|
About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 7 Gideon
Defeats The Midianites (ch. 7:1 - 25) Note
in verse 1 we have another name for Gideon as we saw in chapter 6, verse
32. Jerub-Baal means
"Ball fighter". In
the last chapter you might say that Gideon tested God with his fleeces.
In this chapter you might say that God tested Gideon.
He started out with 32,000 men to fight the Midianites.
God said that was way too many.
The Lord wanted fewer men to prove to Gideon and to The
Lord provided two ways for Gideon to reduce the men in his army.
The first one is seen in verse 3.
Just send the fearful men home.
Twenty two thousand out of the thirty two thousand went home.
I'd say that Gideon was now feeling the test.
We should know that these Israelis weren't finely trained
soldiers. They were
herdsmen, so you know many would be fearful of their very lives. In
verse 4 we see that God told Gideon that there are still too many men.
Gideon must have really been sweating now.
He's already lost two thirds of his men and now he'll lose more.
From verse 4 through verse 8 we see what took place.
Gideon took all of his men down to a stream to drink water.
There were basically two groups of men that were determined by
how they drank the water. Three
hundred men lapped the water like a dog would.
The text states that the rest got down on their knees to drink.
The text does not give any more details than that.
Many Bible teachers try to fill in the details to distinguish the
difference and then determine the reason why God chose the three hundred
men. I'm not convinced we
can do that, because in my mind, it is speculation.
Whatever
the case, God chose the smaller of the two groups, and, this might well
have been the reason. The
way in which the men drank the water might not have been the determining
factor. The determining
factor might well have been the numbers in each group.
We know from the text that all along the Lord wanted Gideon's
army to be smaller. So, this
seems to be a plausible explanation
to me. Verse
8 tells us that the camp of the Midianites was in the valley below.
Most scholars understand this to be the I
remind you again of the Biblical principle that is stated in verse 9.
The Lord commanded Gideon to take his army and fight the battle
and that He would win the battle for him.
We see this all the way through the Bible.
The principle is clearly stated in the last verse of the gospel
of Mark. Mark says that the
Lord went with the disciples confirming what they said with miraculous
signs. Men did the manual
labour while the Lord supplied the spiritual ability. The
same is true today. We
cannot sit back and wait for the Lord to do it all and we cannot go out
in our own strength without the Lord.
It's a combination of both. We
work with the Lord and He works with us.
In
verse 10 God says to Gideon, "if you are afraid …"
I suggest that Gideon was afraid and the Lord obviously knew it
so He had a plan. In verses
10 and 11 God tells Gideon to take a man named Purah, sneak down to the
Midianites camp and listen to what you hear because he would certainly
be encouraged by what he heard. It
is clear that what Gideon was about to hear was the doing of the Lord. Note
in verse 12 how many Midianites there were.
The text says that there were "more than the sand of the
seashore". This phrase
is interesting because we see this phrase as how it relates to God's
promise to Verses
13 through 15 tells us what Gideon heard.
Two men were talking. These
were probably guards. One
man told the other of his dream of a round barley loaf coming down from
the sky, hitting his tent, and causing it to collapse.
The other men took this to be a dream directly from God stating
that Israel
would attack and win the battle. We
should realize that in the beginning, Gideon had a 32,000 man army
getting ready to attack, which the Midianites would have known about.
They did not know that the army was reduced to 300 men. For this
reason, these men would have been fearful. It
is clear that God gave the enemy of Whether
you think this dream was from God or not, Gideon sure thought it was
from God. He heard the
dream, and, it says, "he heard the interpretation", and, then
he worshipped God. Gideon
believed the interpretation to be true and he worshipped God for what he
heard, thus giving him the courage to do what he was called by God to
do. From
verse 17 to the end of this chapter we see the battle.
Three hundred men, divided into three camps, waited until the
middle of the night to attack when most were sleeping.
Each had a trumpet and a jar with a flame under it.
When Gideon gave the word, they all smashed their jars and blew
their trumpets and shouted. The
camp was terrified and confused. Many
fought against each other. Many
headed east while the tribe of Ephraim joined in the battle.
Two of the leaders were killed and their heads were brought back
to Gideon. The
simple lesson to be learned here is when we as God's people obey Him, He
will fight our battles along side of us, and in one way or another, we
will win. Note
the fact that the heads of two leaders were brought back to Gideon.
As we have seen over and over again in Old Testament times, these
uncultured peoples had no restraints when it comes to war.
They're pretty vicious and very savage.
|