God Wins the Battle

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Judges chapter 7 tonight. Judges chapter 7. And over the last four Sunday nights that we’ve been here, I’ve been talking to you about the life of Gideon.

And we, well, the life of Gideon, as far as we know it from the scriptures, there’s a lot more that we don’t know. But how Gideon was called by God, even though he was really a nobody, and God said Israel is defenseless, Israel is beaten down, Israel’s enemies are determined to destroy her, and yet I want you, Gideon, to be the one to raise the defense of Israel. I want you to be the one to lead the battle.

There were people in Israel with military training, and God chooses the guy who’s threshing wheat down in a wine press. So he’s a farmer and not even a very good one. Well, no, I’m teasing.

He was threshing the wheat down in the wine press so the Midianites wouldn’t find him and take what little food he had for his family. So this man who sees himself as so unimportant, he’s from a tribe of lesser importance. His family is the least important, he says, in his tribe, and he’s the smallest in his family.

God calls this man anyway and says, hey, I still want you. And Gideon did like we all do, I think, from time to time. And we start to recite a list to God of all the reasons why we’re the wrong choice.

Isn’t it interesting that we try to tell God that he made the wrong choice, like we know so much more than God? So Gideon did like most of us do at various times, and he starts reciting all the reasons why God should pick somebody else, and God says, no, I choose you. And we saw how Gideon verified what God wanted him to do.

Gideon tried to make sure that he was at the very center of God’s will, not because it was the safest place, but because it was the place where he was going to be able to accomplish the mission. And we saw how God looked at Gideon and his army. This nobody with no military training managed to raise an army of 32,000 people.

That’s pretty impressive. To go up against the Midianites, they were probably still outmanned. They were probably still the underdogs in that fight, but they had a fairly good shot, better than they would with 300, at least by human math.

And God looks at that army and says, no, no, no, you’re too strong. Well, I’ve never in my life heard anybody say, no, your army is too strong. Is that a problem we have here?

Oh, no, our army is too strong. You know, we want to be threatened by more countries. We don’t say that.

We want our army to be the strongest it can be. God has a different perspective on things. And we saw last week how God winnowed this army down from 32,000 men to 300.

And he took the ones who were willing and he took the ones who were alert. The ones who were willing to stay in the fight. And I think that’s what God looks for is willingness.

And he looks for those who are alert. Those who are tuned in to the fact there is a battle going on. And so after these tests, he leaves Gideon with 300 men to go and do battle against the Midianites.

And the way I’ve always pictured this battle scene is, you know, they go down there, they’re prepared for battle, even though they know that there are just 300 of us against the entire Midianite army that has just bisected our country. And they go down there prepared for battle. As many times as I have read this, there was something I didn’t pick up on until last week.

I was listening to Brother Chuck at the back door. And he said, trumpet’s not a very good weapon. And I thought, my goodness.

How many times have I read that and I didn’t realize God sent them into battle unarmed? No, they didn’t have any ARs. It says that you get into verse 8 and it says they got their vittles and their trumpets and they went off to war.

Right? Was it Napoleon who said an army marches on its stomach? but only taking food and your trumpet, that seems to be taking it a little to an extreme.

Not to mention, if you’re faced with an overwhelming force, you kind of want the element of surprise. You don’t normally send in a mariachi band ahead of time. They took their vittles and their trumpets, and they went down to battle, because God told them to.

Now, that’s crazy. I mean, from a human standpoint, that’s crazy. But it’s not that crazy if you trust God.

It’s not that crazy if you trust God and you believe that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. And if we look at God’s track record of fulfilling his promises, we can easily trust him. And I challenge you even to look at the times in your life and think about the promises of his word and see whether he’s come through for you or not.

I know a lot of people who choose not to believe in God. They don’t because, well, God didn’t come through for me in this or that. You know, my marriage fell apart.

My family member died of cancer, all these things. And those are legitimate hurts. Those are legitimate reasons to feel hurt.

And they’d be legitimate reasons to feel hurt even if I didn’t grant that, even if I didn’t agree to that. People have every right to feel hurt over those things. But there’s no promise in God’s word that bad things are never going to happen to us.

God didn’t break his promises to us just because bad things happen. But God has promises all throughout his word. and you look at the times that he’s promised something to somebody like Gideon, a specific promise to a specific person, and you’ll see that he’s faithful to keep his word.

You look at the general promises that apply to us today. And by the way, not every scripture, not every promise in scripture applies to us today. Sometimes he was speaking to Israel.

And I hear all the time, well, I’m not going to go into that tonight. But we have to be careful about what promises we claim. But when God gave a promise that’s for us, You look, and you look at your own life, and I believe you’ll see the track record of God’s faithfulness.

And as Israelites, they could look back and they could see how God had brought them through so much. God brought them out of Egypt. God took them to Egypt in the first place to save them from famine in Jacob’s day, in Joseph’s day.

Then in Moses’ day, he brought them out of slavery in Egypt, led by Moses, who was an exiled cattle farmer. shepherd, not cattle. He was taking care of sheep.

I knew the word coming out of my mouth was not the word I meant in my head. He was a shepherd. He was an exiled shepherd, and God used him to deliver this.

God separated the Red Sea, parted the Red Sea for them to cross over. God provided them water. God provided them manna.

God provided their needs for 40 years, and then God dried up the Jordan River so that they could cross over it into the promised land where he defeated Jericho. The walls of Jericho came down and all they had to do was walk around it and shout and blow the trumpets. So sometimes I guess a trumpet is a pretty good weapon if you’re trusting in God to do what God says he’ll do and what only God could do.

So the men that were with Gideon had to know this track record that God has. So it wasn’t completely crazy for them to march into battle with just their trumpets and their food supplies. But verse 9 says, and it came to pass the same night that the Lord said unto him, Arise, get thee down unto the host, for I have delivered it into thine hand.

So he tells Gideon, get up. It’s in the middle of the night. He says, get up and go down to the Midianite camp.

And by the way, he uses the word host. Get thee down unto the host. A host means a huge number, bunch of them. And so he was told to go and challenge this innumerable horde of Midianites. Go now.

Take your few little men and go down there in the middle of the night, and it’s time to challenge them. And you know what? God knows what we need even before we can raise the objection.

Because I know human nature because I am a human, and I’m pretty sure the next thing out of my mouth would be something to the effect of God, I’m afraid. Before Gideon can even raise the objection, God said, but if thou fear to go down, if you’re afraid to go down there, go thou with Pharaoh thy servant down to the host. Take your servant, you both go down there. I’m not sure what the purpose is of taking the servant unless Gideon gets down there and says, did I hear that right?

Did I really hear what I just thought I heard? He’s got somebody there to verify it. Y’all go down there, he says, and in verse 11, and thou shalt hear what they say.

And afterwards shall thine hands be strengthened to go down unto the host. Then he went down with Fura his servant into the outside of the armed men that were in the host. So he and his servant, Fura, they go down to the camp in the middle of the night. They stand just on the very outside of the Midianite camp. I’m sure they’ve got their campfires going and their tents down there.

And they’re sort of off back in the shadows, close enough that they can hear, but not so close that they can be seen. And it says in verse 12, and the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along the valley like grasshoppers for multitude. You’ve seen those times in Oklahoma, those summers where they’re grasshoppers, you can’t walk around outside without them flying up everywhere because they’re just all over the place.

Well, this is the picture. When you walk and thousands of grasshoppers just take off from the field, that’s the picture he wants us to see and understand. The Amalekites and the Midianites were down there and they were just so numerous.

They were like these grasshoppers, and their camels were without number, and as the sand of the seaside for multitude. So he gives us a couple of pictures here. They were like the sand, it was like trying to count sand, trying to count these men.

And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow. And he said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came into a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. Now, I’ve not been able to find the answer of what the significance is of the barley cake.

In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, y’all study it out for yourselves, because I haven’t been able to find a clear answer. Barley was considered to be worth less than wheat, and a lot of times it was thought of as animal food, animal feed. And that’s probably what the Israelites were reduced to living off of, because you recall that the Midianites had taken all of their wheat, all of their grain.

And so they say in this dream, this cake of barley bread, this loaf of barley bread, tumbles down into the midst of the Midianite army, and it runs into a tent, and it knocks the tent down so that the tent lay along. So he’s telling his, one Midianite soldier’s telling another his dream, this loaf of barley bread comes tumbling through into one of our tents, and knocks the tent down. That’s a pretty weird dream.

But another one has the interpretation. Verse 14, and his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel, for into his hand hath God delivered Midian and all the host. He said this is a symbol of Gideon and the sword of Gideon because his God has delivered all of the host of the Midianites into his hands. Imagine being Gideon and being scared and going down there and hearing this.

He’s already scared because God said go down there if you’re scared. God knew he was scared. He goes down there and he looks and he sees that they are just like grasshoppers.

Now we’ve heard this before when Moses sent the 12 spies into Canaan. And not to say, can we take the land? God had already told them it was theirs.

But to say, check out the land and see what it’s like. And they came back and they said, the Canaanites are numerous. They’re like grasshoppers.

We can’t take the land. And what that did was scared the Israelites to where they refused to obey God and go into the land that he had given them. So the last time they’ve come up against an army that was like grasshoppers, they turned and ran in disobedience.

But this time they didn’t. And it’s because Gideon was faithful enough to stand there and see what happened next. As God put this dream into the heart of one Midianite and this interpretation into the mouth of another one, to say amongst themselves where Gideon could hear, we are going to lose to the Israelites.

You can’t tell me that’s coincidence. God orchestrated that because God knew exactly what Gideon needed to hear to get him, that final nudge to get Gideon to do what he was supposed to do. And it was so, verse 15, and it was so when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and the interpretation thereof that he worshipped and returned unto the host of Israel and said, Arise, for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.

Gideon’s all excited, and he gets up and he goes back to his camp, and he says, Get up and go, because God has already delivered them into our hands. In other words, God has already won the battle. And verse 16, he divided the 300 men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in every man’s hand with empty pitchers and lamps within the pitchers.

So they take basically a torch of some kind, and they take something to cover the torch, and they take their trumpets, and they go marching out in these three companies. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise. And behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that as I do, so shall ye do.

So he says, you march out, we’re going to go in three groups, we’re going to surround them, and you do what I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of the camp, and say the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. So Gideon and the hundred men that were with him came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch.

So it’s the very middle of the night. And they had but newly set the watch. It’s also an interesting time to attack.

you’d think. I mean, just from human logic, you’d think you would attack toward the end of the shift where the guys are tired, where they’re not going to be as alert. But God told them to go and attack at the beginning of the shift.

And they had but newly set the watch and they blew the trumpets. So Gideon starts to blow his trumpet and they all join in and they break the pictures that were in their hands. So they break these coverings that are over these torches.

And as soon as they do, the torches light up the sky. Think about this. It’s in the middle of the night.

I don’t know how alert you are in the middle of the night, but I am not. Charlie will be screaming and crying. I will not hear it.

It takes me forever to go to sleep, but my goodness, a tornado could not wake me up once I am asleep. And Charlie will wake me up at 2 o’clock in the morning. She’ll have to grab me and shake me a little bit and say, can you get me the baby?

And I sort of open my eyes. Who are you and what baby is this that we’re talking about? Okay, I’m just not.

if you ever call me in the middle of the night for an emergency it’s fine but don’t be surprised if I ask who are you if I ask brother Ken who it’ll take me a minute I’m not the most alert and at that time of night these Midianite soldiers many of them are asleep they’re soundly asleep they’re dreaming their sweet little dreams of the conquest of Israel and the next thing that happens they are surrounded by these people blowing trumpets and suddenly light is everywhere they’re going to fly out of their beds, confused, disoriented, kind of like me, not knowing where I am, or half the time I don’t even remember taking her the baby the next morning. They’re going to wake up not knowing who they are, where they are, what’s going on, and there’s going to be panic broken out, as they think they are surrounded by thousands and thousands and thousands.

And the three companies, verse 20, blew the trumpets and break the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands, to blow with and they cried the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. So they’re surrounded by blowing trumpets and screaming men and torches being waved in the air. It’s chaos.

Their peace in the middle of the night has just been broken in chaos. They don’t have time to realize that there are only 300 men around them. They don’t have time to realize that they’ve outnumbered the people that surround them that they could easily just annihilate Gideon’s whole force because there’s confusion.

Now, this is what we would call a Hail Mary. Not the prayer, but like the football play. It’s a last-ditch effort when nothing else will work.

I mean, from a human standpoint, let me clarify that. This would be a Hail Mary. This would be one of those things that somebody, if they were having a strategy meeting, would talk to Gideon and say, really, this is a long shot.

This is not really going to work. You cannot go down there with 300 men and no weapons and think that this is going to work. But you know what?

If God says that’s the way to do it, that’s the only way that’s going to work. There’s no such thing as a long shot with God. So they cried the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

And verse 21 says, And they stood every man in his place round about the camp, and all the host ran and cried and fled. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host. And the host fled to Beth Shittah in Zerarath. I practiced these earlier in the week, but it’s been a while.

In Zerarath and to the border of Abel-Mehoah and to Tabith. And the men of Israel gathered themselves together out of Naphtali and out of Asher and out of all Manasseh and pursued after the Midianites. After this, the Midianites are relatively quiet for some time.

Because what happened here when they were obedient to God, this miraculous thing happened that is so incredibly unlikely otherwise, that they stand out there unarmed and they blow their trumpets and they shout and they wave their torches and the Midianites wake up, these elite Midianite soldiers, wake up so startled and so confused that they begin to flee in all directions and they begin to attack each other. Have you ever seen anybody who’s just come out of a fight or a battle of some kind, and their adrenaline’s pumping, and reason isn’t necessarily in control, but it’s that fight or flight response? And unless you’ve been highly trained, like I know they train our guys in our military, it’s hard to tell what is a threat and what’s not.

And these guys are in a fight or flight situation. The adrenaline’s pumping. Anything around them looks like a threat.

And so they’re just attacking indiscriminately. thinking they’re being overrun. God didn’t need Gideon’s forces to slaughter the Midianites.

They did it themselves. And those that weren’t slaughtered ran. And suddenly, as they’re fleeing back through the Israelite lands that they came from, or that they came through, suddenly now the Israelite tribes are emboldened.

And it reminds me of the story of the Redcoats fleeing back from Lexington and Concord in their bright red suits, uniforms, at least I didn’t call them costumes, in their bright red uniforms, and the townspeople just sitting on them all, and they had to fight their way back to Boston. Well, same thing here. Suddenly, the Israelites, the villagers, some of the guys probably who were sent home already, are emboldened to join the fight, and these guys had to fight their way back to Midian.

And these people who had slaughtered the Israelites, who had starved the Israelites, who had done everything that they could to drive the Israelites to extinction. As I said, they were very quiet for a long time after this, because God dealt them a devastating blow, and he didn’t need a single sword to do it. God didn’t need a massive army.

God didn’t need shock and awe kind of firepower. In this case, God used their own confusion. And the lesson for us in this story is this, that God can win battles with or without our help.

And God always does win, ultimately. I know some people would look at the world and say, you’re telling me God’s winning? God will win in the end.

I was reading a Christian book on philosophy that made my head hurt this week. I had to read it. One statement out of it that I did understand, though, said this is not necessarily the best possible world, talking about all the evil and all the things that go on in the world.

We can’t say that this is the best possible world, but we could easily say this is the best possible way to get to the best possible world. That God is working all of our circumstances to bring the world to where it needs to be. And yes, it looks like a chaotic mess now, but God’s going to bring it all together.

He’s going to weave it all together in the end to be just exactly what it needs to be. And yes, God ultimately does win. And this whole series has been about joining the battle, being ready for battle.

God called Gideon to a fight. And God calls each of us to a fight as well. It’s not the same thing.

God is not. I’m not your Holy Spirit, but I can’t imagine that he’s telling you to get your sword or get your gun and go shed some blood in his name. That would be, I’ll say, foreign to the New Testament understanding of things.

But he’s called us to battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and darkness, spiritual wickedness and high places. Folks, the battle that we’re in is a spiritual one. And we fight the battle by standing for right when wrong is so much easier and more popular.

We join that battle by fighting for the souls of others around us. That we look at people and we, folks, honestly do battle with the forces of darkness. We pray that God will intervene, that the Holy Spirit will move in their hearts, draw them closer to Jesus Christ. and we do everything that we can to lead as many people as we possibly can to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ while there’s still time.

This is entirely a spiritual battle, and too many Christians have set out of it, either because they’re not willing, they don’t want to be inconvenienced, they don’t realize there’s a battle going on, or in some cases we’re just afraid we’re going to lose. God, I don’t feel like you can use me. I don’t feel like I could possibly win this battle.

There’s no way on paper Gideon could win this battle. There’s no way. When you look at it from a human standpoint, there’s no way.

But God doesn’t see things the way we do, and he doesn’t do things the way we do. And there’ll be times that he’s called you to join the battle, and you look at it and say, God, there’s no way I could possibly accomplish what you set me there to do. There’s no way I could do this.

There’s no way I could win this battle. Well, maybe not on your own. Maybe not by your own strategy or by your own power.

Maybe not with human math and strategy, but God can do anything. God’s already won the battle. And he didn’t need swords.

He didn’t need archers. He didn’t. .

. Think about this. He sent them into battle outmanned.

We look at verse 16. He sent them into battle outmanned. We don’t know how many Midianites there were, but there were a whole lot more than 300.

And he sent them in outmanned. A lot of times we feel outmanned in our society, don’t we? I know we live in a country that claims to be somewhere around 70% to 85% Christian, depending on what numbers you look at.

There’s no way that’s true. At least not by a biblical definition of Christian. There’s no way that’s true.

When you start looking at people who claim to be born again, understand what that means, self-identify that way, the numbers in America are closer to 30. We’re outnumbered. That’s okay.

I wish everybody in America would be saved and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. but my point in saying it’s okay just because we’re outnumbered doesn’t mean that God is powerless doesn’t mean that we can’t step forward and do the things that God’s called us to do and he sent them in not only outmanned but he sent them in outgunned I know they didn’t have guns then but outsorted is not a word in English outgunned is however a word he sent them in without weapons or better said he sent them in without human weapons see they had the sword of the Lord and of Gideon God’s power was the only weapon they needed. And you know what? God doesn’t rely on the human weapons and the human strategy and the human resources to win the battle any more than he did in Gideon’s day.

And so what if we don’t have, and I’m not speaking of literal weapons here necessarily, but so what if we don’t have the weapons that we think we ought to have? Who cares if we don’t have the resources that we think we need? Who cares if we don’t think our strategy is better?

God doesn’t need those things anyway. He sent them in there outgunned. But God is never outgunned.

God’s power wasn’t weakened. It wasn’t lessened by them not having any weapons. I was going to say all God needed was them, but he didn’t even need them.

All God chose to use was them, and all he needed was his own power. Here’s the bottom line. God sent the Israelites there for one reason.

God sent them to stand there and watch him deliver them. That was it. So he told, when he was narrowing down the troops from 32,000 to 300, he told Gideon that the whole purpose for that was that if they went in as this big strong force and did what big strong forces do and whipped up on the enemy, that they would say, look at how strong we are, look at what we did.

And everybody around them would say, look at how strong the Israelites are, look at what they did. And they would not give God the credit that he deserved. But 300 win without weapons, you can’t explain that apart from God.

And there’s nobody that deserves credit for that other than God. And he doesn’t say it here, but in the text I can hear echoes of what he said to Moses when he parted the Red Sea. Stand here, wait, and see the Lord’s salvation.

Just stand there. Just stand there and be obedient and be available and watch God do what only he can do. And folks, we are faced with overwhelming darkness in our world today.

That’s not a political statement. That’s not a gripe or a complaint about what anybody’s doing in the culture. That’s just the fact of what the Bible says, that men’s hearts are blinded to the truth, that the gospel is hidden from those who perish.

We are surrounded. We are surrounded by people who were created in God’s image like us and who just like us are fallen short of God’s grace, fallen into sin, and who don’t realize or won’t realize that that sin is real, that that sin incurs the judgment of God and that God is absolutely right to judge sin and also don’t or won’t realize that God has given a Savior. Folks, it’s a spiritual battle rather than a physical one, but we are literally in a fight for the eternal destinies and the eternal souls of the people around us.

It’s not just about making the culture act more Christian. Honestly, I don’t care that much about making the culture act more Christian because if you do that without changing people’s hearts, if you do that without introducing people to Jesus Christ, all you end up with is a bunch of well-behaved people in hell. The fight we are in is a fight for the eternal souls of those around us, for those who are still in darkness as we’ve been.

And God’s called us to join the battle. And there’s all sorts of reasons why we could say, well, God, I can’t, or you don’t want to use me, or we can’t win this battle. All the things that we’ve talked about over these five weeks, that when we get right down to it, God has already won the battle.

God can win the battle with or without us, but God chooses to use you. Don’t ever tell God. Don’t ever tell God he made a mistake in choosing you.

God doesn’t make mistakes. Anybody in here think God can ever mess up? I know you don’t.

I know you know that’s not true. So don’t ever think God made a mistake by calling you to join the battle. Don’t ever think God made a mistake by calling you to serve him.

If God could use Gideon and 300 men unarmed to subdue the Midianites and free Israel, He can use you to do anything He calls you to do. God’s got a place for you in the battle, in the battle that He’s already won. And He calls each of us to step up and join the fight, grab our trumpet, and sound out His message and grab a torch and shine His light right where He’s told us to.

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