AM Bible Study Group; June 3, 2015 from Judges 7:8b-15
Theme: This passage shows how nothing hindered God from giving the victory to His called-out people.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
As we have studied the important battle Gideon fought against the Midianites—a battle that one Old Testament commentator called the best-known battle in the Bible—we have found that the odds had been made humanly impossible. Gideon himself was a humble man who needed assurance—and was not someone that would ordinarily thought to be a great military leader. His army was ridiculously small—an army that was reduced by God from 32,000 men to only three-hundred; making the odds against them about 400 to one! And the provisions for each solder were the strangest ever issued to an army—that is, to each man a clay pitcher, a trumpet, and a torch.
And yet, the battle was won! And this story in the life of Gideon teaches us an important lesson about the God we serve: Nothing hinders God from winning the victory when the battle is His. We always need to remember that it was God who told Gideon, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man” (6:16). God called him, sent him, and promised him the victory; and therefore it was the Midianites who were hopelessly outnumbered!
Consider that when the battle is the Lord’s . . .
I. A LACK OF RESOURCES ARE NOT A PROBLEM (7:16-18).
A. After having overheard the two Midianite soldiers on the outskirts of the camp discussing a dream, and after hearing one say to the other, “This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel! Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp” (7:14); we’re told that Gideon then got into action. But what kind of action is this? After departing from the overwhelmingly great army of the enemy, we’re told, “Then he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet into every man’s hand, with empty pitchers, and torches inside the pitchers” (v. 16). Would the 300 soldiers have looked at one another and said, “What are we supposed to do with these? Provide entertainment?” But it may be that these strange provisions were the only things at Gideon’s disposal at that point. After all, for seven years the Midianites had greatly impoverished the people of Israel. It may be that Gideon gave them all the ‘weapons’ that they really had.
B. But like the old song says, “Little is much, when God is in it.” We should remember how the disciples were baffled at the prospect of feeding a multitude with only a few loaves of bread and a few small fish. That meager provision became great after the Lord said, “Bring them here to Me” (v. 18). Gideon knew that the battle belonged to the Lord; so the little he had was much in God’s hand. He gave his meager supply to the 300 soldiers; and we’re told, “And he said to them, ‘Look at me and do likewise; watch, and when I come to the edge of the camp you shall do as I do: When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets on every side of the whole camp, and say, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”’” (vv. 17-18). Notice what those things became? They were ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon’—just what the Midianite soldiers said in the interpretation of their dream—except that the Lord was now clearly in it! We should never despair having meager resources for God’s work when those resources are brought to the Lord!
II. A LACK OF NUMBERS IS NO BARRIER (7:19-23).
A. Some have thought that the thing that Gideon did next was an example of military genius. And when we hear someone say that, we should respond by saying, “Then YOU try it sometime!” The vast army of Midianite soldiers was “as numerous as locusts”, and they had camels “without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude” (7:12). And the fact that a mere 300 men with pitchers and torches and trumpets could defeat them by breaking the pitchers, and making a lot of noise, was not a result of brilliant military strategy! It was a miracle of God’s own doing! We’re told that Gideon took 100 men to the outpost of the camp “at the beginning of the middle watch”—that is, around 10 pm, when many soldiers were beginning to fall asleep, and when those on watch were relaxed and unsuspecting. The other two divisions quietly surrounded the camp from other sides. And at the right moment, “they blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers that were in their hands. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers—they held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing—and they cried, ‘The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!’” (vv. 19-20). We can safely say that this humanly ‘far-fetched’ plan would have to have been something given to Gideon by God.
B. And we are clearly told that what happened next was the Lord’s doing. “And every man stood in his place all around the camp; and the whole army ran and cried out and fled. When the three hundred blew the trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his companion throughout the whole camp; and the army fled to Beth Acacia, toward Zererah, as far as the border of Abel Meholah, by Tabbath” (vv. 21-22). It may have been that the sudden sound of crashing and trumpets, the sudden appearance of torches, and the sudden surrounding army of 300, set the Midianites in a panic and caused them to head for their homeland. It may have been that the camels were put into a panic and began to run amok. But how can we account for the fact that the Midianites then set their swords against each other and reduce their own numbers? The answer we’re given is that the Lord did that! We might say that the lack of human resources proved not to be a problem, because the Lord was able to provide the manpower through the Midianites themselves! What’s more, once they were on the run, those that Gideon had previously sent home (7:3, 6-7) now—in the providence of God—became handy for capturing the escapees along the way. “And the men of Israel gathered together from Naphtali, Asher, and all Manasseh, and pursued the Midianites” (v. 23). As Joshua once said, “One man of you shall chase a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you, as He promised you” (Joshua 23:10).
III. EVEN THE FRAILTIES OF PEOPLE CANNOT HINDER GOD’S PURPOSE (7:24-8:3).
A. It’s here in the story that Gideon ran into a problem. At first, the news seemed good. We’re told that Gideon called upon the Israelites in the mountains of the tribe of Ephraim to come and seize the watering places in the south—the ones that fed into the Jordan—to prevent the Midianites from going any further. What’s more, the Ephraimites captured two leaders of the Midianites—Oreb (whose name means “Raven”) and Zeeb (whose name means “Wolf”)—slew them, and brought their heads back to Gideon on the other side of the Jordan (7:24-25). But the victory quickly turned sour. The Ephriamites, after all, were a very proud tribe. Joshua had come from them. The tabernacle had been located in their own city of Shiloh. And their founding father Ephriam had been honored over the founder of Gideon’s tribe Menassah in the blessing of Jacob (Genesis 48:8-20). They confronted Gideon and said, “Why have you done this to us by not calling us when you went to fight with the Midianites?” We’re told that “they reprimanded him sharply” (8:1). This, as it turns out, is a repeated problem with proud Ephriam—expecting to be honored much for doing little (see Judges 12:1ff). We might think of some examples of this in church today!
B. Such arrogant pride is a terrible fault; and it can hinder the work of God through division. But it doesn’t have to. God gave His appointed servant Gideon the grace to respond wisely. He could have silenced them by pointing to his own clear call from God; but instead, “he said to them, ‘What have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?’” (v. 2). Gideon was an Abiezerite; and he was saying that Ephriam’s act of capturing and slaying the two princes is far greater than the work of Gideon’s humble army. He added, “’God has delivered into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. And what was I able to do in comparison with you?’ Then their anger toward him subsided when he said that” (v. 3). It may not have been a fair comparison; but it was a wise one to make. God gave that answer to him. When we remember that “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1), then not even the frailties of pride and jealousy have to stand in the way of God’s work getting done!
* * * * * * * * * *
As followers of Jesus, we are called upon often to enter into battle—not, of course, against flesh and blood; but against overwhelming forces in spiritual realms. But as Paul wrote, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ . . .” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
Let’s always remember that the God that gave the victory to Gideon is also our God; and when the battle is His, nothing—not lack of resources, not lack of personal, not even our own failings and faults—can hinder Him from giving the victory.