Judges 6-8 | When God Brings Victory Out of Doubt

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

A few weeks ago, we began concluding our summer by looking at 1 John chapter 2, where John instructs the believers of his age to not love the world or the things in the world.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

I called that standing in the middle, living in the middle, caught in the middle, where we as Christians struggle with one foot in the world, yet looking toward and desiring the things of God.

We moved from 1 John chapter 2 to the book of Judges.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

It's an Old Testament example of living in the middle.

That's much of Judges itself, all of Judges.

This morning I ask that you join me in Judges chapter 6.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

So we look at a lengthy portion.

I encourage you last week to read through Judges so that you're familiar with it.

We're going to be covering three chapters this morning, so we can't really read through the whole text, but hopefully you are familiar with some of it.

Most church people are familiar with this section about the story of Gideon.

And most church people are familiar with portions of it.

Familiar with Gideon testing God with a clump of wool.

Or maybe you're more excited by the other part of the story of Gideon, where he triumphed over Israel's enemies with a mere 300-man army.

But those are only tiny parts of the larger story and its charge to God's people to move out of the middle.

That place of living with one foot drawn to the world and the other foot desperately trying to trust God.

You see, the account of Gideon calls us to uproot sin in our lives and in turn to strengthen our hope and trust in our covenant God.

Gideon's story is not merely about a doubting man with some wool or a conquering hero.

It's the history of God's covenant people who could not relinquish their love for their world and fully trust God.

At the beginning of Judges, we find a people much like us, the nation of Israel, a people called out by God, yet struggling to be distinct from the world around them.

They were stuck in the middle.

Now in Judges chapter 6, we begin the history of God working through this Savior Judge named Gideon.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

On the larger scale, it's a sad story of God's people living in the middle.

Sometimes they looked to their covenant God Yahweh as the God of their history.

But mostly they worshiped Baal as the God of today.

We left off last Sunday in Judges chapter 3, where we saw that the Jews living in the promised land after the death of Joshua abandoned the Lord their God and served false gods.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

As a result, God gave them into the hands of their enemies.

And that's a cycle that you find all throughout the book of Judges, repeated over and over again.

After a period of difficulty, Israel cries out to God for help, and so God raises up unique saviors to rescue them from their human enemies.

Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 recount the first Savior judges.

Stories all leaving us with this feeling that this place called Canaan is not really the storied place of milk and honey, but of being caught in the middle.

And so we arrive at chapter 5 and verse 31, the very last line of chapter 5 in your Bibles.

And the land had rest for 40 years.

Shalom for 40 years.

But those 40 years were short-lived and swift.

For God reminds us that after 40 years of freedom, the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and he gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.

Israel's hope in worldly beliefs brought God's discipline and his judgment.

They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Why?

Because they were drawn by the belief system of the world around them.

And so God responds.

And the hand of Midian, verse 2 of chapter 6, overpowered Israel, and because of Midian, the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds.

You see, Israel continued to walk in step with the world around her, resulting in an abandonment of her God.

And God's discipline for following the ways of the world was so severe that his people were desperate to hide from their enemies.

If you think about it, it makes our complaints seem petty.

In fact, they continued to plant crops in their fields when they weren't hiding in the caves to make bread for their families, and even that was taken away in verse 3.

For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them.

They would encamp against them and devour the produce as far as Gaza and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey, for they would come up like locusts in number, and they laid waste the land.

Israel was hopeless.

You go from 40 years of shalom to this.

One would think that people would begin to return to God when driven from their homes to dens and caves in the mountains.

But our historian tells us that they continued in their rebellious ways.

Maybe they thought, well, let's just make the best of the situation.

Yes, it's it's difficult, it's a hardship, but we've got to adapt, right?

But God did not want them to adapt to difficult circumstances.

He wanted Israel to turn around, to return in repentance and in trust, but they didn't.

So God's discipline went a step further.

He took away their food.

The text tells us that year after year, after year after year, every springtime in the time of the barley harvest, multiple nations would come up against Israel in massive numbers.

They would take the harvest by force, leaving the fields and the animals destroyed.

But that travesty wasn't merely enemy action.

In a way, if it was just the enemies coming up, hey, they're stronger than us right now, we can understand that.

That travesty wasn't merely enemy action, though.

God removed what Israel trusted in.

God took the food upon which his people lived.

Let that settle for a minute.

God did this.

And that meant that he also undermined the false God that they worshipped.

Because Baal was the god of fertile crops.

My friends, God may use affliction and difficulty to gain our attention.

By taking food sources, God also took away their worldly hope to make them rely on Him.

You understand this, right?

We become self-sufficient and independent of God when life goes well for us.

And then we begin to make idols of our success.

On the other hand, we become more aware of our need for the Lord when life is difficult.

Here we see God, God working to make his people more aware of their need for him.

He challenged their self-sufficiency to bring them to him.

You see, only when we are helpless do we really feel our helplessness and need of God.

Let me say that again.

I meant to have it on the screen for you, and I don't.

Only when we feel our helplessness are we really aware of our need for God.

Put that in a different way, in an evangelistic sense.

People need to know that they need a savior.

But you only know that you need a savior if you feel your helplessness.

If you sense your sin.

Only when we are helpless do we really feel our helplessness and our need for God.

So run to God in your difficulty.

Command your heart to trust Him implicitly.

Hope in Him.

Don't let your first action be to run and tell everyone so that they can commiserate with you in your pain.

Instead, make your first action talking to God.

Confess any sin, worship Him alone, and command your heart to trust in your good and gracious King.

Eventually, Israel did just that in verse 7.

They cry out to the Lord on account of the Midianites.

And God's response is interesting.

He sends an unnamed prophet.

Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Listen up.

I made a covenant with you.

And as part of that covenant, you were to obey me.

But you've not obeyed my voice firsthand.

That's a convicting blow.

God says, I called you out, I brought you out of Egypt, I gave you this land, and you still believe that I exist, you still believe that I'm here, but you go every day and you worship Baal.

You've not obeyed my voice.

I wonder how often God could say similar words to us.

How many times could God say to us, listen, I've told you, you shall be holy as I am holy.

But you've not obeyed my voice.

Maybe God could say to us daily, you cannot love both me and the things in the world, but you sure are trying.

Sometimes God disciplines us.

And we are slow to recognize the discipline.

We just think, oh, things aren't going that well for me.

It's just a hard time right now.

In fact, this story indicates that it took seven years before anyone realized why Israel was overrun by the Midianites every single year.

Israel had not maintained her allegiance to her God.

She had broken the covenant, and God had every right to discipline the people.

And yet, and yet God's covenant faithfulness steps into their situation and brings mercy.

It's astounding.

They are denying him, they're desiring to have everything in the world and yet still maintain their distinction as God's people.

And yet he is gracious and merciful to them.

God keeps his covenants even when his people do not.

Look at verse 11.

Now the angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abizarite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites.

The angel of the Lord comes to Gideon.

He's performing a very ordinary duty at harvest time.

He's beating grain to separate the kernel of grain from the stalks.

And that process was typically done on hard, flat ground.

But Gideon is in a winepress, which was most often a hollowed-out rock.

Why would Gideon beat his grain in a winepress?

Because he's afraid.

Because he's afraid.

Remember, this is the time of the year when foreign invaders come to take away Israel's crops.

Gideon is hiding his work.

And the angel of the Lord appears to him and says in verse 12, the Lord, that's all capital letters, the covenant name of God, Yahweh, Jehovah, is with you, O mighty man of valor.

What?

How can a mighty man of valor live and work in fear?

That's an oxymoron, we would say today.

Those don't go together.

A mighty man of valor working in fear?

Hiding what he does, that some mighty man of valor.

God, are you really sure about this?

Beloved, here's the beginning of God's grace.

The Lord takes a man who, by any standard of leadership, should not be considered for the job and declares him to be a mighty man.

That pattern is echoed in the New Testament when God takes sinners who ought not to be worthy of his mercy, and he declares them to be righteous.

Gideon is not merely a mighty man, but he's a mighty man because the Lord is with him.

That's God's mercy.

The story rests on God's intervention in time and space by declaring his presence with a fearful man.

Does that not sound familiar to you, Christian?

There was a fearful man and a fearful woman in the beginning of your New Testament to whom God said, You shall call his name Emmanuel.

God with you.

Gideon is just like the rest of us, though.

He's a picture of the twisted perception of reality that becomes ingrained in us, that we really develop by our choice to live in the middle.

He has one foot in the faith of his fathers, believing that Yahweh exists, and one foot squarely in his version of reality.

Please, sir.

Can you hear the sarcasm in that?

Please, sir.

Really?

If Yahweh is really with us, then why has all of this happened?

Where is God if this is what we live in?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yahweh has forsaken his people.

That's his version of reality.

It's as if God, it's as if Gideon is saying to the angel of the Lord, Are you out of your mind?

Look around you.

I have to beat out my grain in a wine press just to have some food to feed my family.

We live in fear every day.

If anything, God has forsaken us.

Gideon was caught between believing in Israel's God and his circumstances of life.

And that tension twisted his perception of reality.

Had God given them into the hand of Midian?

Yes.

Absolutely.

The text says that.

But the reality was that God's mercy was being manifested through discipline.

God was giving them into the hand of Midian so that Israel might repent and return to him.

But the people did not recognize the presence of these invaders as God's mercy to bring them back to him.

So had the Lord forsaken them?

Not at all.

God had remained faithful to his covenant.

Israel had forsaken him.

But Gideon's perspective only saw the world around him looming large, like the armies and the hundreds of thousands coming to take their food.

His perception of reality made it difficult to trust in a faithful God.

And how can we blame him?

Oh, we're Christians.

We would never say that God has forsaken us.

But we act that way when we fail to trust God, don't we?

It's easy to think that God has forgotten us when life doesn't go as we want.

That's what happens when we live in the middle.

Gideon looked at his life's circumstances and assumed a conclusion based on his perception.

But it was an incomplete perception.

He lacked a faith-based understanding of his world.

It's as if he wanted to believe that God was with them, but it was impossible to think that way when his focus was on his world.

That's an important thing for all of God's people to remember.

We have eyes of faith, Scripture says.

But eyes of faith cannot see the unseen world when our hearts are consumed by the world around us.

The next part of the story is likely familiar.

God commanded Gideon to lead Israel in defeating the invaders.

Verse 14 God said, Go in this Might of yours.

That's a reference back to Gideon's might is not in his own ability, but in the fact that God is with him.

Go defeat the Midianites.

It's likely familiar to you.

Our Sunday school stories, though, often skip the first step.

God commanded Gideon to deal with the blatant sin in his own little part of the world first.

God commanded him, go and tear down the altar to Baal and the Ashtareth pole.

That's there as well.

Gideon, he said, My people are living in the middle.

They're wanting this perceived hope that comes from joining the world in their worship of demons while they claim to be my people.

Go destroy it.

It was no small task.

And it came at personal cost.

Gideon was to use his family's best breeding bull to tear down the altar.

And then he was to take that prized possession and offer that bull as a sacrifice to Yahweh on a new altar.

Those actions would infuriate the community and cost his family dearly.

But friends, following God requires personal sacrifice.

Sometimes God calls us to give the best of what we possess.

Gideon learned that godly faithfulness requires dealing with sin.

We need to remember that.

Are we harboring sin rather than tearing it out?

Are we unwilling to crucify our love for the world and the things of the world?

You see, Gideon still lived in the middle.

He followed God's command.

He took the bowl and he tore down the altar and the ashtraith pole and he offered the bowl as a sacrifice to God, but he still lived in the middle because he did that at night.

When it was dark and people were sleeping, because he was afraid of what the neighbors might think.

Ironically, the mighty man is still afraid.

But we start to see a change, beginning in chapter 6, verse 33.

Now all the Midianites, it says, and all the Amalekites and the people of the east came together.

This is all of them.

It's harvest time.

They're here to do their job.

And Israel would say, Here we go again.

But God's work is now shifting from discipline to merciful deliverance.

Because verse 34 says, But the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet and he called out the people to follow him.

And this is where we find that famous action of Gideon, right?

Gideon lived in the middle, meaning his faith was squashed by the world around him.

So he puts out a small piece of wool and he asks God to do something small.

Cause the threshing floor, we've moved from the wine press now to the threshing floor, cause the threshing floor to be dry, but the fleece to be wet with dew.

That's asking for a minor miracle.

See, the threshing floor would be hard-packed earth and unlikely to be soaked with dew while the wool would gather the dew.

God answered, as you know.

Gideon took up the wool and he squeezed out the water and see it come out.

Well, that made him bolder.

So he asks a second time, God, you've done the natural thing now.

Now do what is unnatural.

Make the earth wet, but the wool dry.

And God did.

This is a sermon in and of itself, but I'll make this short.

I find a couple of interesting details in this short thing about the wool.

First, the only comment, the only comment this historian gives us is in verse 40.

It's the only comment.

And God did so that night.

And it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.

So God didn't tell Gideon to ask for a sign.

God does that in the book of Isaiah to one of the kings of Israel.

He says, ask for a sign.

He doesn't tell Gideon to ask for a sign, neither does he condemn Gideon for asking for a sign.

So let's be careful about making this prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Prescriptive means that it is an example for us to follow.

Descriptive means it's just describing what happened.

There's no prescription here.

There's nothing that tells us that we should follow Gideon's example when we come to a difficult circumstance.

But if you think about it, our historian doesn't need to record anything like that.

Because in the grand story, this is yet another illustration of Gideon living in the middle.

What do I mean?

Look back at chapter 6, verses 14 and 15.

Yahweh turned to him and said, Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian.

Did I not send you?

Gideon says, Lord, how can I save Israel?

My cleanse the weakest in Manasseh, I'm the least in my father's house.

And Yahweh said to him, Close your mouth, Gideon.

I will be with you.

And you shall strike the Midianites as one hand, as one man.

What did God already said?

He had already declared success because of God's presence with him.

But later, Gideon does not yet fully believe God's word.

Putting out the fleece is not a helpful method of determining God's will.

It's the action of a man who lacks trust in God's word.

It tells us that Gideon is just like us.

He hears and takes in the words of God and then wonders did God really mean that?

He questioned God's word.

He lived between trust in the God of his fathers and the world around him.

He believes God exists, but he's too much in the world to avoid doubts and uncertainties about God's word.

Nevertheless, God is a God of covenant faithfulness, isn't he?

And in his covenant faithfulness, he's merciful to Gideon and does what he requests.

That must have been sufficient for Gideon because in chapter 7, verse 1, we see the army gathering together.

And now we have a change in Gideon's name.

He's now called Jerob Baal, which means he contends against Baal.

He's going against Baal.

So now we are taken out of the world of ancient Israel and their circumstances, and we are now beginning to see that there is an unseen world that is at work.

This is not merely about Israel going against her enemies.

This is about God contending against a false God.

And Gideon is his representative.

But we see the encouraging truth that God's strength is made perfect in weakness.

People living in the middle need to hear and to trust this truth.

Strengthening one's trust in God's use of imperfect people is vital to the success of moving away from the middle and toward greater faithfulness.

Let me show you what this looks like by resetting the stage.

In chapter 8, verse 10, we find that the enemy army totals about 135,000 men.

That's a massive army for the time.

Virtually insurmountable.

Gideon's army numbers an impressive 32,000 drawn out from the hills and the caves.

Still, General Gideon is outnumbered by over a hundred thousand men.

And God dares to say to Gideon, yeah, your 32,000 men is too many for me to give the Midianites over to their hand.

I don't want Israel to boast over me saying, my Israel's hand has saved me.

Gideon's got to be beside himself.

32,000 is too many to go against 135,000?

The math doesn't work, God.

But that's the mindset of living in the middle, isn't it?

It sees life only through human eyes.

So God, God initially sends 22,000 men home.

Those who were just like Gideon, afraid to fight.

That means it's now 10,000 going against 135,000.

So God sends home 9,700 men.

So it's now 300 men against 135,000.

If you want to have a more modern feel of what that would be like, imagine having$300 in your bank account versus$135,000 in your bank account.

You get a sense of the disparity.

But God knows Gideon's weakness, so he says in chapter 7 and verse 10 if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp, and you will hear the truth.

Of course Gideon's afraid.

That's all we've known so far.

He's a man of valor who's deeply afraid.

But we're also following along with our historian reminding us that God uses imperfect people.

Why wouldn't Gideon be afraid?

He's sending him out against an army of 135,000 with 300 measly men.

Gideon sneaks down to the enemy camp with his servant.

He hears someone speak about a dream he has.

That dream signifies that Gideon is going to destroy the armies of Israel in verse 14 of chapter 7.

Now notice Gideon's response to hearing that dream in verse 15 of chapter 7.

As soon as he heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped.

He worshiped.

At this point, we see no more fear from Gideon.

Finally, he appears fully convinced in God's word, and he confidently goes to war with his 300 men.

He seems to have left the middle and moved to a place of wholehearted trust in God's word, wisdom, and might.

And so he takes his 300 men and he stations them around the perimeter of the enemy camp.

Imagine how large that camp has to be with 135,000 people.

He stations his 300 men around the enemy camp with the only weapons defeated and crushed people possess.

Frightening trumpets and torches covered by jars.

At the appropriate time, the jars were smashed, allowing the smoldering torches to flare up against the darkness of the midnight sky, and then the trumpets were blown.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with some thunder.

Imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of trumpets surrounding your camp.

The sleeping enemy awakes to the sound of trumpets and the breaking of jars, and looking around them, they believe that they were surrounded by an army of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

And so in their sleep-fogged minds, they fought each other, believing that they were surrounded and outnumbered.

Tells us in chapter 8, verse 10 that a hundred and twenty thousand men of the East died.

God worked a miracle for doubting Gideon.

My friends, never think, never think that you are too far gone.

Never think that you have lived too long in the middle or are too deep into the world's ways.

Gideon proves that God can use imperfect people for his glory when we listen to his word and we tear down the sinful idols in our lives and begin trusting our covenant God.

Oh, but beware.

Beware, because if you step out of the middle and begin trusting your God, it will likely stretch your faith and at the same time undermine your love for the world.

But it will teach you that God delights in displaying his strength through weak people.

We often stop the story of Gideon right there with God's great victory.

But that's not the rest of the story.

The people were so glad to be free from their oppressors that they wanted Gideon to be their king.

But fresh off this mountaintop experience, Gideon tells them in chapter 8, verse 23, yeah, no, I will not rule over you, my son will not rule over you, because Yahweh rules over you.

Now we see Gideon turned theologian.

But he's right.

God is their king.

He is the one that they trust.

He has recognized that Yahweh was king over Israel, that he was to be obeyed and worshipped.

Gideon's merely the vessel.

He's merely the weak, imperfect servant whom God has used.

But in Gideon's living in the middle mind, it would help if people could be reminded that God is present with them.

So let's have something that we can see and touch that helps us remember God.

So he took some jewelry and fashioned an ephid.

That's a portion of a priest's garment.

And he took that ephid and he set it up in his hometown.

And you can see why this has to be included in the whole story of Gideon, because at the end of the story, Gideon's ephid that he wanted to remind people that God is king, that ephid has now taken the place of the altar to Baal and the ashtra pole.

And people now begin to worship what Gideon made rather than the God Gideon intended it to represent.

Gideon wanted something visible and physical to help him stay in touch with God, but Gideon's people began to worship the Ephid rather than the Lord, just as Israel would in later years worship the Ark of the Covenant rather than the God of the covenant.

And that's what people in the middle do.

In the end, they really struggle to have eyes of faith that rest only on what is unseen.

So Gideon's lack of trust from living in the middle became a snare to his people.

Gideon always wanted and needed something more than God's plain word.

And in the end, it was trouble for those around him.

Same is true for us, more often than not.

Now the end of the story is in chapter 8, verse 33.

As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and hoarded after the Baals and made Baal Barit their God.

And the people of Israel did not remember Yahweh their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.

And they did not show steadfast love to the family of Jarabaal, that is Gideon, in return for all the good he had done to Israel.

So we have a reminder here that this was to be about contending against Baal.

God raised Gideon up to be a savior judge to contend against the enemy.

In the end, the people turn right back around and embrace the spiritual enemy.

God brought victory out of Gideon's doubt and his lack of trust.

But sadly, Gideon continued to live in the middle.

He struggled to believe that God is truly present with his people.

Even though you can't see him, God said, I will be with you.

But eyes of faith that are consumed by the world struggle to see the unseen.

So he wavered in his trust in God's word and he wandered from the God who called him.

And beloved, that is our reality too.

So we're reminded that God expects absolute allegiance.

He doesn't tolerate divided loyalties.

Gideon's life reminds us that God expects unwavering trust.

And you know what?

He is worthy of our trust, for he is our faithful covenant God.

Yes, yes, he is merciful to us when we're caught in the middle of the world and him.

And while we're in that place, he may also graciously send discipline to turn our eyes back to him.

And finally, Gideon's life reminds us that while Jesus will keep all of his own sheep safe until the end, he also calls us to be vigilant to the end.

So tear down those altars and trust God's word.

Deny yourself.

Take up your cross and follow the Son.

Lord Jesus, may we do just that.

Not by our own power, just as Gideon was not to do things in his own power, but because of your presence with us.

Thank you for the reminder that you have promised to never leave us nor forsake us.

And we asked then that you would cause our eyes to see the unseen.

And not just to see it, but to trust in it.

Now and to the end.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.