Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

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Some time back a speaker at one event or another said something I think makes a lot of sense.  I have written and spoken about this several times.  The speaker said that if we think we are capable of doing the task to which we feel that God is calling us, that is NOT the task to which God is calling us.  He expanded by telling us that God calls us to tasks and missions which will display His power.  So, God calls us to tasks and missions that we know we can only accomplish because of His power.  Today’s passage illustrates this idea.  Gideon had sent out a call to the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali to join him in going to war against the Midianites.  Thirty-two thousand men answered Gibeon’s call.  God told Gideon this was too many, if God gave them victory over Midian they might think they had accomplished out of their own might.  Gideon sent home everyone who was afraid.  These men were not cowards.  They were afraid, but they had answered the call anyway.  After doing this, Gideon still had ten thousand men in his army.  God told him that this was still too many.  So Gideon reduced the company even more until he had only three hundred men (actually, as I read this, Gideon had the men he did not select stay in a camp, and took only the 300 to go to battle).

Depending on how you read it, Gideon took on a camp of either 120,000 or 145,000 men with a force of 300.  Gideon had a clever plan, but no one would say that a force of 300 had defeated that many without divine intervention.  God calls us today in the same way.  Whatever battle He calls us to today, we will not be victorious because we are strong enough, or smart enough, or rich enough.  We will be victorious because God is with us.  That does not absolve us of making the best use of the strength, intelligence, wisdom, or whatever other resources God has given us.  We just need to remember that we will not accomplish God’s tasks without the power of God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

I debated on writing my initial thoughts about today’s passage because they are about the obvious lessons from this passage.  However, they are important lessons.  The first lesson relates to something I heard someone say when talking about a New Testament passage (I no longer remember either who said it, or what passage they were talking about), but it’s related to today’s passage.  The person said, “If you look at what you feel called by God to do and think, ‘I can do that.’  That isn’t what God is calling you to do.”  He went on to say that God calls us to tasks which we can only accomplish through the grace of God.  God calls us to tasks where we must give credit to Him.  When Gideon saw the army which had assembled in response to his call-to-arms, God told him that if he went into battle with that many men, the people of Israel would think they had won because of their prowess in battle and would not give credit to God for delivering them.

Now, I do not think that the quote I gave above is necessarily accurate…I think that sometimes God does call us to tasks about which we will say, “I can do that.”  In fact, I think to some degree He does so in ways which relate to the second lesson from today’s passage.  After God had reduced Gideon’s army to a mere 300 men, He gave Gideon a sign to reassure him that God would deliver the Midianites into his hands.  When we think about this, it is important to remember that Gideon had only summoned the Israelites to fight because God had given him a sign (actually, multiple signs) that He was calling him.  So, before going into battle, God gave Gideon a sign that God was going to use his plan to defeat the Midianites.  When God calls us, He will give us signs that we are doing His will, and that we are still on track.

As an example of this, almost 25 years ago when my fiancé, now wife, were planning our wedding we received such a sign.  For reasons, we had put our wedding planning on hold.  Then we resumed planning just a few months out and my wife had decided that she wanted a particular venue for our reception.  We spoke with the proprietor, who told us, “I am sorry.  I have no openings for the next two years, except for this specific date.  The couple that had reserved that date just cancelled yesterday.”  The specific date he had open, which had just opened up the day before we spoke to him, was the day which we had chosen for our wedding.  We locked in the date immediately.  As soon as we left, I told my now wife that this was God giving us a sign, that there would be times in our marriage when we would wonder if we had done the right thing in getting married.  God had him say that as a reminder to us that He had blessed our marriage.  If you have any question in your mind that you are doing God’s will, ask Him and He will provide you with a sign.  In this case we had not asked for a sign, just as in today’s passage Gideon had not asked for a sign, but God knew that we, like Gideon here, needed a sign.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 7-8.

When Israel’s enemies mustered their army to raid Israel once more, Gideon summoned the warriors of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali.  However, the army which answered Gideon’s summons was too large for God’s purpose.  So, God instructed Gideon to reduce his army, from 32,00 to 300.  Here is the important lesson we can take from the story of Gideon’s victory over the Midianites.  When God sends us on a mission, we can’t accomplish it on our own.  In fact, God wants us to go into it knowing that we will only succeed because of Him.  If we go into it thinking that we can pull it off with the resources we have gathered, we aren’t doing it right.  When we go into something to which God has called us, we have to know that we will only succeed because God ordained our victory.

There is a second lesson in this passage as well.  After his initial defeat of the oppressing army, Gideon summoned the warriors he had originally dismissed, plus the warriors of the tribe of Ephraim.  He asked the tribe of Ephraim to hold the crossing points of the Jordan so that the bulk of the enemy army could not escape.  They were successful, but resented that Gideon had not summoned them when he first gathered troops for battle.  However, Gideon did not give them attitude back.  Instead he praised their accomplishments.  He could have claimed credit for what they did, since, after all, what they accomplished was only possible because of what he had done first.  However, Gideon recognized that the glory was neither his, nor theirs, but rather the glory belonged to God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 7-8.

I want to write about Gideon’s faith.  A week or two back it was pointed out to me that our failure today to see signs and wonders similar to those written about in the New Testament is not because our faith is too small.  My initial response to that was to think, “Well yes, but…”  Then I read today’s passage.  To fully understand what the meaning it conveyed to me we need to take a look at something from yesterday’s passage which I did not write about yesterday.  In yesterday’s passage, God had called Gideon to lead the Israelites against the overwhelming force of the Midianites.  Gideon asked for God to give him a sign that he had been interpreted God’s leading correctly, and from that sign we get the expression of “asking for a fleece.”  Gideon got the answer for which he had asked.  In fact God gave him an answer twice.  Then, when the time came to attack, God told him to do so, but God also said, “If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp and listen.” That is a paraphrase and there was a bit more to it than that, but the account tells us that Gideon did go down and listen.  Now, why did Gideon go down and listen?  Because he was afraid.  Think about that.  Gideon had laid down a fleece at night, asking God for it to be wet from dew in the morning while the ground around it was dry.  In the morning, the ground was dry and Gideon squeezed a bowlful of water out of the fleece.  Then Gideon asked God to do the opposite the following night, and the morning after the fleece was dry while the ground around it was wet from dew.  Yet, when it came time to do as God commanded, Gideon was still afraid.  Here’s the important part, God didn’t leave Gideon hanging, He knew Gideon was afraid and provided him with a sign to strengthen his courage.

We see from this that God did not use Gideon to save the Israelites from the Midianites because of his great faith, because Gideon did not have great faith.  In the same way, we do not need great faith to accomplish God’s purpose, we just need to be willing to do what God tells us to do.  When we start doing what God tells us to do, He will provide us with evidence that we are doing the right thing.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 7-8.

We normally read this passage as representing Gideon’s first, and essentially only, battle against the Midianites.  However, when I read this passage where it talks about Gideon spying on the Midianite camp I realized that he had clearly already developed a reputation among the Midianites.  This lends even more significance to God’s instruction to Gideon that his army was too large.  Gideon clearly had won numerous smaller battles against the Midianites, such that he had a reputation among the Midianites.  We need to recognize that Gideon did not just defeat the Midianites in a few days, or even just a few months.  His campaign against them likely went on for several years before God gave him his great victory.  We need to remember that bringing about positive change does not happen overnight.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

The story of Gideon making an ephod from the gold earrings taken from the defeated Midianites has always bothered me.  Gideon made it right after defeating the Midianites.  He had unified the Israelites against the Midianites by calling for a rejection of idolatry.  Yet, here he is making an object which he should have been aware would become an object of worship.  And, sure enough, the writer tells us that the Israelites began to worship the ephod Gideon made.  Not only that the writer tells us that it became a trap for Gideon and his family.  We do not know if they worshiped the ephod, or merely took advantage of the desire of other Israelites to worship it.  In either case, it set the stage for what happened after Gideon died, both the turning back to worshiping Baal and the account in tomorrow’s passage.