Little but Fierce

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Judges chapter 7 tonight. Judges chapter 7. While you’re turning there, I wanted to show you this shirt.

Now I’m selling these on the. . .

No, not really. You’ve probably seen this shirt running past you at a quick speed down the hallways with Madeline inside of it. But I love this shirt of hers and I can’t remember who got it for, Charlotte or my mother, but you’ll notice it says, little but fierce.

And as soon as I saw it When they brought it home, I loved it because it fits her, not just size-wise, but the saying on it fits her. Little but fierce. You know, my daughter can play with makeup and play with, well, some of y’all saw the Belle dress from Beauty and the Beast that she wore here on Wednesday night when it was her birthday.

She can play with dresses and makeup and all that. But I tell you what, if I’m out getting dirty in the garden, she wants to be right there with me. She helped me harvest cayenne peppers yesterday and just had a great time.

last year when it was announced that we were going to get that the Choctaws were going to start sending hunting licenses out to the tribal members we started talking about well if we’re going to get a hunting license maybe we should think about going hunting she was the first one to say I want to go deer hunting with daddy and then a few months later I was talking about shooting deer and she got upset saying why would you shoot them I said well what do you think we were going to do when we go hunting and she was disappointed because somehow my daughter had in her mind the idea that when we go deer hunting we sneak up behind them in the forest and choke them to death with our bare hands that’s what she was looking forward to doing you want to talk about little but fierce that’s my girl little but fierce and when I saw this shirt again Charlie was doing laundry this week as I was working on this message for tonight I thought that is the perfect title for the message tonight, Little But Fierce, because it just fits with what we see with Gideon’s army.

And if you haven’t turned there already with me, turn to Judges chapter 7. We’re going to see how God made Gideon’s army to be little but fierce, and we’re just going to look at eight verses tonight, and it’s a story that many of you will be familiar with. But the point of it is that God does not require a mighty army to accomplish his purposes.

We’ve been talking about doing battle for the Lord and doing battle for his kingdom over the last several Sunday nights that we’ve been here. And this concept of being ready for battle, now again, I always want to preface it, we’re not jihadists here. When I say ready for battle, I’m not talking about going and taking a gun and doing battle.

What I’m talking about is doing battle against the principalities and powers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in our land, in our community, in our families, in our neighborhoods, wherever we find it. And the battle for the kingdom being standing up for the truth of God’s word, standing up for righteousness, and standing up for the gospel, because that’s what defeats the darkness is the light of Jesus Christ. And whether it’s in Gideon’s day doing actual physical battle against the Midianites, or whether it’s in our day spiritual warfare. God does not require, hear me on this, God does not require a huge army to accomplish his purposes.

And sometimes I know we get down and we get discouraged because, oh, we’re so few in number and we think God can’t use us or won’t use us. You know what? God could accomplish his purposes without us if he so chose to do so.

If he chose to do so. It’s a better way to say it. God could accomplish his work with or without us.

He doesn’t need us. He chooses to use So it doesn’t hinder God at all if he has three of us as opposed to 3,000 of us. God can accomplish what he wants to do.

And we’re going to see that in this story where it says chapter 7, verse 1, then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon or Jeroboam. I’ve never known. I’ve always thought it was Jeroboam.

And a pastor friend of mine growing up called it Jeruboam. So sometimes I slip into that. Although there’s no A or anything in between the two Bs.

So I think it’s Jeroboam, but if I say Jeruboam, that’s who I’m talking about. Then Jeroboam, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early and pitched beside the well of Herod, so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them by the hill of Morath in the valley. And if you’ll recall from two weeks ago when we talked about Gideon putting out the fleece, it was because he knew that God had called him to raise the defense of Israel And then you find out that the Midianites are in the Jezreel Valley, so they have basically launched their armies deep into Israelite territory, and they’re camping there in the middle of the thing.

It’s like if we were invaded by the Canadians, and they were occupying the whole I-35 corridor. They’ve basically split the country in half. So they’re in the middle of the country, and that’s when Gideon puts out the police.

Not to say, God, can you use me, or should I believe you? But I really think he was asking, is now the time? Is this the circumstance where you wanted to use me?

And so once Gideon or Jeroboam gets his confirmation from God, he takes his troops and they march up to the other side of the Jezreel Valley and they pitch their tents there. And verse 2, The Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands. Wait a minute.

God says, You’ve got too many for me to do this with. Does that mean God can’t use a big number? No, that’s not what he’s saying.

You read on in the verse, he says, These are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. He says, the problem is you’ve got such a big army that right now if you go in there and you whoop up on the Midianites, even if it’s completely because I gave you the victory, what’s going to happen is the Israelites are going to look around and say, Look at us. Look what we did.

Aren’t we just incredible? And nobody is going to stop and think to give God the credit for it. Now, the Israelites were still pretty weak at this point.

So even if they had gone in there with tens of thousands of men, it still would have been God giving the victory. And you know what? Even if Israel was incredibly strong and went in there with tens of thousands of men, they weren’t going to be victorious unless God decided that they were going to be victorious.

What was going to determine the outcome for them was whether or not God did battle for them. But God said, you’ve got so many people that if you go in there and you do this incredible thing, you’re going to say, look at how awesome we are. So God said, you’ve got too many people.

You’re going to take, your army is going to take all the credit. We can’t have that. He says, verse 3, Now therefore go to proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead.

And there returned of the people 20 and 2,000, and there remained 10,000. So if you do the math there, and you figure that 22,000 people went home, and there were 10,000 left, that means he starts out with an army of 32,000. That is not a huge army by modern standards, but not something I want to stand against, you know, all by myself still.

32,000 troops he’s got, God says you’ve got too many. He said, so I want you to tell the people, hey, if you’re afraid at all, If there’s any part of you that says, I don’t want to do this, I’m scared, tell them to go home. Which is generally frowned on in the army, right?

I’ve never been in the army, but I’m pretty sure that’s frowned on. Hey, if you’re scared, just go home. That’s not something that you’re told on a regular basis.

I think that goes against your training. But God said in this case, hey, if they’re scared, send them home. And you’d think these tough army guys would not have admitted to being scared even if they were.

But 22,000, more than half of the army, says, yeah, I’m going home. really more than two-thirds of the army. So Gideon’s left with 10,000 people, 10,000 men.

And the Lord said unto Gideon, verse 4, the people are yet too many. Now imagine you’re Gideon. You’re the commander of this army.

You’re about to do battle with the Midianites who have a pretty fierce reputation. And you’re thinking, maybe, just maybe, with our 32,000 people, with our 32,000 troops, maybe, just maybe, God is going to give us a victory here. Maybe we’re going to see something incredible.

And God comes to you and says, you’ve got too many, and by the time you’re done, you’ve lost over two-thirds of your army. You’re probably still thinking, well, we’ve still got 10,000. We can still do something with that.

And then God comes to you a second time and says, wait a minute, wait a minute, you’ve still got too many. God, what are you doing to me here? I’ve only got 10,000 troops to go up against the Midianites.

But God said, you’ve got too many. He says, here’s what he says in verse 4, bring them down into the water. and I will try them for thee there.

Take them to the water, and let’s do a little test. Let’s test them. And it shall be that of whom I say unto thee, this shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee. That seems pretty simple.

God says we’re going down there, I’m going to test them. The ones that are going to say take with you, take with you. And of whomsoever I say unto thee, this shall not go with thee, the same shall not go.

Pretty simple principle. I’m going TO test them. The ones I say take, take.

The ones I say don’t take, don’t take. Okay, pretty easy to remember. So he brought the people down into the water, and the Lord said unto Gideon, Everyone that lappeth of the water with his tongue as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou sit by himself.

Likewise, everyone that boweth down upon his knees to drink. So he says, you’re going to take the guys down to the water, and you’re going to have them get a drink. And then I want you to separate them by what they do there.

Ten thousand men down there to get a drink. And what happened, he said, the way you’re going to separate them, some of them are going to lap like a dog, which sounds like the bad thing to do, but it’s actually a good thing. They’re raising the water to their mouths.

Some of them, because keep in mind, Israel’s in the Middle East, right? They’re probably marching through desert territory to get there, probably going to be thirsty. I’m sure it was hot.

Some of these guys are going to be so excited to go down into the water, they’re just going to plunge their whole face in the water. They’re going to bow. It doesn’t say that.

It says they’re going to bow the knee. Some of the guys are going to bring the water up to them. Some of them are going to bring them down to the water.

And that’s how you separate them. Verse 6 says, And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, those who brought the water up to their face, were three hundred men. But all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.

So ninety-seven hundred of them, instead of bringing the water to their mouth, brought their mouth to the water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the 300 men that lapped will I save you and deliver the Midianites into thine hand. If I’m looking at the division, if I’m Gideon, I’m looking at the division, I’m saying, please, please, please pick the 9,700.

Please pick the 9,700. God doesn’t. God says, take the 300 who brought the water to their mouths.

And by the way, he doesn’t say, these guys are going to save you. He says, by these 300, I’m going to save you. By these 300, I am going to save you and deliver the Midianites into thy hand.

And let all the other people go every man unto his place. He said, send the other 9,700 home. God didn’t need the 9,700.

God didn’t need the 10,000. God didn’t need the 32,000. Can I let you in on a little secret?

God didn’t even need the 300. But he chose to use the 300 anyway. God said, send those 9,700 home.

And so the people took victuals. It’s a great old English word there. That doesn’t get used very much anymore.

I think really the only holdover is here in our southern English where occasionally we say vittles. That’s where that word comes from. Basically, they took provisions.

If you want to use fancier English. They took provisions or they took vittles in their hand and their trumpets. And he set all the rest of Israel, every man unto his tent, and retained those 300 men, and the host of Midian was beneath him in the valley.

And next week we’ll talk about the final battle, and we’ll talk about the victory that God gave them. That’ll be the last story that we’ll talk about with Gideon in this series. But right now I just want to talk about God taking these 32,000 men and paring them down to, I mean, barely enough to go out and do reconnaissance, 300 soldiers against the Midianites.

God, as I said at the beginning of this, God didn’t need a big army. God didn’t need any army, but God certainly didn’t need a big army. Now God took this little army, and because He was working through them, He made them fierce.

So God used them. And with God working through them, the 300 were more powerful than the 32,000 would have been without God working through them. If God had needed, first of all, if God had needed the 32,000, I’d be questioning whether it was really the God of the Bible.

But God didn’t need the 32,000. That’s why he says in verse 2, you’ve got too many people. You’re going to have to send some of them.

You’re going to have to send some of them back. Because God knew what was going to happen. The same thing happens every time.

God does all the work and we like to take the credit for it. If we can conceivably take the credit at all. But what we see here is God working in a way that he demonstrates to us that God uses small things to show his power.

I mean, even the fact that God called Gideon to be the leader of this army, that God called Gideon to raise the defense of Israel, shows us that God uses small things to demonstrate his power. I’m sure that there were guys with actual military experience. I’m sure there were talented warriors in Israel still somewhere who could have raised the defense of Israel.

I mean, I’m sure Israel had a Braveheart somewhere, or a Rambo type somewhere. No, God calls the guy who’s threshing wheat in a wine press and says, wait a minute, I’m from this tribe and within this tribe, my family’s the least important and I’m the smallest one in my family. God says, yeah, you’re the one I want to use.

See, God uses small things to show his power. Even an untrained farmer like Gideon can be a fierce warrior in God’s hands. And I hope that you’ll take this to heart because I know sometimes we get discouraged by our numbers here and think, well, we’ve just got a handful of people.

Can God do anything here? Can God use us? Are we really asking if God is able to do something?

Because I’m here to tell you, God can do anything that’s consistent with his nature. I heard growing up so many times, God can do anything. It’s not entirely true.

So I want to be very clear about what I’m saying. Because God can’t lie. God can’t sin.

God can’t do anything illogical because I believe God is where logic comes from. God’s not going to make a four-sided triangle. That’s impossible.

And that’s outside God’s nature because logic comes from the order that God has put in everything. So anything that’s consistent with God’s nature, He can do. Can God bring revival to this church?

Absolutely. Absolutely He can. Anytime He chooses to.

We may just not have done the things that He wants us to do before He’s willing to do that. Can God use us to reach Seminole? Absolutely He can.

Can God use you to reach your neighbor, your friends, your family members? If you’ve written down some names on your prayer list or somewhere of people that you’re praying for, As we’ve talked about praying for 15 minutes a day, at least, for lost people by name, that they would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and that God would use us to help bring them there. Can God use you to reach those people?

Absolutely, God can. Those things are consistent with his nature. Those things are consistent with his will.

This afternoon, we stood out on Highway 99 and we prayed and we held signs, praying for God to end the slaughter of the unborn in this country. We didn’t have a huge number of people out there. I was just glad I wasn’t out there by myself.

That kind of thing is very uncomfortable for me, but I’ve been trying to make myself do uncomfortable things. We probably had a dozen, and I’ve been told that some years they’ve had as many as 60 out there. But you know what?

God doesn’t need the dozen of us to change people’s hearts. He chooses to use his people when we’re humble and when we’re willing to pray. But we had to remind ourselves, God doesn’t need the big army.

God can do what God wants to do with whoever he chooses to use and whoever’s willing to be used. And you know what? There are churches of all kinds of sizes that are facing the same issues that we face.

I know we look and say, well, you know, we’ll run 30, maybe 40 on a good Sunday morning. And, you know, this particular Sunday morning, half our people are gone. There’s 20 of us.

Oh, you know, woe is us. And I know we think, man, if we had 200 people, we would feel like we had it made. There are churches in our town that if they had 200 show up on a Sunday morning, they would think, what’s wrong with us?

What happened? Where did everybody go? We’ve got to quit worrying about the numbers and just worry about being faithful to what God’s called us to do.

I’m not saying that we don’t want to grow. What I’m telling you and what this whole series has been about is not giving in to defeatism and thinking that God can’t use us anymore because we’re only this many. Or God can’t use me because I’m too old.

Or God can’t use me because I’m sick. Or God can’t use me because of what I’ve done in my past. If this series of messages has taught you anything, if you take one thing away from it, I hope that you’ll realize that God uses sometimes the most unlikely people and that God can use anybody He chooses to and anybody He calls to. And guess what?

When He called you, when you became a Christian, and when He called you to enlist in His army, He gave you something to do. And that means He chose you to do it. Everybody in here, I feel pretty confident in saying this.

Everybody in here, there’s something that God has called you to do right now. There’s something that God has enlisted you for in His kingdom right now. You may be doing it.

You may be still saying, no, God, not me. God has called you for that because God will equip you to do it. He could have chosen anybody in the world to do what He’s called you to do, but He called you to do it because He wants to use you.

God could have called anybody to raise the defense of Israel. He called Gideon. God could have used any number.

God could have used the 10,000. God could have just snapped his fingers, but he chose to use the 300. So a few things for us to take from this tonight, and then we’ll be finished.

Number one, God uses the willing. And we’ve talked about that already in this series. You may feel like I’m repeating myself because I am, but some things need to be repeated until we get it, until we understand it.

God uses the willing. Why is that so important? Because sometimes when we’re not being used, it’s because we’re not willing.

Why do I not see God at work in my life? Why do I feel distant from God? Why is this not happening?

Are you willing to be used by God? See, I’ve fallen into that trap, and a lot of people I know have fallen into that trap. I just feel like God’s not really working in my life.

What was the last thing God told you to do, and did you say yes to it? Were you willing? I think sometimes God stands back and says, okay, we’re just going to wait until you’re willing.

no not always sometimes God says fine I’ll find somebody else but I really do believe sometimes God says okay we’re going to wait until you’re willing we’ll wait until you’re being obedient so what I would ask you tonight is what is what is the last thing that you know for sure God put on your heart that he wanted you to do and if you don’t know that tonight think about it until you until you can remember maybe it was 20 years ago and that’s why you don’t remember think back to the last thing that you know God told you to do and then ask if you’ve done it when you do that, he’ll probably give you the next marching order. See, contrary to what I want, God doesn’t tell me 15 steps ahead where I’m supposed to go. I wish he would.

I want to know the end of it. I’m the kind of person who will go and read the plot of the movie before I watch it and see if I even want to watch it. I want to know what’s going to happen to see if I’m even going to like it.

It doesn’t ruin the movie for me. I want to know the ending. Most of y’all, that’s crazy.

My wife thinks that’s crazy. That’s just, if I’m going to invest two hours in a story, I don’t want to look at the end of it and say, well, that’s two hours of my life. I’ll never get back again.

Okay. I want to make sure I’m going to enjoy it. I want to know 15 steps down the road and how the story ends.

God doesn’t work that way. And if I want to know the next thing God wants me to do, I need to do the last thing he told me to do. I need to be willing.

God used the willing because he said in verse three, go and tell the people if they’re afraid, if they don’t want to do this, go home. 22,000 went home. You know what was the common thread among the 10,000 who stayed?

They were willing. Seriously, no consequences, no shame, no judgment, no court-martial, no nothing. Go home if you don’t want to do this.

Those 10,000 stayed. They were willing. God was looking, first and foremost, for people who were willing.

Second of all, God uses the alert. God uses the alert. You can’t do battle if you’re so oblivious you don’t even realize there is a battle, right?

I think I’d be a really bad soldier, and I might want to rethink hunting for the same reason, too, that I can be kind of oblivious to what’s going on around me. I think I’d be standing, I know they don’t fight wars this way so much anymore. A lot of it’s push of the button and all that.

But I’m afraid, you know, I could see myself, if I had been on the Western Front in World War I, everybody’s in the foxholes and everything’s quiet, I could see myself, the fighting breaks out, and I’m so oblivious I don’t even realize it. There are people fighting hand to hand, and I’m saying, hey, what are y’all doing? What’s going on?

That’s just me. And that’s how we are a lot of times spiritually. God’s called us to do spiritual warfare.

God has called us to battle against the powers of darkness in this world. And a lot of Christians are standing around saying, hey, what’s going on here? Because we’re not paying attention to the battle that God’s called us to enlist in.

And when he took those men down to the water, there were 9,700 men who were so focused on getting a drink that they weren’t watching for the enemy. There were 9,700 men who were so focused on meeting that immediate need, that immediate craving that they felt right then and there, that they forgot their whole purpose for being there was to whoop up on the Midianites. And God said, I think God’s purpose here was saying, I’m not looking for 10,000 men to jump into this battle who forget there’s a battle going on.

Give me 300 who are paying attention. If you want to be used by God, pay attention. It’s so hard to do.

We get on autopilot and we do our little life. I do all my Sunday things, and then I go to bed. I get up on Monday.

I take the kids to school. I do my Monday things. I pick the kids up from school, eat dinner, do stuff around the house, go to bed, get up, take the kids to school, do my Tuesdays.

And I forget about what’s, until sometimes God just kind of smacks me awake. He says there’s a whole spiritual battle going on here that you’ve got to remember and get into. It’s not just about your little world.

God doesn’t use the biggest and the best equipped. God uses the alert. Are you paying attention?

Are you focused on the battle? Are you focused on what he gave you to do? Or are you just focused on your little world?

And finally tonight, God uses the insignificant. And I feel like I’ve really hit on this point during this series too. God uses the insignificant.

There’s a passage in, I believe it’s 1 Corinthians. Paul writes it. where he talks about using fools.

God uses the simple things of this world to confound the wise. God uses the weak to confound the strong. That’s the way it always has been.

God uses the outnumbered. God uses the underdog. Do you know why he does that?

Because God deserves the glory. And when the underdog wins, nobody says, well, yeah, we knew how strong he was. We knew how talented he was.

Everybody says, well, how did that happen? I don’t know enough about sports to give you a sports metaphor if I don’t research it well first. So I’ll tell you about the world I do know. I know about politics.

And everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency last year. I thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. I did my little map of the electoral college and thought she was walking away close to 400 electoral votes.

Boy, was I wrong. By the way, don’t be mad at me. I didn’t say that’s what I wanted to happen.

I just said that’s what I thought was going to happen. My goodness. if she’d won, everybody would say, well, she was prepared, she was the next one to be, you know, she was the logical choice.

Instead, Donald Trump won, and everybody said, what happened? They’re still saying, what happened? 1948, everybody thought Thomas Dewey was going to win in a walk for president.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Harry Truman, but I love that picture of him grinning ear to ear holding the cover of the Chicago Tribune that says Dewey defeats Truman after he mopped the floor with Dewey. And everybody said, because he was the underdog going into that election. Everybody said, how did that happen?

See, when the one you expect to win, wins. When the big guy wins, everybody says, oh, I knew that. Look at it.

I mean, he’s the best. It only makes sense when the underdog wins. Everybody says, what happened? And the only possible answer for so many of these Bible stories where the underdog wins is because God did battle for him.

And a lot of times in my life, I feel like the underdog. You may be in that same boat. I would imagine most of you are in that same boat at some point.

You feel like the underdog in some aspect of your life, or maybe most of them. And when you accomplish something great for the kingdom, the question is, well, how did that happen? When God uses Billy Graham, and I’m not putting Billy Graham down, but when God uses Billy Graham to reach thousands for Christ, I mean, he’s kind of got that reputation.

So if Billy Graham comes to town and revival breaks out, everybody says, oh, Billy Graham came to town. If we start reaching half of our community for Christ, everybody looks and says, wait a minute, Chuck’s involved in that? Jared did what?

And Don? I’m not putting you all down. I’m just saying, we’re not Billy Graham, unless there’s something I don’t know.

God likes to use the underdogs. And by the way, I’m thankful for Billy Graham’s ministry and the people he’s led to Christ over the years. I was in the choir and one of the counselors at his crusade in 2003 in Oklahoma City.

I’m just using him as an example, but he’s somebody prominent. Most of us are not. Most of us are never going to be on TV or have our names in the paper or be on the best dressed list or the Forbes, I can’t even remember.

Whenever they make their list of whoever makes the most money, it’s usually Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, we’re never going to be on those lists. That doesn’t mean God can’t use us. God habitually, often, regularly, as a habit, chooses to use the underdog.

That’s why God sent those men back to their tents and said, I’m going to use the 300. No betting man in his right mind would have bet on 300 people, 300 Israelites against the whole Midianite army, but they would have been wrong. Because God alone is a majority.

And God can use the underdog to do incredible things, not for our glory, but for his. And that’s what he deserves. And that’s what we’re here for.

That’s what the battle is for, to grow the kingdom for the glory of God.

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