Judges 7

Judges 7:1

THREE HUNDRED ALERT SOLDIERS ARE CHOSENNow Gideon goes out and looks at his army. He had thirty-two thousand men, and the thought in Gideon’s mind is that this is not enough. The Midianites were like grasshoppers on the hills. They were disorganized, but by sheer numbers they would have overcome the Israelites. Therefore, his men were too few, and I think Gideon was ready to blow the trumpet again. But God said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot give you the victory with thirty-two thousand men because you would boast and say that you did it in your own strength, power, and might.” No flesh is going to glory in God’s presence. That is the reason God has to use weak instruments today. This is the method. He continues to follow. He is going to cut down the number of the army.

Judges 7:3

Gideon had thirty-two thousand men and now he has lost twenty-two thousand of them! You may recall God’s condition, as put down in the Mosaic system in the Book of Deuteronomy that if anyone was drafted into the army and was afraid, he could go home. I have often wondered why Gideon did not go home. When he said, “All of you who are fearful and afraid,” he could have said, “Follow me, because I am going home, I am more afraid than anyone here.” He had to stay, however. God had commissioned him. Now Gideon has only ten thousand men, and that is enough to make anyone afraid. But God says, “Really, you still have too many men. You have to reduce this number. I cannot give you victory with this number of men in your army.” So Gideon and his men went through another test.

Judges 7:5

Do you know what we have here? It is one of the finest lessons concerning divine election and man’s free will. This is the way they work together. God said to Gideon, “I am going to choose the men that I want to go with you, but the way I will do it is to let them make the choice. Bring them down to the water, and the ones who lap water like a dog, just going through and throwing it into their mouths, are the ones I have chosen. You can put aside those men who get down on all fours and take their time drinking. I don’t want them.” Had we been there (ours is a great day for interviewing the man on the street), we could have had interviews with the men in Gideon’s army. For example, let us take the man that is down on all fours. We would go up to him and say, “Brother, why did you get down on all fours?” “Well,” he would reply, “I was just wondering why I didn’t go home with the other crowd. I have been thinking this thing over and I have a wife and family, and I just do not think I ought to be here. I feel like I should have gone home. I have no heart for this.” He made his choice, but God also made His choice.

That is divine election and human free will. You see, God elects, but He lets you be the one to make the choice. Then we go to the man that lapped water like a dog, and went to the other side of the stream. “Why did you lap water like that?” we ask him. He says, “Where are the Midianites?” “Wait just a minute,” we reply. “Why did you do that?” He replies, “Because I am with Gideon one hundred percent!” May I say to you that these three hundred men had a heart for battle. If you had said to any one of these three hundred men, “Say, did you know that God has elected you?” he would have replied, “I don’t know what you are talking about. The thing is that I want to go after these Midianites!” You can argue about divine election and free will all you want to, but it works. You cannot make it work out by arguing, but it sure works out in life, friend. Each one of the ten thousand men in Gideon’s army exercised his free will. God did not interfere with one of them as far as their free wills were concerned. Today God, through His Son Jesus Christ, offers you the free gift of salvation. It is a legitimate offer.

It is a sincere offer from God Himself. He says, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh_6:37). Now don’t tell me that you can argue about election right now. You cannot. You can come to God if you want to come. If you don’t come, I have news for youyou were not elected.

If you do come, I have good news for youyou were elected. That is the way God moves. Now these three hundred men often have been misunderstood. As a student, I went down to a little church in Georgia. When I got there, a dear little lady wearing a sunbonnet said to me, “Mr. McGee, we have here just a little Gideon’s band.” They didn’t have a Gideon’s band! They had the most discouraged, lazy folk I have ever seen in my life. That is not Gideon’s band. Gideon’s band was a group of dedicated men, willing to die to deliver Israel, men who had their hearts and souls in this matter. May I say to you that these men lapped up water like a dog because they were after the Midianites and not after water. They will drink after the battle is over. I once watched a football game, and then I listened to the interview of the quarterback of the Arkansas team. Even after the game, he was so excited and so emotional that he took no credit for himself. He gave his team the credit for winning. He said, “We were determined to win.” That is Gideon’s band, friend, and that is the thing that is needed today in the church, if you please.

Judges 7:10

ISRAEL’S VICTORY OVER MIDIANThis is Gideon’s final lesson before he goes into battle. He goes down to the edge of the camp and eavesdrops while two soldiers are talking. They frankly believe that God is going to deliver the Midianites into the hands of Gideon and his host. God permits Gideon to hear this conversation to encourage him just prior to the battle.

Judges 7:16

This is the record given of Gideon’s strategy. He divides his three hundred men into three groups. They are given three things: pitchers, lamps, and trumpets. The lamps were put inside the pitchers so that the light could not be seen, and they held them in one hand and their trumpets they held in the other hand. When they went into battle, their cry was to be, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” The interesting thing is that Gideon did not have a sword and neither did any of the three hundred men. You see they were under the rule of the Midianites, and the Midianites did not let them have an arsenal. They kept the weapons and the swords for themselves. So Gideon’s strategy employed pitchers, lamps, and trumpets. As we have said before, the Midianites and Amalekites were among the nomadic tribes of the desert. They had raided the land of Israel and seized their crops and supplies. They had a very loose organization. They moved as disorganized nomads through the desert and did not have an organized army. They had set a few guards about the camp but most of the people were asleep, here, there, and yonder. They did not expect to be attacked at night.

To begin with, it is difficult to see at night. So Gideon posted his three hundred men in three groups around the camp. At a certain time they blew their trumpets and broke the pitchers so that the light shone out. Each trumpet represented the fact that there were probably several hundred of the enemy present. Imagine the Midianites waking out of a sound sleep. The first thing they did was start whacking their swords in every direction.

The Israelites did not have swords. All they did was hold the light so the Midianites could go after each other. It was a regular riot! The Midianites soon fled over the hills into the tall timber and out of the area. This gave Gideon and the Israelites a tremendous victory. There are some wonderful spiritual lessons in this account. First of all, I would like to go back to this matter of the dew on the fleece. We need God today to do an interior decorating job on our lives. We need to ask Him for dew on our barren lives. In Hos_14:5 God says, “I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.” God speaks about this subject several times. “And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath” (Deu_33:13). “The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass” (Pro_19:12). “By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew” (Pro_3:20). Finally, in Psa_133:1-3, God says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” God has blessed in this way. We need that touchthat fresh touch. We need it like dew upon the rosebud and the grass in the morning. We need a tender touch. Hos_14:5 tells us that the lily is delicate. He, our Lord God, will come down upon us like rain upon the mown grass. Even when we are in trouble, and He has cut us down, He will come down upon us like rain. Our Lord could weep over Jerusalem, but do we weep today over sinners? The Publican could smite his breast and cry out about his sin, but what about us today? We need a touch from God that will make us strong and stable, grounded and settled. Oh that we could say with the psalmist, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise” (Psa_57:7). We need the dew of God upon our lives to bring purity into our lives. Peter tells us in 2Pe_3:14, “Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” This is what we need today. God uses only a clean cup. 1Pe_1:16 says, “Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.” God says this to us. “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2Co_7:1). What a wonderful picture and lesson we have here. Now let us look at another spiritual lesson concerning the pitchers. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels …” (2Co_4:7). Those pitchers represent the bodies of believers. That is what Paul means when he says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies [your total personalities] a living sacrifice …unto God …” (Rom_12:1). That is the reason we ought not to glory in any man. Paul says that. “Therefore let no man glory in men …” (1Co_3:21). That is the earthen vessel.

We have this treasure in earthen vesselspitchers. Some of us are not broken and, as a result, the light does not shine through. It is not our light that we should shine, but the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. His light should shine through us. It can only shine in a broken life. We are to shine as lights in the world.

Paul told the Philippians, “Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Php_2:14-15). Let’s look for a moment at the trumpets. 1Co_14:8 says, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” This speaks of the testimony and witness of believers. The testimony and witness of believers must be certain and clear.