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Gideon and the
Men Down By the River from
Doug Perry - June 1,
2007
I've heard a bunch
of sermons on this one little element of the Gideon story and I've
never been satisfied with any of them. The Lord has been talking to
me about Gideon for almost three solid years now, so I've spent a lot
of time dissecting the whole story. For whatever it's worth, I
thought I'd give you my take on this story and you can decide if it
makes more sense to you than some of the other interpretations you
heard. I guess when we get to heaven we can just ask Gideon
about it. I'm sure he was the first one in line to ask God what
He was thinking with this crazy scheme!
Anyway, the
passage is found in Judges 6:2-8. (Amplified)
2 The Lord said to
Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the
Midianites into their hands, lest Israel boast about themselves
against Me, saying, My own hand has delivered me. 3 So now proclaim
in the ears of the men, saying, Whoever is fearful and trembling, let
him turn back and depart from Mount Gilead. And 22,000 of the men
returned, but 10,000 remained. 4 And the Lord said to Gideon,
The men are still too many; bring them down to the water, and I will
test them for you there. And he of whom I say to you, This man shall
go with you, shall go with you; and he of whom I say to you, This man
shall not go with you, shall not go. 5 So he brought the men
down to the water, and the Lord said to Gideon, Everyone who laps up
the water with his tongue as a dog laps it, you shall set by himself,
likewise everyone who bows down on his knees to drink. 6 And
the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth,
was 300 men, but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their
knees to drink water. 7 And the Lord said to Gideon, With the
300 men who lapped I will deliver you, and give the Midianites into
your hand. Let all the others return every man to his home. 8
So the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands, and
he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his home and retained
those 300 men. And the host of Midian was below him in the valley.
Now, I've heard
two different sermons on this. The most common one goes like this;
“The Lord sorted the men out based on their watchfulness. That
is, that the ones that knelt and stuck their faces in the water were
not ready for an attack. They were prone and defenseless. This was
proof that they were not good warriors. But the ones that drank
from their hand kept one hand on their sword and their eyes on the
horizon scanning for threats. They were watchful and ready. These
were the best warriors and so should you be.”
The only other
variant I've ever heard was this rare one. (I'll let you judge the
quality of scholarship and logic here.) It goes like this;
“The Lord tested them based on their pride. The ones that knelt
over the water liked looking at their own reflection. This was
evidence of their pride and unsuitability for God's purposes. God
wanted the ones that were humble and willing to drink from their
hand, not the ones that like to look in the mirror.”
OK, personally I
think that second one is just goofy. For one thing, you can't have
calm enough water to see yourself in when 10,000 people are trying to
get a drink at the same time. And I think both of them make God
out to be kind of weak. In both cases, it seems that God doesn't know
who the best warriors are until He can see their behavior. And it
can't be a duplicatable test that is designed to teach Gideon
something, because the Lord never explains the point of the test or
what it's designed to measure! So it's simply a sorting method
and it has to be an opportunity for self-selection, not a chance to
show God how good a warrior or how humble you are – He already
knows that. And to imply that God needed the best, most watchful
swordsmen there, is to imply that God needed ANY of them there to win
this victory!
I think this was
something else entirely. By way of illustration, I need to tell you a
story. This is the event that happened to me that helped me to
finally “get” what God did with Gideon and his posse.
In the Fall of
2006 I was at a pretty large conference in Kansas City where Roland
and Heidi Baker from Mozambique were speaking. I wouldn't normally go
there, but the Lord had made it clear I was to go (and it was
free). During the second evening of the conference, there was a
young lady singing. There were about 500-800 people there, I guess.
(I'm not sure how many were in the balcony.) At a particular
point in her song, she said something like “who will stand up
for Jesus?”. Well, everyone in the place is seated
and she is alone singing up front. But the Lord said to me,
“Will you stand up?” “Now, Lord?” “Yes,
right now.” “But nobody else is standing and the people
behind me won't be able to see.” “Are you more afraid of Me
- or of what they will think?” So I popped up! The
whole dialogue took about 15 seconds.
So I stand up and
I'm the lone person in the audience standing. Then, pop, pop, pop
– other people start standing. It wasn't like I started a wave
or anything. I looked around and the second person up was a dear
brother and freak warrior that I'd spent a lot of time with and I
KNOW hears God. I didn't recognize any of the others, but they looked
fierce (in the spirit). All together, I think there were about
eight or so out of 500-800 that stood up (not counting the balcony).
We all stood there for a couple of minutes, then fairly spontaneously
all sat down. I heard the Lord tell me that was enough, thank me, and
tell me to sit down. I assume they did to. They certainly weren't
standing in support of ME or anything! We were all pretty
absorbed in worship and not paying much attention. I doubt if any of
them noticed at all. They just stood because something in them said
to stand – or they hear God really good and knew to obey.
Whether it was a gentle nudge or a conversation voice, I don't know.
When I sat down, I
asked the Lord, “What that was all about?” He said,
“It was a hearing and obedience test.” I said,
“So you told all those people to stand up?” “No,”
He said, “I told EVERYONE here to stand up – those were the
only ones that heard Me well enough or were willing to obey.”
OUCH!!
So ONE PERCENT may be the best we can expect. That may be all
we've got that hear God really well and are really crazy enough to do
something embarrassing in public. (And that wasn't really much of a
personal risk. Certainly not like the Chinese Christians sneaking
across the border to go preach the Gospel in Iran!)
Anyway, I know
that God uses the foolish things to confound the wise. I know that
God didn't want Israel to claim that they had won this battle in
their own power. I don't think that God was interested in selecting
the best, most watchful, most attentive warriors who always kept
their hands on their swords. If I know anything about the people God
uses, the 300 that made the cut were probably geeks and weirdos and
rebels and people that would generally be dismissed by society. THAT
is who God uses so that HE can get the most glory.
Here's what I
think happened, and I think the facts that follow will bear me out.
Everybody that was scared went home. That left 10,000 that weren't
scared, but may not have been fully prepared for this kind of battle.
So God sent them all down to the water and whispered quietly to ALL
of them, “Drink out of your hand.”
Those that heard
Him and obeyed, He kept. Those that couldn't hear Him for whatever
reason or wouldn't obey, He sent home. One percent that hear
the voice of God and obey all the time is about right (300 of
32,000). Sadly, that's pretty typical of my experience with the
“church”. How about you?
You need to
understand that, at that point, even Gideon doesn't know the plan.
The Lord isn't telling ANYBODY the plan until the very last minute.
And when God does tell Gideon the plan, he has to go back and tell
his army, “OK, guys. Here's the plan. We're all going to take a
trumpet in one hand and a torch with a jar over it in the other hand
– never mind your swords. We're going to split up into three
groups of a hundred and surround 135,000 soldiers. When I give you
the signal, break the jar, wave the torch, blow the trumpet and
shout, 'Victory for God and for Gideon!' as loud as you can. Then
they're all going to kill each other. Oh, and we're going to do this
RIGHT NOW.”
Evidently there
were only 300 Israelites that heard God well enough to go along with
something so completely nutty! But none of them defected. None
of them panicked and ran from the battle. Why? Because these were the
ones that were close enough to God to say, “OH, C'MON!! Lord,
please tell me this is You! That's the craziest thing I ever
heard!!” And their ears were cleaned out enough to hear,
“Yep. It's Me. It's all good. Go get 'em.”
Now they may not
have heard God's voice conversationally. It might have just been a
peace in their heart, but these HAD to be people that trusted God all
the way and He knew they would obey. So I think that, down there by
the river, He gave the whole 10,000 a chance to hear and obey and
share in the reward, but only a remnant were either willing to obey
or had done the necessary work of personal repentance beforehand to
be in a place where they could hear Him. When the Bridegroom
came, some didn't have their lamps full. In fact, 99% didn't!
If this was going
to give God the most glory, these were probably the strangest bunch
of misfits you'll ever want to see. And they lived the rest of
their lives enjoying the physical rewards of the booty from that
battle, the social rewards of being one of Gideon's mighty men and
the spiritual rewards of being obedient and used by God in a crazy
way. The nation lived at peace with God for forty years –
it's likely that these 300 lived at peace the most.
God didn't sort
out the army to find the warriors that could help Him out the most!
God could have killed the enemy without any help at all (like He did
in II Kings 7 and elsewhere). I believe God was looking for
those obedient ones that were willing to risk it all so He could let
them share in the spoils of His victory. These were the ones
that got to see up close and personal how really mighty our God is.
In Judges 6:8-10,
God had sent a prophet to Israel to preach repentance. If I believe
that these 300 were the remnant that had heard and repented. Their
ears were clear to hear the voice of the Lord, because they had put
away the Baals and the Asherahs from their hearts. These were a
shadow of the remnant in Ezekiel 9 that escapes the death angel.
These 300 were
indestructible. NONE were lost. (8:4) Not a single one. They fought
and destroyed 135,000 - and didn't lose a man. Why? Because God takes
extra special care of freaks like these! Besides, they weren't
there to help God win the war, they were there to be blessed by
watching God do His thing! They were there to share in the booty.
They were there
because they had their lamps full when the Bridegroom came, so they
got to go in and party with Him!
At least that's
what I think.
Doug Perry FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
This
site is meant to be just
a plain, direct reporting of how miserably, horribly, devastatingly
badly we
- the
Christians in
the West - have
mismanaged the massive gifts which God has entrusted to
us. Maybe we can change
directions if we try something different. Maybe if we started
listening to God really well and obeying radically, no matter what
the cost. Yeah, that might work.
Although
we're perfectly capable of it - we're
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