Clough Judges Lesson 8

Judges 6

In our treatment of this particular unit of Judges, Gideon, we’re going to do a little change up in the approach in that we will try to make this a self-contained unit even though it’s actually part of three. There are three chapters here, chapters 6, 7 and 8 in the so-called Gideon cycle. But since we can only cover one chapter at a time and are doing well to do that we have to somehow unitize that area. So the things that draw this chapter together that we’re using tonight is seven principles and these seven principles have to do with accomplishing God’s will in your life, and these seven principles you’ll notice in this incident with Gideon. So these form kind of a succession but even though the seven principles are just in chapter 6 keep in mind that chapter 6 is intimately tied in with chapters 7 and 8. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 form the Gideon complex.

Each judge has his section, and you recall as we move to this section the historical background of this period. The judges reigned from the time period ranging from the latter days of Joshua in the late 1300s all the say down to the time of Samuel, around 1100 BC; actually it amounts to 200-300 years. And during the period of the judges you had a situation that looks like this at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. You had Israel colonized strongly in the highlands; the colonies of the Jews were also up in here. All around them were hostile forces; historically speaking we’re looking at a time that would be analogous in modern times to the Dark Ages. Civilization had been destroyed; Egypt was not at the height of her power at all. In fact, if some of the revisions of the chronology suggested by Immanuel Velikovsky are true Egypt was completely prostrate at this time. In the northeastern area you had the Assyrians, at their very initial stages; you had the Babylonians up in that area in a very weak state. But all around Israel you had darkness. To the north you had the complex from which came Cushan-rishathaim, the king who came down into the northern area that Othniel beat off? From the east you had another group of people; all these peoples, however, around were connected in that they were in cahoots. And the people that united all of these were the Amalekites.

The Amalekites would be analogous in our Christian experience to the sin nature. The Amalekites are the source of trouble for Israel and the sin nature is the source of trouble for the believer today. The Amalekites had as their objective to dominate the land, if we are to believe Judges 5 and the Song of Deborah, the Amalekites had one of their great citadels at Ephraim. And so the Amalekites were not too happy at being bumped out of their stronghold. So if we combine this with many of the Arab legends we find that the Amalekites were very fierce people. They were known for their cruelty; places that have been found where the Amalekites have lived you find the skeletons dismember and so their fortresses, evidently, were torture chambers. And they were known for this, they were also known for a tactic which you observe in Judges 6 to conquer their enemies. They would line up their cattle and stampede them across the farms just at the time of harvest; they’d wait until harvest and all the crops were up and then they’d move in in mass, thousands and thousands and this is the way they conquered; they drove the animals ahead of them, just cutting down everything before them and it was a very horrible thing because obviously you didn’t have ways of storing food in that day so if your food supply was destroyed you starved that winter. This was the situation that was faced in the ancient world from these Amalekites, a very fierce and a very aggressive type of people. They were able to bring a dark age all over this geographical area and history only records one people that managed to break out to freedom and that was, in certain times, the Jews, under the leadership of the judges.

We have seen Othniel; in Judges 3:10 he had to fight an invasion from the northeast under the king of Mesopotamia or the king of Arimea, his name is Cushan-rishathaim, that we traced back to an Arabic background. In Judges 3:13 Ehud, the second judge, he had to battle with Ammon and Moab and they were in cahoots with the Amalekites. You remember the humorous incident in the bathroom there, and that was one of those cases where the book of Judges shows you all the gory details. Then we went to Deborah, we showed how she managed to rally the forces to another thing that came down from the north, from a place called Hazor, and the Canaanites enclave here commanded by a general by the name of Sisera. By the way, after she got through the psalm of chapter 5 the end result of this historically is that the Canaanites never did manage to exert a very powerful influence over Israel again, so this was quite a stunning blow to the whole Canaanite force.

Tonight we’re going to see the beginning of a series of chapters dealing with the fourth judge in this series, Gideon. And as we do we want to look ahead a little bit to see what this man accomplished. This man accomplished one of the most fantastic things in the history of the nation of Israel and yet he was a man who, quite obvious from this narrative, had very little faith. To see the extent of his destruction of Midian; now Midian is Amalek, these are the two forces that are in combination, are coming across from the east. They’re driving their cattle before them and causing a great deal of suffering and misery. In fact, we’re going to see how the Midianites and the Amalekites not only drive their animals westward but they also are able to control all the way over to the coast, because Gaza is a city on the sea coast and the Bible says that they drove all the way this far west. So it shows you how far these people were able to dominate, very powerful people. And yet when Gideon got through he made such a mess out of not only their forces that moved with these herds into the land, but he chased them all the way up to their citadel in Syria or Arimea and wiped 150,000 out. We’re going to see how, with special help from the Lord, how 300 men were able to destroy thousands and thousands and thousands of men, again showing the supernatural work of God.

But the effect of Gideon’s leadership was so fantastic that this incident in Judges 6-8 was used as a proverb for the rest of the history of the nation. I want to go to Psalm 83 and you’ll see where this is used as an example of annihilation. Gideon and the Midianites became the synonym for mass destruction, and while these people, the Midianites and the Amalekites were a very fierce people, a very tough people, yet they met their equal and they met their superior in the Lord working through Gideon. Psalm 83:9-12, the psalmist is praying and petitioning God to destroy the enemies and I want you to notice this is a legitimate prayer. In our day we don’t pray against people as in the Psalm but we do and should if we’re not be praying in this language with this fierce combative spirit against the evil spiritual powers that reign in our world. We live in Satan’s land and we have the right and the command from our God to make this kind of a prayer. So if this prayer seems to offend you because it seems a little too bloody and gutty, just remember that we too are in a spiritual battle and we too are authorized to pray this kind of a prayer.

In Psalm 83:9 the prayer request is made, “Do unto our enemies as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the book of Kishon, [10] Who perished at En-dor; they became as dung for the earth. [11] Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna,” and all of the princes listed in verse 11 are people that were killed by Gideon, they were Midianite princes. So seeing this then you see how the psalmist, the later psalmist would look back to the incident we are about to study and say that this such a fantastic slaughter that from this point it will be used as a synonym for absolute destruction: do unto them as Gideon did to the Midianites.

The second place this occurred is in Isaiah 9:4; once again we see the Midianite destruction at the hands of Gideon used as a synonym for destruction. Speaking here of the oppressors of the nation, Isaiah says, “For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.” In other words, again the day of Midian was known in the rest of the Jewish history as looking back to the time when there was an astounding, absolutely astounding defeat for the enemies of God.

In Isaiah 10:24-26, “Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of hosts, O my people that dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrians; he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. [25] For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction. [26] And the LORD of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb; and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt.” So again Midian becomes the synonym for great destruction. So obviously you are about to see a most interesting happening in the history of the nation.

But in Judges 6 we’re not yet into that battle, we’re in the preparation stage and in Judges 6 you see a very humorous and yet a very poignant illustration of how God prepares the believer and how He prepares the believer to do His work. In Judges 6:1, “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD,” now remember I have told you in reading these cycles in the book of Judges to keep your eye on the proportion of Bible verses, for example, Judges 6:1a deals with the first cycle, apostasy. Remember we always have these three things. Judges 6:1b-6 deal with chastening. So here you have chastening, that’s the second area of this cycle. And then in Judges 6:7 all the way to chapter 8 you have the deliverance and again we have the fact that God is emphasizing grace in the book of Judges. Over and over again the emphasis is not on the sin that got the believer in trouble, the emphasis is on the grace that got him back out of trouble. And this is God’s viewpoint of the Christian life; He doesn’t make a big bone out of somebody’s fall and somebody’s transgressions. Christians do that but God doesn’t. Now Christians are great ones for weeping over past incidents, spilled milk, worrying about their sins and how awful they are and how they goofed and how they messed up the plan of God and perpetuating a misery out of the past. And yet God never does this; he’s more interested in what He himself does, if you pardon the expression, than He is with what you’re doing. So here again we see God’s viewpoint and how He emphasizes grace and deliverance.

In Judges 6:1 this is a summary, we’re not even told what the evil is though we can guess from later incidents in this chapter, a religious evil as usual. “And the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years.” Keep that seven in mind; it’s going to come up again in this chapter. So this is a time that will be analogous in our Christian experience to a believer under discipline; it would be analogous to the fact that here, if this circle represents the will of God for us, when we are doing His will we are in fellowship with Him. When we’re out of fellowship we are not doing His will. In fellowship we have a certainty; out of fellowship we have a doubt. In fellowship we have peace; out of fellowship we don’t. So we have one of these two positions at any given moment. And if we stay out of fellowship then God is going to start His disciplining process. This is why we always want to make sure we confess our sins because 1 Corinthians 11 says if we don’t, He’ll take care of it and usually it induces a lot of suffering, unnecessary suffering in our lives as believers. So because we’re God’s children it means we have to take care of our dirty linen in the way of 1 John 1:9. But when we do not confess our sins then God will put us under discipline and chastening. This is the case here, for seven years the nation has been under discipline.

Judges 6:2, “And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel,” and this would mean perpetual defeat and misery, and some of that misery is now spilled out in the rest of verse 2. “…and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds.” In other words, again the Jews did what they did earlier in the days of the Canaanite invasion under Deborah and Barak, and that is that they left the flatlands, they left the lowlands, all their farms, and ran to the hills and stayed there. Many of them were starving in these hills. Verse 2 says that they [can’t understand word] these dens; Josephus says it took them three years to figure out what was going on because for three consecutive years the Midianites and the Amalekites would come in just at harvest time and wipe out their crops. So they had crop failure induced by military pressure for three straight years. And Josephus says finally after three years they abandoned their farms and began to move everybody, children, men, women, all the way up into these hills to protect them from these roving bands of Midianites.

The Midianites had a new weapon that is introduced in this chapter that is never before recorded in history and that is the use of the camel on long range military works. Now the camel was used for sheer traveling but this is the first time in history the camel was actually used in sort of a cavalry operation, the reason for it being, of course, that this enabled the Midianites to travel fast and far over the desert terrain just east of the Jordan. This gave them high mobility, whereas the horse could not do this and going across these areas by foot would be impossible. So they hit upon the idea of using the camel and we’re going to see later on this caused great suffering at the hands of Israel because they didn’t have them, they couldn’t use them, and the camels could do something that Sisera’s chariots couldn’t do. Notice the introduction of these weapons as you go on here. Each enemy of the Lord has his own weapon or his own tool. The Canaanites introduced the chariot; the Midianites introduced the camel.

Notice too that the tendency is throughout Scripture to see the believer as technologically behind. This is very interesting and it has a parallel even in some cases today. The believers are almost looked upon as the uncivilized, and I think this roots back to an ancient principle in Scripture, a principle that has come to my attention more and more as I worked on these pamphlets on Abraham and his background, and the days out of which he came, and that is that the Bible’s argument over and over is that civilization, or the rise in technological development of a man is always paralleled by a decrease in his spirituality. You see this at the tower of Babel. It is the people that develop technologically that are the ones that are the weakest spiritually. You see this in Genesis 4 where, when the cities formed, where is Lamech? He’s singing his song of vengeance in the city because he’s there. So throughout Scripture you find this. For example, in Sumer and Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia you have a tremendous development and yet religiously these people are further away from the truth than the Pygmy. One of the most advanced peoples on earth from the standpoint of God’s Word is the Pygmy. And yet from the cultural anthropological point of view the Pygmy probably has one of the lowest cultural forms known to man. Yet religiously the Pygmy is a monotheist, he worships one God, he realizes that his sins must be atoned for by blood. And so the Pygmy is a very far advanced person. So the further and the more primitive they are the further they are away from, apparently, all forms of civilization the more modern or more correct is their theology.

The argument is of course is that civilization destroys the primeval tradition; the primeval tradition given through the three sons of Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth. And as these men spread abroad their traditions were preserved except in those areas where civilization developed. Now why this is true may be due to the fact that cities reflect the works of man. A person that lives in a concrete jungle 24 hours a day is surrounded by the works of man, he doesn’t get out to see the works of God and it tends to eat away and affect the way he thinks. So urbanization in Scripture is often associated with theological deterioration; it’s a very interesting correlation. And here you notice at least technologically the men who come into Israel, that give Israel the great pressure, that are sent by God as a chastening rod against the nation are always the people with the superior weapons, they are always the people with the more advanced position. So I think that has a few things to say to our own generation today.

Judges 6:3, “And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them,” now verse 3 is a parenthesis. We know this because of the way the verb tenses are. It would rather be translated “and so it always was, when Israel had sown the Midianites would come up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they would come up against them.” It’s a repetitive idea, that this is a principle, that this would just be their normal state, their normal strategy.

Then Judges 6:4 goes back and repeats what verse 2 is doing, “And they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza,” now look at that, a fantastic extant, they completely wiped out the whole southern area. Remember last week we dealt with Deborah and Barak in the north. Here it’s evident, although they do attack the north because the northern tribes come in, they must sweep around, break through the mountains, go all the way to the coast and come back down the coast to the area of the Philistines. So these people did a tremendous work of destruction; you couldn’t get anything more comprehensive, they just completely wiped out all farm production, it was just at a standstill. And since you have an agrarian economy you can understand there was intense depression, there was absolutely no production in the society and it was a very, very suffering type of situation. [4b, “and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.”

Judges 6:5, “For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it.” You see, there were just hordes of them, and they were very polite, they never did this until harvest, they stayed out and they waited until the Jews had farmed and gotten all the crops up to maturity and then they’d try it. So they weren’t around bothering them all year, just at one critical time they’d drop by for a visit. This was the way they were able to subjugate their enemies and gradually destroy them. And obviously verse 6 is an excellent summary, “And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD,” analogous to the believer who finally realizes that it’s God who is spanking him and he finds out that his misery is his own and that he is suffering, not because some Satanist has a bone to pick against him but because he’s out of fellowship and God is just laying the rod to him. So that’s verse 6, now verse 7 begins their deliverance.

Judges 6:7, “And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD because of the Midianites, [8] That the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them,” and he’s going to give a message, we don’t know who this man is. Verse 8 is an unnamed man, he’s an anonymous teacher of the Word of God; he is never identified and nowhere do you find his name because the issue is not the man, the issue is the message that he has. So from verses 8-10 he is going to give them a message. Now right here we have a very important principle for Christians and that is that though they were suffering, I want you to notice what God does. He gives them a framework in which they can see their suffering; He does not permit believers to deduce things from experience; He gives them the Word of God and the Word of God is the source of the deduction, not experience. You don’t deduce things from your experience; your experience is illuminated and measured always by the Word of God.

Now this would prevent, if this principle were applied widely today, it would prevent this kind of silly, ridiculous things that are going on. We have all sorts of people speaking in tongues and so on, but the latest one I just heard really takes the cake. We’ve got a group of people going around the state of Texas that are getting together in homes and they pray for each other’s legs. Of course you know when you’re born one leg is shorter than the other, so they have this big hocus pocus you go through and they lay their hands on somebody’s leg and the leg starts to grow to the same length the other one is. And people have been eyewitnesses that see this thing goes on and obviously it’s a supernatural thing, but can’t you just see the Holy Spirit in this day of critical issues adding an eighth of an inch to someone’s leg. This is ridiculous and yet we have believers falling for this in several well-known cities of Texas. This stuff goes on and it’s all ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous and yet this is looked upon as a great pouring out of the Spirit of God. Here again we have believers, many of them good honest believers, but what are the doing? They’re building their theology from their experience.

Here you notice the principle, God first, before He does anything is draw the believer’s attention back to the Word. The reason why this prophet is sent in verses 8-10 is simply…he doesn’t even add any new revelation, verses 8-10 are simply a repetition of what they already knew, so it’s just drawing the believer in the middle of his suffering and the middle of his sorrow and despair over his problem in life, over his carnality, the Holy Spirit sends a man such that the believer’s attention is focused away from his problems over to the Word, always the Word. And the Word of God then becomes the yardstick and the measure and so now he’s going to tell them.

Judges 6:8b, “Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; [9] And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drove them out from before you, and gave you their land,” now in verse 9 the word “oppressors” is a very interesting word. Actually in the Hebrew this word “oppress” means to squeeze. It’s a word which means to put someone under tremendous pressure and this is a participle so we translate it “the squeezers,” the people who are squeezing you, that’s the word, it’s beautiful, the idea that you pick something up and you just squish it right in your hand. And this is the picture of the believer being squished and the ones that are oppressing are the satanic forces that are unleashed by God toward His children to put the pressure on in discipline and chastening, and so they’re being squeezed. And God says I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and the squeezers.

In Judges 6:10 there’s a cohortative in the original language which makes this a lot stronger than it is here translated, it goes along and narrates what God said, and then it comes to verse 10 and I’d rather translate it this way, “I delivered you, I did all this for you, I did this, I did that and so on, now I resolve to make one thing clear to you,” and that would be the force of this verb in verse 10, “I resolve to make one thing clear to you, that I am the LORD your God,” that’s the one thing that I wanted to make clear, God is saying, “fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice.”

Now for us who are the gods of the Amorites? For the believer today the gods of the Amorites are any kind of… well first of all, in whose land are they dwelling? They’re dwelling in the Amorite’s land. What’s in that land? Religious practices and habits, and this would be analogous to –R learned behavior patterns, that is patterns of behavior and response that you’ve picked up from non-Christian days, days of carnality and these become ingrained in you so these have to be weeded out. Another thing would be human viewpoint because the doctrines of demons are what must be accepted before you can worship them. You have to buy their ideas first, before you can worship them. So one of the things that would be analogous to us would be false doctrine. In other words by believers, and it’s possible for believers, it’s very obvious here that these people were being soaked up by the false religions doctrine of the Amorites and so God is saying look, I don’t want you to fear them.

Now the word “fear” doesn’t mean to be afraid of in the normal sense of the word, it has a religious connotation; I don’t want you to respect them is what it means, you respect Me, I’m your God, don’t you respect somebody else. There’s an intense jealousy here and the parallel would again be in Romans 6 where when God delivers us as believers He delivers us from the oppression of the sin nature and the flesh. This is all a past tense, an accomplished fact, and so we can say with verses 8, 9 and 10 that God, at the point of salvation God has delivered us, potentially He has delivered us. Just like the nation Israel, wasn’t the nation Israel totally delivered from the bondage of Egypt? Yes. Were they potentially delivered from all the power of the Canaanites? Yes. What did they have to do to enjoy moment by moment their position? They had to follow the directions of the Word. They had to submit moment by moment, be filled with Spirit, walk by the Spirit, these were the methods that were used to enjoy the possessions each moment, each day.

Now what God is claiming in verse 8-10 is that the reason why you’re not enjoying it is not because I didn’t provide it, I did provide it, I provided it completely for you, and I made sure, verse 10, that I told you that I am the Lord your God, that you must be obedient to Me, that you must submit to My word, you must trust Me in other words, trust My provisions for you instead of trusting other things, for you can imagine in an agrarian economy how easy it was for these people to get off the track. Do you realize what the real issue here is with the false gods? We’ll get into it more deeply as we move through Judges and into Samuel because Baalism begins to develop. But one of the interesting things that comes out of all of this is lack of trust in the promise of God to provide agricultural prosperity. That was basically the issue; it wasn’t some…initially it was not a theological problem in the sense of a developed system, let’s invent our own religion; it was nothing of that sort. It was a simple problem in every day life. What was the average business? The average business was farming? What was Baal? Baal was a fertility god; Baal was the kind of god that if you managed to make points with him he brought the rain. One of the pictures they’ve recovered from one of the cites shows him holding a thunderbolt and it shows him as the god who brings the thunderstorm and who brings the rain.

So the reason these people began to worship false gods isn’t because they walked along the path and said, oh boy, I like that idol, let’s worship here. The reason why they began to worship the false god was the pressure of their everyday business. Every day business moved them over to this because under the continued pressure of every day business what was the problem? Will there be rain for our crops? Will I make it this year and so on; this kind of thing, it was on their minds. And the Baalists, this was their key thing, this was their pick, the evangelists of Baal said worship Baal, the reason you guys don’t have any crops is because you’re not worshiping Baal; Baal will give you the crops. So the false gods here are the ones that would prosper their business; Baal was the god of business prosperity. And God says you never mind that, I’ll give you the prosperity, you just trust Me to provide.

Now with the Christian it’s the same thing, God has provided for all our needs and that is a stated promise that He has given us. But under the daily pressures that we all operate under the temptation is well, I’m not going to trust the Lord, I’m going to trust something else, my own gimmicks, I’m going to trust somebody else’s advice, I’m going to trust just the general drift of everything. In other words, I’m going to put my weight on something other than the Word of God and I’m going to operate that way under this particular situation. It’s easy to do once, and then tomorrow it’s easy to do it twice, and then the day after that it’s easy to do it all day long until you finally get in the habit where you’re not trusting the Word of God at all, you’re just trusting yourself, trusting some other person, etc. You’ve gotten completely off the track. Well, this is the problem here and God wanted to make it explicit, you trust Me and My promises.

Now in Judges 6:11 we begin the actual cycle of deliverance. Verses 7-10 is an introduction to the cycle of deliverance in that it provides the reason and the mode that God has and he explains their suffering. Part of the deliverance is first to understand why you’re suffering. People can take a lot of pain and a lot of sorrow if they see there’s a reason to it. That’s one of the wonderful things about the Word of God, there’s no problem or pressure will ever come into your life for which the Word of God doesn’t give a reason. You may not know the specific reason but the Word of God gives you the overall categories and you can rest assured that no matter what the pressure is, there’s a reason for it, and you have your pick of about 11 or 12 different ones listed in the Word of God. So that’s one of the benefits of careful study of the Word. But in verse 11 God actually begins to affect a deliverance.

Judges 6:11, “And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak,” now there are several things to notice here, first of all, the angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ. Here is one of those cases, a Christophany in the Old Testament. The angel of the Lord is actually the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son. God the Son is God, but yet God the Son is different from God the Father; we have a Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament you had a Trinity; you had it expressed thusly, you had Jehovah, you had the angel of Jehovah and you had the Spirit of Jehovah; that’s the Trinity of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the angel of Jehovah. Notice the angel of Jehovah appears in an incarnate form here. The thing I want you to notice first is we’re going to do a survey the rest of this chapter, very quickly. Notice verse 11, I want to prove to you that the angel of the Lord is identical to the Lord. Now in verse 11 who is doing the speaking? The angel of the Lord. Now look at verse 14, who is doing the speaking? The Lord. See, the terms are interchanged. Verse 16 who does the speaking? The Lord. Verse 20 who does the speaking? Angel of God. Verse 21, who does the speaking? Angel of the Lord. The terms are all interchangeable, Lord, angel of the Lord, angel of God, God. These terms all refer to God. So the angel of the Lord is the Lord. And yet in other passages of Scripture we find the angel of the Lord turning around talking to the Lord; Zechariah 1, the angel of the Lord is turning to Zechariah and then he turns right around and talks to the Lord. So how can the angel of the Lord be the Lord and yet turn around and talk to the Lord? The solution is never given to us in the Old Testament but the New Testament provides us with the solution, namely that God is one in essence and three in personality.

So we do have the Trinity manifest in the Old Testament and here Jesus Christ appears in His preincarnate form. And it’s rather humorous, he is sitting there, he’s sitting under an oak and the reason he was sitting under an oak was why anybody else would be sitting under an oak, it was hot. And probably off…here’s Gideon working up a sweat over there at the winepress, and here this man just suddenly appears. Now whether appeared and sat down or whether he walked along the road we don’t know but He obviously had a human appearing body and He “sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.” Now you have to se this to get the humor because Jesus Christ is going to come out with an interesting crack in a moment and you want to catch the scene. The scene is that here Gideon is down in this winepress trying work so the Midianite raiders don’t see him. So the whole point is that this operation that’s going on is an operation of fear; it’s an operation of trying get out from under the threat of being wiped out by these raiders.

Judges 6:12, “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.” And in one sense it’s kind of humorous and in another sense, of course, it’s deeply theological because he is going to be a mighty man of valor when the Lord gets through with him, but right now he isn’t. You can just see Him just kind of sitting there with His arms crossed, saying hey Gideon, you mighty man of valor. You’ve got to catch the humor of this to see that this is an actual personal encounter with Christ in His preincarnate form here.

Judges 6:13, “And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us,” can’t you just see yourself here, well why is all this befalling us if God is with us, “why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? But now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” See, it’s always God’s fault. Now one thing to notice about verse 13 is that it goes along with a very great promise given to believers in Romans 8. This promise is the nearest thing in Christian experience that would correspond to what Gideon is saying here. In Gideon’s day they’d go around, they’d have an expression: Did not Jehovah bring us out of Egypt. Now when they asked it in the form of a question they weren’t asking it not knowing what the answer was. The reason they asked it was to underscore the certainty of it.

For example, we might go out here and we’d say, will not the sun come up in the morning? Now obviously we’re not doubting that the sun is going to come up in the morning but by phrasing it as a question it’s a literary device of getting over the fact the sun will come up in the morning. So they had a phrase in Gideon’s day, “the Lord certainly brought us out of Egypt,” and this evidently was used as a byword among the farmers in this area. In other words, when there would be a problem, there’d be suffering and they’d meet catastrophe the password would be “but the Lord brought us out of Egypt.” In other words, they always looked back to a completed finished work of deliverance by God. And so no matter what the trial, no matter what the pressure is, the word of encouragement, the word of exhortation would be “the Lord brought us out of Egypt didn’t He,” implying that if he got us out of Egypt he can certainly get us out of this.

In Romans 8:32 we have a similar thing for the Christian. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things.” A very worthwhile verse to memorize and use about fifty times a day. “He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things.” In other words if God did the most for you at the point of salvation He most certainly can do these things that crop up from day to day. Now that is exactly the kind of promise that was used back here. So turn back and let’s see what Gideon is talking about. What Gideon is saying is look, my father, my grandfather, they were yip-yapping this promise about God bringing us out of Egypt and all I’ve seen in my generation are the Midianites, and I’ve seen this struggle that we’ve had. I don’t see any evidence that God is going to deliver us.

And then in verse 14, it’s very interesting, I don’t know what God was doing, the implication is that as the angel of the Lord is sitting here and Gideon started all this carnality, throwing it out, blaming God for all his problems and so on he was probably turning away because in verse 14 in the original language it says, “And Jehovah turned His face and looked at Gideon.” The obviously implication being that He wasn’t looking at Gideon before He turned His face. But we know He was earlier; so therefore apparently the Lord just turned His face while Gideon was yip-yapping all this blame, You’re to blame God, and so God just oh yea, I’ve heard that story before. So finally after Gideon lips off and finishes, then God turns and looks at him, and that’s the impression you get, He turns and looks, and He’s going to give Him something and he begins a little teaching system and here we have the seven principles of developing a spiritual life in the believer, preparing him for service. There’s a little school that’s going to go on here for the next five or ten minutes and Gideon is going to learn a few lessons.

Judges 6:14, “And the LORD turned to him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?” Now that’s the crux of the whole rest of the chapter so let’s break that verse down carefully so you see the point. The first part of it says, not “go in this thy might” but “go in your strength [dash] –this.” That’s what Jesus Christ says to him, “go in your strength—this, and you will save,” in other words, it’s conditional, if you “go in your strength this—then you will save Israel from the hand of the Midianites:” (colon) and that colon should be there because that is going to explain what the “this” is. What is “this?” That’s the problem here, Gideon doesn’t see what the “this” is but you see it. “This” is the last part of verse 14, “have I not sent thee,” and what did I tell you a question means? Certainty. I have certainly sent you. So God is giving him a promise, “I certainly have sent you.” Now that’s the promise He’s giving him right here, “I have certainly sent you,” and he says if you go in your strength, which is this promise, then you will save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Now keep that in mind be sure you understand verse 14, I’ll run it by again. “Go in your strength—this, and you will have victory” in the life. And what is “this?” “I am with you.” So the first principle we notice in the believer’s life is he has to have a commission or he has to have an area for the known will of God for his life; that’s the starting point. You can’t move until you know where you’re going to move, so the first principle is that the believer is commissioned to action. Now we have various exhortations in the New Testament. If you are wacky and wondering what God’s will for your life is, there are only about 7,000 addresses in the New Testament alone that tell you what God’s will is and you needn’t worry about what God’s will is three years from now, just start with the known. What is the known? The known is God’s address in the epistles; read the epistles, you’ll find out lots of things God wants you to do in your home, in your marriage, things that He wants you to do at work, things He wants you to do when you meet a non-Christian and so on. There are lots of things that are very clear. Now don’t make it too esoteric here at this point; the first principle is real simple and that is you have to have a piece of the known will of God circulating in your brain to start with. So this is it, the known will of God is that Gideon be the judge. How is he going to accomplish it? He’s going to accomplish it with a promise, “I am with you.”

Judges 6:15 and we get introduced to the next principle, “And he” that’s Gideon, “said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel?” Now the Lord just got through telling with what He was going to save Israel, the promise I just gave you, that’s what you’re going to do it with. And he turns right around and says Lord, boy that’s great but what am I going to use. And of course Gideon at this point hasn’t got the concept across yet that it’s the promise of the Word that he’s going to use, it’s trust and reliance upon that fact that God will perform that which He has promised. And that is the instrument or the means of accomplishing the will of God; trust. That is walking by faith. Gideon doesn’t realize it and he thinks in terms of some physical device, he says I don’t have anything, he says “Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house,” and it doesn’t mean that he came from a poor family, this Sunday School literature where you see here Gideon is in rags and you get the impression this guy was somebody off skid row somewhere. “Poor” here means that his family had suffered economic loss but this man came from a wealthy family. This man is a leader, this man is the upper class, this man is an aristocrat and what he means is that his family has suffered intense loss, and he’s saying to God, “look, if my family was in its normal economic health I’d be glad to help you, we could swing it, we could get a few battalions in here and get the servants going and train them and so on but Lord, I can’t do it right now because there’s not too much left in the bank, and I don’t have the resources available. My family has suffered most in Manasseh, so why don’t You pick somebody else who’s got the dough, let them do it but don’t come to me Lord, I just don’t have the resources.

Judges 6:16, “And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee,” now catch what he’s doing here; what was the promise, “I have sent thee.” Then he says what am I going to use, and God says “I have sent thee.” You see God repeating Himself here, he’s going to keep on repeating this promise until it just soaks into little old Gideon’s head and what he is going to use; he is going to use the promise that God had given him, that’s what he is going to use. So God in verse 16 simply repeats verbatim what He has said in verse 14, “I will be with you.” And he says not only will I be with you, the result will be that “thou shalt smite the Midianites as easily as you’d smite one man.” The Midianites are out there and they’ve got 150,000 so that gives you an idea what kind of a promise this is. God says My promise is so fantastic it multiplies by 150,000. You can go out here and slug somebody and knock them down, He said it’s as easy as slugging somebody and knocking them down; if you an knock somebody down you can knock 150,000 men down, all you have to do is trust My promise.

The second principle is, obviously, a knowledge of God’s promises. At this point Gideon is finally locked in on what the promise is. The first principle was you have to know the will of God; the second principle is that you have to be trusting in some promise, you have to be trusting in the promise of the filling of the Holy Spirit, you have to be trusting in the promise that God in His resources is going to provide for you. God never asks you to do something without making the means available by which you can accomplish it; 1 Corinthians 10:13, a very excellent promise. So here we have the means given. The second principle is that the believer understand the promises and the provisions that God has made for him to accomplish His will. Please notice the order of the principle; you don’t go from principle two to principle one; you go from principle one to principle two. Do you know why? Because principle one has to do with the will of God and that’s the issue. See, Christians have this promise thing turned around; they want promises to do anything. Promises aren’t given in the Word of God to do anything, promises are given in the Word of God for a now restricted function of accomplishing what God wants to accomplish in you’re life, they’re not psychological aspirin used at the drop of some pain some place. God doesn’t work this way. The promises are not mental drugs; the promises are there as tools to be used doing God’s work. So principle one must precede principle two.

Now in verse 16 we come to the third principle, and the third principle is the believer has to be assured that the God of the promise is who He claims to be. In other words, the third principle is that he has to be assured that God really is there and is who He claims to be. You get into the apologetics of the thing, is Christianity really true? You can memorize all the promises you want to but if you’re not assured that God exists and is who He claims to be, this moment, in 1971, that He’s really here, that He is the God of the universe and has the attributes listed in the Bible, and that He is the One that is giving you the promise…Bible memory isn’t going to…it doesn’t mean a thing, not a thing unless you have a platform for this. I have long suspected the problem with fundamentalism is not that the people don’t know enough; the problem with fundamentalism is they’re not confident the thing is true. This explains why we have so much of this head knocking that goes on in fundamentalism, get out there and do this, get out there and do that, hustle this way, hustle that way, and yet nothing ever seems to get done. Why do people have to be beat over the head? The reason is very simple, they doubt. And the reason they’re not doing is because they’re not trusting, it’s not that it’s just a simple matter, there’s often there’s a caricature that people are just disobedient, and they know the will of God but they’re just being disobedient. I don’t think so. I think the reason we don’t see more witnessing is because believers, frankly, are ashamed of the gospel. They are afraid that if they open their mouth for Jesus Christ they’re going to get shot down; they’re afraid of their business associate, that they’ll make a jackass out of them at lunch if he brings up conversation centering on the person of Jesus Christ. And I think this has a lot do with the inactivity, the horrible inactivity in fundamental circles, whereas we should be the ones that are active, we should be the ones that are doing things, and yet nothing is ever accomplished, it just slugs along. Why? Lack of trust. It’s a question of truth, is the thing really true?

And here the principle occurs in Judges 6:17, “And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in Thy sight, then show me a sign that You are talking with me.” That sounds like a real brilliant statement. That’s not really what the original says so let’s go over this. “Show me that it is You who is the One talking with me.” That’s the way it should be translated. In other words, that the One talking with me is You, and “You” refers to God. You see, he sees the person there physically, and this is, by the way a problem, you often wonder, what would it be like if God appeared to you, you know, knocked on the door and walked in? You think, oh I’d believe then. Oh no you wouldn’t, because then you’d have doubts whether the object in front of you is really God. So it’s not true that if you saw God that you’d automatically believe and this proves it right here. Gideon sees God, that’s Jesus Christ he’s looking at here, and he still doesn’t believe. Will you please tell me that it’s really You that’s talking, he says here. So here’s the third principle, and so he is going to engage in a little test.

Judges 6:18, “Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present,” this is not Merry Christmas, the word “present” here means an offering, he is going to go pick up an offering, he’s going to bring this offering before the angel of Jehovah and he wants to see what happens to it, “and set it before thee. And he said, I will tarry until thou come again.” The angel said okay, I’ll wait until you come. Now the wait, this took about an hour or so, this whole thing here because, a little more than that, some of you ladies can figure out how long it took him to make what he did here.

Judges 6:19, “And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour,” that’s about 45 pounds of flour, “the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it.” So he went in and had a time in the kitchen while the angel of the Lord is sitting out there cooling Himself under the oak; a very interesting picture, a very human picture, very anthropomorphic, very easy to visualize this whole dialogue, tremendous dialogue here, very powerful, how God is not in a hurry, God says okay, I’ll wait for your test, go fix it up. And so God sits under the tree waiting for him to bring out his test.

So when he brought it back, Judges 6:20, “And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so.” By the way, here we see part of the fourth principle; the third principle was that we want to be assured that it is God who is there that’s behind the promise. The fourth principle is that Gideon did do this much, he went as far as his present moment’s faith enabled him to go, and this is the principle, never try to fake Christian experience, don’t be a phony about it. If your faith is this big find, but at least operate on the basis of the faith where you can; trust God where you can. That’s basically all God asks. Don’t try to trust Him when you can’t trust Him yet. Gideon isn’t going to be able to trust Him; at this point Gideon could no more trust the Lord to work with the military problems of knocking out a 150,000 Midianites than I could or you could. He couldn’t trust God for this but you’re going to watch this man’s faith grow and the principle is he trusts God where he can right now. Now what he’s going to do two days from now but right this moment how far can he trust God. That’s the point. He can trust God this far, so he’s trusting that all right, if God is who He claims to be, at least I know this, that if I give Him an offering He will accept it. It’s a trivial little thing, but it meant acting, he’s not just sitting there having a dialogue and discussion with Christ; he’s acting, He’s trusting, and so he goes ahead in the confidence that at least he can trust God to do something here.

 Judges 6:21, “Then the angel of the LORD put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the LORD departed out of his sight.” And that was a sign that He had accepted the sacrifice; by the way, it’s an interesting construction, verse 21 in the fire that came out of the rock. We don’t know what this fire is but it occurs over and over in Scripture. It’s a fire that appears not to burn but it is a fire that is present in the material elements because Moses sees the burning bush; the bush is there and yet the fire appears to be burning but not consuming the bush. And here you have something that occurs several other times, the fire comes out of something; here the fire is coming out of solid rock. Now what this is we don’t know, all we know is that God in some way in these Theophanies is able to turn his physical universe into flame and to show this flame as His presence. So this flame does consume the flesh and the cake. And then the Lord departed.

Judges 6:22, “And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the LORD, Gideon said, Alas, O LORD God! for because I have seen an angel of the LORD face to face.” Now it says “an angel of the LORD,” it should be “the angel of the LORD.” I’ve looked upon God face to face and since the Exodus experience, down through Scripture, the Jew had a terror of ever seeing the Lord face to face, a deep terror. Why did he have this fear that if he looked on God’s face he’d die? Because of the holiness of God on Mount Sinai. God came, we can’t… there’s no way to conceive of this, but talking about the expression we often use, I’ll put the fear of God in him, well God put the fear of God in man by whatever He did on Mount Sinai because even the apostate Jew would quiver in his boots to think of looking on the face of God; it would be absolutely impossible, something that he could never dream of, to sit there as a human being and look into the face of God and live. So this is what Gideon is saying, he says I’m going to die, I know I’m going to die because I’ve seen the face of the Lord.

Now in Judges 6:23, though the Lord has disappeared in His physical body He’s still there, notice this, just like Jesus Christ appears and He disappears after the resurrection, He’s in the room, remember that famous situation with, well, I’m not going to believe until I can touch Him, and bang, there He is in the middle of the room. Can you imagine Thomas, good night, what did I say, He heard me. So the Lord suddenly appears in the room and He says okay Thomas, touch Me. Now Jesus Christ apparently, you get the implication that Christ was there in the room and that He didn’t come into the room but that He was there all the time and He just appeared; that’s the implication. And so here the angel of the Lord disappears from physical sight but He’s still there, invisible, and so Gideon is really sweating it. He hears the voice, and God says… “And the LORD said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die.

Judges 6:24, “Then Gideon built an altar there unto the LORD, and called it Jehovah-shalom, [unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites],” that means peace, it means that he was accepted with God, and I think there’s something we can draw out as a fifth principle in our development from this little incident with the rock and Gideon’s fear, and that is that when you operate in trust over the area where you can trust honestly God, God rewards you very often with an increased perception of what He is and how He works, and that’s one of the great blessings that only the obedient believer can enjoy because it’s the obedient believer who has that refreshment that comes because when he trusts in God seems to reward him by letting himself open up more and more, and notice what the central truth of God’s essence is that is opened up to Gideon—God’s justice and His love. His justice in this holy fire and His love in the sense that he says “peace” Gideon, you are acceptable to me as a holy God. And it’s this truth, the truth of the cross of Jesus Christ basically, because that’s all it is, the cross of Christ, the truth of Christ’s cross is His work that comes more and more into the perception of the believer, and notice this fifth principle, obedience leads to further knowledge. Not that you don’t know this before intellectually but you know now intellectually and existentially. Now it’s something that is with you because by obedience you have been admitted, you might say, into the inner chamber of God Himself.

And so Gideon builds an altar there. And that, of course, is also part of this fifth principle is that you can worship in a greater degree; the altar is the place of worship, and Gideon, as a result of his obedience and as a result of the fact that not only does he obey the Lord but the Lord shows more of Himself, now Gideon responds by doing the only thing a man can do in that kind of a situation and that’s worship. That’s the only thing He can do, you just sit there and you just worship. That’s the only thing, that’s the only response a man can make.

Judges 6:25, and here comes the sixth principle, the first test for obedience is often in the home and family life. “And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father’s young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it.” Now why do you suppose the second bullock is used, this is a younger one, that’s what it means. Do you notice his age? His age is seven; where else have we met the word “seven” in this passage. Seven years the Midianites have oppressed them, seven years the nation has been in sin and carnality and what is the bullock to do? He is to be the sacrifice for the sins that have happened. And so it is as though this bull has picked up seven years of sin. Seven years this animal has been living; seven years under the domination of rebellion and God says take that bull to atone for these seven years in sacrifices and then destroy this horrible altar.

Judges 6:26, “And build an altar unto the LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down. [27] Then Gideon took ten men of his servants,” now he didn’t need ten but again, don’t knock him too hard, he wasn’t able to trust God completely here and this is obvious, “he took ten men of his servants and did as the LORD had said unto him,” at least he did what the Lord said, “and so it was, because he feared his father’s household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, that he did it by night.” So two things, he could have done it himself, the altars we know from archeology aren’t that complex, one man could have done a pretty good job, but he had probably ten men posted, you watch this street, you watch this street, and watch the door over there, and so on. So they go out there and he does trust, notice the obedience, he trusts God as far as he can. True, you can knock the guy, he brings ten men with him, knock the guy, he did it at night, but the point is he did it, he did trust the Lord, he did get out there and he did it.

In Judges 6:28 the mud hits the fan, “And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that was by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built. [29] And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing. [30] Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it.] And in verse 31 it’s apparent that his father begins to see some issues and his father has a very interesting theological answer.

Judges 6:29, “And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? Will ye save him?” Now his father is being sarcastic, oh, are you going to save Baal, poor little Baal, he can’t help himself so you guys are going to go save him. This is ridicule and sarcasm against false systems. It’s like the apologists today should be ridiculing the non-Christian views, the non-Christian views should be ridiculed, oh you know something, you know absolutes do you, oh you know morals, well, tell us where did you get your morals from, were they written on your ceiling last night? Ridicule the non-Christian position; they walk around with their morals, where did they get those from. So here you have the same kind of sarcasm and mocking. And his father says, “he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar.” His father is simply saying look, if Baal’s the big guy that you think he is and I thought he was, then Baal is going to avenge his own, we don’t have to worry about that, we’ll just let Baal take care of Baal’s business and we’ll go about our way.

Judges 6:32, “Therefore on that day he called him” that’s Gideon, “Jerubbaal, saying,” Jerubbaal means let Baal contend, and this is interesting; there’s one man in all the Bible that seems to have the ideal name for a Christian apologetic, it’d Gideon because what he’s saying is let the non-Christian system authenticate itself, if we want to put in contemporary terms. Let the human viewpoint system prove itself; let Baal prove himself, it’s a challenge that’s thrown out for the non-Christian. You talk so big, prove it; “let Baal contend,” let the false system show itself, let is show forth the answers, “Let Baal plead against him, because he has thrown down his altar.”

Judges 6:33, “Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel.” This is a later event, not sequencing immediately afterward in verse 33, but later on, after this preparation of Gideon, we can presume that Gideon has grown much spiritually and then this incident happens. Up comes harvest, and so now for the eighth year the Midianites and the Amalekites are going to come in to wipe out the crops. Of course there’s a surprise waiting for them but they don’t realize it at this point. They “gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel.”

Judges 6:34, “But the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet; and Abiezer was gathered after him.” Now there’s a beautiful thing here that you can’t see from the English translation but I want to show it to you in verse 34, actually it refers to the filling of the Holy Spirit under the Old Testament economy. Now in the Old Testament the filling of the Holy Spirit was not universal, it was under certain conditions, and the Hebrews have a verb that means “put on a garment.” And then sometimes, usually this verb would be intransitive. Do you know what an intransitive verb is? No object. “Put on a garment,” and then sometimes the verb would have an object, namely the garment. Well guess how this is constructed in the Hebrew? It says “the Spirit of God put on a garment, Gideon,” that’s the way it reads in the original language. The Holy Spirit puts on His garment and the garment is Gideon himself. So the idea is that the Holy Spirit comes upon and is going to use Gideon to fight for Israel. “…and he blows a trumpet,” and it’s so worded in here that you can’t tell whether Gideon is blowing the trumpet or the Holy Spirit. It’s a beautiful construction; the two coalesce, and you can’t distinguish from this point forward whether Gideon is doing it or the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is put on Gideon and he blows the trumpet. Who’s “he?” The Spirit or Gideon, you can’t tell because the two are like this now.

Judges 6:35, “And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh; who also was gathered after him: and he sent messengers unto Asher, and unto Zebulun, and unto Naphtali; and they came up to meet them.” Notice he doesn’t have the trouble that Deborah and Barak had. And now verse 36, another little problem. Keep in mind, it’s easy to knock the man but at least he’s operating as much as he can believe God for. Verse 36, “And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, [37] Behold,” I put out the fleece. Now again we want to take you to verse 36 in the original because again it’s an interesting construction. Literally what it says is “if you are now in the process of delivering,” see, it’s a participle that’s going on, he says God, if you’re really now, right now in the process of delivering I want to know it. So with this we have the seventh principle and that is that the Christian, as he grows, will want the assurance that God is working in the present moment in his life. He will want the assurance that God is working in the present, not just the past but in the present moment. So this is what Gideon is putting out the fleece for; he’s saying is this Your leading, the trumpets, all the guys are coming; now I’ve got to do something. Now before I get out there I want to really make sure that this is of You. So Gideon asks the Lord for two tests.

Again we can see that it’s a lack of faith; it’s a frank lack of faith, of course it is, but notice how faith is established. Isn’t it beautiful that the Lord doesn’t say Gideon, you just believe My word, I told you. God doesn’t give him that reply; God gives him answers to the questions that Gideon asks. So the first thing in verse 37, “I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. [38] And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.” And it’s another one of these beautiful poetic expressions in the original, it’s as though he squeezes this thing and he looks down and he says good night, I got a whole bowl of water out of this thing. It’s very picturesque here. But now he still isn’t quite satisfied that this is the sign, because after all, it could have been some freak thing you know, where the wool was more prone to accept the dew, since it tends to draw in water. So Gideon asks for a reverse of the test.

Judges 6:39, “And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. [40] And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.” Gideon got his test and notice this principle, he always was a man who asked God, he trusted out to the boundary of his faith, but each time he trusted out to the boundary, by pressing as it were, God to the edge of that boundary expanded, and the next time Gideon trusted it was more. Why was Gideon’s faith enlarged? Because he trusted out to his limits in the present moment. That’s the secret of Christian growth.