepared for battle because they could still look around and reach their weapon if they needed to. Those who put their face into the water were very vulnerable and unprepared.

After sifting out the fearful and the foolish, God then tells Gideon that he will save Israel with 300 men who know how to drink politely! Seriously, these men were the most faithful and the most fit of the bunch. We know from chapter 8 that the enemy army had 135,000 human fighting machines. Gideon probably did some math in the sand and quickly realized that for every one Israelite, there were 450 Midianites. His army is less than 1% of its original size. Talk about being outnumbered!

God loves to show Himself strong when we feel weak. He delights in the difficult, but He specializes in the impossible. In Luke 18:27, Jesus said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” Someone has said that we should “attempt something so big for God that unless He is in it, it will fail.” I’m sure that’s how Gideon felt.

God doesn’t need us to accomplish His purposes. Have you ever noticed how much He can do through just a few people? Sometimes we get so caught up in what we’ve done that we forget to even give God credit. When our numbers are reduced, then we know its God who is doing the work. 2 Corinthians 12: 9:“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

7. God gives us assurance when we do things His way (7:9-25). After whittling down the troops, God recognizes that Gideon may be a bit nervous and that he doesn’t feel like a superhero at this point. God then has Gideon go down to where the Midianites are camped so that he can hear someone tell about a dream that he had. When Gideon realizes that the dream was about the Midianites’ defeat at the hand of the Israelites, verse 15 tells us that he worshiped God.

I love how God goes out of His way to give us assurance when we do things His way. We don’t have to doubt or wonder. I can think of at least five things we can be totally certain about if we have put our faith in Jesus Christ:

By the way, we think these verses are so important that we encourage all of our new members to memorize them.

After Gideon receives assurance, he divides the three hundred men into three companies and gives each of them trumpets and clay pots with torches inside them. They don’t even have slingshots! He gives them the battle plan, telling them to follow his lead. In the middle of the night, they snuck up and surrounded the camp, blew their trumpets and broke the jars so that the light would shine.

Normally, only a few of the soldiers carried trumpets for signaling because hands were needed for weapons and shields. Likewise, only a small number would be assigned torches to illuminate the battlefield during the night. Therefore, when the Midianites heard the blast of 300 trumpets and saw the myriad of torches, they naturally assumed there was a massive army that would be charging into the camp. They got spooked and started running around like crazy, killing one another. Many died and others got away, with Gideon in hot pursuit.

8. Expect criticism and deal with it gracefully (8:1-3). Remember this. Whenever you’re involved in the Lord’s work, criticism will come. The Ephraimites were one of the chief tribes of Israel, and they were mad that Gideon hadn’t given them a bigger role in the battle. Look at 8:1: “Why didn’t you call us when you went to fight Midian? And they criticized him sharply.” This word “sharply” means to “wrangle vehemently.” Actually, they were more concerned that they wouldn’t get as much of the spoils as the other tribes. They wanted the blessings without fully engaging in the battle.

Gideon demonstrates a boatload of wisdom here. He didn’t want to risk a civil war, and recognizes that their pride was wounded and so he builds them up. He dealt with them gracefully by saying in verse 3: “What was I able to accomplish compared to you?” He thanked them for the role they did play in capturing two of the Midianite leaders.

Here’s a good lesson to learn from Gideon. When you’re criticized, answer people with kindness. Proverbs 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”

9. Finish strong even when you feel like giving up (8:4-21). Several months ago, when I was feeling particularly tired, God used verse 4 to encourage me: “Gideon and his three hundred men, exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit…” Gideon was weary but he still had a job to do. He was wiped out but there were still Midianites to track down. The task wasn’t complete. God is looking for “finishers” today, for those who will not only start strong but will finish strong.

10. Be careful to give God the credit (8:22-23). After defeating the Mighty Midianites, the Gideonater is basking in the glory of a victory parade and the “high-fives” of the people. In verse 22, the Israelites say to him, “Rule over us—you, your son and your grandson—because you have saved us out of the hand of Midian.” They’re basically saying, “You go, Gideon! You da’ man!” Gideon knew it was all about God, not about him and so he directed their focus back to the Lord in verse 23: “The Lord will rule over you.”

There’s a lot of good news about Gideon in these three chapters. We can learn to trust God by following his top ten list:

· Private faithfulness is a prerequisite to public usefulness

· God is patient with our faith process

· Success is determined by God’s power, not ours

· Expect criticism and deal with it gracefully

· Finish strong even when you feel like giving up

Gideon’s Bad News

While Gideon learned how to trust God, his story doesn’t end on a very good note. Like Samson, who started out with so much potential, a fatal flaw tripped him up in the end. While he refused to be made king, he did ask for the gold earrings of the killed Midianites. His desire for gold tarnished the luster of his bright name. It was like kryptonite for our spiritual superhero.

He then wanted this gold used to make an ephod, which was supposed to be just for the high priest. Gideon was hoping he could use this to get a special connection with God, without having to travel to Shiloh to worship. Unfortunately, this object became a stumbling block for the entire nation of Israel, much like the golden calf constructed by Aaron in Exodus 32. Look at Judges 8:27: “All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.” When Gideon eventually dies, the Israelites once again prostituted themselves to Baal. They were right back to where they started. Gideon’s compromise led to their downfall. One of his sons took the role of king and killed 70 of his brothers in the process.

This is really sad and serves as a warning to us. We can never coast spiritually. Don’t ever think that you’ve arrived, because you haven’t.

When we lived in Mexico City, I used to get up very early to get ready to teach English. I would take a bus, the metro, another bus, and then walk about 15 minutes to the corporate offices for Coca-Cola. It was dangerous and I had to always be on my guard. Beth would say to me many times as I was getting ready to leave, “Be careful. You’re not invincible.” What she was really saying was, “Put your cape away and trust God!”

Let me close with some of the words from the hymn, “Come Thou Fount.”

Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wand'ring from the fold of God, He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed his precious blood, Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love. O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let they goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to thee Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.