WWUTT 244 Gideon's Fleece?

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When we read about the promises of God, it's not to hear about how God is going to make us healthy and wealthy here on planet
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Earth, but rather that we know that He has delivered us from our sin through Jesus Christ when we understand the text.
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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.
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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. It is Thursday, and we are doing our Old Testament study today, so if you would open up your
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Bible to Judges 6, that is where we are in our study of the book of Judges, and we will be covering chapters 6, 7, and 8, the story of Gideon, largest chunk that we've taken out of Judges so far,
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I think. Well, that may not be true. A couple of weeks ago, I think we did, what, the first four chapters? We just didn't read it word for word, nor are we going to do that here.
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We'll do a little bit of skipping around. So the most famous judges in the book of Judges are, of course,
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Samson. He's got to be the top of the list. I made an argument last week for Deborah being the second most popular, and then
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Gideon would be the third. And even then, you probably don't know the whole story of Gideon. What you know is the story of the fleece, and there are people that will allegorize that story, ministers that will say, you know, what's your fleece?
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What is it that you're going to use to test and see what God is truly saying to you? And on and on it goes.
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That's not what we're supposed to understand from the story, because when it comes down to it, Gideon was actually kind of a coward.
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But it was by God's grace and mercy that he would give Gideon to the Israelite people, that he would be a judge over them, and he would deliver them from their enemies.
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This is the cycle that we've seen in Judges, and we see it throughout this entire book, that the people of Israel will fall away from God.
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They will begin worshiping the Baals and the false gods of the Canaanites around them. And then the people will be oppressed by an enemy that God had sent to them to punish them because they were worshiping the false gods.
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The people will cry out to God for deliverance, and God shows them mercy by sending them a judge who delivers them from the hands of their enemies, and then they experience a period of peace.
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But the Israelites, because they are stubborn, will go back to repeating the same cycle again.
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They fall into complacency and comfort, and they begin to worship the false gods once again.
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God sends an enemy to punish them because they are worshiping the Baals and the pagan gods of the
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Canaanites. The people of Israel cry out for mercy, and on and on it goes. Now what the judge represents to us is
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Christ, because we are dead in our sins and our trespasses. The enemy, which the final enemy, the way that death is described, death is the consequence for our sin, and we cannot overcome death.
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Nothing that we can do will beat that enemy, the devil who accuses us of the sins that we have committed against God.
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We cannot defeat Satan. It is only Christ that undoes the work of Satan. As it says in 1
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John, the reason why Christ came was to undo the works of the devil. It is only
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Christ who can save us from our sins. He is the ultimate judge. He is the judge of the universe, and there is a day that is going to come where he will judge the living and the dead.
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Only those who are in Christ Jesus will be saved from the wrath of God. John 3 .36
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says that he who has the Son has life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
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It is only through Christ that the wrath of God has been satisfied, and we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. More than that, we have fellowship with God, and we are fellow heirs with Christ Jesus of his eternal kingdom.
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What grace and love and mercy God has shown to us as his children, adopted into the family of God through his
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Son, Jesus Christ. And so he, as the ultimate judge, is the greater judge than what we see here, what the judges represent in the book of Judges.
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And as I mentioned, Gideon was not some great man. As a matter of fact, he was kind of a coward.
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He did not really want to do what it was that God had asked him to do, and he needed constant confirmation that it was really
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God that was telling him to do this before he would kind of pull himself up by his bootstraps and go, okay,
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I'm going to go do this thing. And it turned out to be a very successful judge. But of course, he needed some constant pandering in order to get him to do anything.
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And that's what we're going to see here as we come to the story. Judges chapter six, what we read about is that the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the
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Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of the Midianites for seven years. That's what we have right there at the beginning of Judges chapter six.
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So when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites who were oppressing them so severely that they had to flee into the hills and their crops were being devoured by the
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Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to them. Now, when we read this in Judges chapter six, verse eight, the prophet is unnamed.
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We actually have a prophet that is recorded here saying something to the people of Israel, but we don't know who this prophet was.
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The name is not given. The prophet said, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery.
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And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you and drove them out before you and gave you their land.
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And I said to you, I am the Lord, your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.
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But you have not obeyed my voice. This prophet who is saying to the
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Israelites everything that they should have known anyway, because they still had the writings of Moses and everything that had been written down by Joshua as well.
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But they had forgotten all of these things and were not worshiping God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt and had given them this land, which they did not deserve.
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But it was because of God's judgment on the Canaanites and his loving affection toward his people that he had given them that land.
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And yet they forgot all of this and were worshiping false gods made by men instead of the living
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God, creator of the universe. So the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Afra.
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And we see the angel of the Lord come up several times in judges. As a matter of fact, this angel appeared before Joshua as well.
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And this angel came to Gideon, who was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the
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Midianites. The wine press was in a secluded place. It had to stay cool. It was not out in the open.
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And that's not where you go to beat wheat. But that is where Gideon was, because he was trying to hide from the
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Midianites. Verse 12, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, oh, mighty man of valor.
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And Gideon said to him, please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?
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And where are all of his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, did not the
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Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.
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Now, here's here's kind of the main lesson that I want to draw out of what we are reading in the book of Judges today.
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All of these things had been written down for the people of Israel to remember what the Lord had done for them so that they would remember
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God and they would worship God and they would give him glory because God is great. The Israelites had not done anything to deserve this.
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But God is loving and merciful toward his people. He had called them out of slavery to himself and called them his people.
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They the Lord loved them so much that he gave them the law so that they might walk in righteousness and know the statues of the
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Lord and know the holy requirement in order to be in the presence of God, what he expected of his people to do.
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And instead, the way Gideon reads the historical record is not remembering the grace and love and mercy of God, but all of the wonderful things that God was supposed to give me and I don't have.
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And this is exactly what prosperity teaching is doing in the church in America today, telling people that they can have if they just believe it, if they just speak it into existence or you have
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Joyce Meyer, who has gone as far as saying that Jesus died on a cross so that you could have comfortable living.
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That's not the reason Jesus died on the cross. He died on the cross to absorb the wrath of God so that you would be saved.
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If you are in Christ Jesus, you have nothing to fear of God's wrath. The price has been paid by Christ, who lived a perfect life that you could not live and died the death that you could not die to pay for your sins.
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He took God's wrath upon himself so that all who are in Christ Jesus receive his righteousness.
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Jesus didn't stay dead. He didn't stay buried in a tomb, but he came back to life, showing that he had the power over death itself so that all who are in Christ not only receive his righteousness, but we receive his eternal life as well.
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We are holy in the eyes of God if we have Christ, not because of anything that we did, but because of what
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Christ has done. That is why Jesus died on the cross. We read in Titus 2 14 that Christ died on the cross, gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
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That is what Christ did for us on the cross. It was not so we would have comfortable living.
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It was not so we could have the best house and drive the fastest cars. It was so we would be delivered from our sins to the glory of God and we would give him all the praise and even be willing to sacrifice comfortable living for the glory of God.
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In fact, Christ said Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that his way was the difficult way. You read that in Matthew chapter seven.
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When you become a Christian, things actually get more difficult for you in this life. Jesus said narrow is the gate and long is the way that leads to life and few will find it.
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But broad is the way that leads to destruction and many will find that way because that is the easy way.
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So it is the way to Christ Jesus that is the most difficult path. But it is the way to life.
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This world has nothing for us. There is nothing in this world that can sustain us or save us.
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If we are not in Christ, we will perish like the rest of the stuff in this world, like your cell phone that's going out of date in your pocket as you're sitting there.
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But it is only in Christ Jesus that we might be saved from the wages of sin, from the death and decay in this world that we see all around us that none of us will escape.
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We will only be delivered into the perfect kingdom of God where there is no sin, death, dying, fear, evil.
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None of these things exist in that kingdom for God has removed all evil and he has restored all things to perfection.
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And it is only if we are in Christ that we receive that wonderful and perfect kingdom and we will live with our
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Lord God forever. If we repent of our sins, we turn from our worldliness and our wicked ways and we follow
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Christ Jesus, our Lord. This is the work that Christ has done on the cross, reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ, whether in heaven or on earth.
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God is reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Christ, not for comfortable living, but to the glory of God.
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And this is something that Gideon forgot, that all of these things that God did was for his glory.
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And so he's got kind of a prosperity theology mentality going on where he thinks that he should be living in the lap of luxury.
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Instead, I'm having to hide from my enemies in the wine press, beating the wheat, which is not even where you're supposed to do that job.
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So where is this God that our fathers told us about and had delivered us into this wonderful promised land?
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And yet we're here being oppressed by our enemies. The Lord turned to him.
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This is verse 14 and said, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian.
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Do not I send you? And Gideon said to him, please, Lord, how can
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I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my father's house.
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And the Lord said to him, but I will be with you and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.
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Now, God did not respond to Gideon's sniveling by correcting him. As a matter of fact,
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God was very merciful instead of chastising him and saying, what is the matter with you? I mean, the whole reason why you're supposed to be remembering the books of the law and all the things that were written down for you was so that you would give glory to God so that you would turn from these false gods.
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The reason why you're being oppressed by your enemies is because your people are worshipping false gods instead of the true
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God that delivered you from slavery. And that's what God could have chastised him with and struck him down on the spot for even questioning
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God, this angel of the Lord, but instead was merciful toward Gideon and said, I will be with you and will deliver your enemies into your hands.
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So Gideon went and got the angel of the Lord a gift, and he came back with the food that he had prepared for the angel of the
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Lord. The angel touched it with a staff and it was incinerated with fire. And then the angel of the
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Lord disappeared. And Gideon said, this is verse 22. Alas, oh, Lord God, for now
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I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. But the Lord said to him, peace be to you. Do not fear.
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You shall not die. Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it the
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Lord is peace. To this day, it still stands at Afra, which belongs to the
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Abyss Rites. So the name of that altar that Gideon named it is the
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Lord is peace. Gideon knew that he had peace with God, not because of anything that he had done, but because of what
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God had done for him and was going to do for him. So then the Lord said to Gideon that he was to take a bull and sacrifice it on an altar that Gideon was to construct.
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He needed to tear down the altar that was on his father's property because that altar was was built to bail and he was going to build his own altar and sacrifice to the
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Lord God. So that's what Gideon did. And then, as it says in verse 28, when the men of the town rose early in the morning, they saw that the altar of Baal had been broken down and they got very angry and they said, who has done this?
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And they found out it was Gideon. And they said, well, bring this guy out. We're going to kill him. But Joash, who was
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Gideon's father, this is verse 31. He stood up in front of all those who were meaning to come against Gideon.
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And he said, are you going to contend for Baal or will you save him? Whoever contends for him will be put to death by morning.
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If he is a god, let him contend for himself because his altar has been broken down. Therefore, on that day,
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Gideon was called Jerubaal. That is to say, let Baal contend against him because he broke down his altar.
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So Joash, who had this altar of Baal that was built on his property and he may not have built it himself, may have been the entire townspeople that had built this altar because that was where they sacrificed to this false god.
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After his son tore down that altar, I think it was kind of a testimony to Joash.
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And so when the people came up against Gideon and wanted to put him to death, Joash kind of called their bluff.
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And he said, well, hang on a second. If Baal is a god, let him take care of his altar. If Gideon has torn down the altar of an actual god, then
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Baal can defend himself and let him come up against Gideon. I have to believe that Gideon made a believer out of his father that day who no longer believed that Baal was any sort of god that should be worshipped to or offered to and began to worship the true
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God of Israel instead. Verse 33. Now, all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east came together and they crossed the
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Jordan and encamped in the valley of Jezreel. But the spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon and he sounded the trumpet and the
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Abizrites were called out to follow him and he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh and they too were called out to follow him and he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali and they all went up to meet them.
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Then we have in verse 36 the story of the fleas. There's really nothing spectacular about this story.
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There's nothing about this that we should draw out of thinking about. Well, what what can I use to test
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God and find out if this is what he wants me to do? Instead, what we see from this story is that Gideon just didn't have a clue.
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He still needed constant confirmation that God was with him. It wasn't enough that he heard from an angel of the
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Lord that the angel of the Lord incinerated his gift right before him and then disappeared, that he heard the voice of God speaking to him and all of these other things.
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Rather, he still needed more signs. He still needed to see something that was going to prove to him that God really was there and really was going to deliver his enemies into his hands.
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So you have the sign of the fleas. In verse 36, Gideon said to God, if you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold,
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I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone and it is dry on all the ground around it, then
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I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said. And it was so when he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water.
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But then Gideon said to God, let not your anger burn against me. Let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece.
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Please let it be dry on the fleece only. And then on all the ground, let there be dew.
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And God did so that night. And it was dry on the fleece only and on all the ground there was dew.
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So the Lord is, in fact, rather merciful and rather patient with Gideon, even though he's kind of a pinhead.
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Judges chapter seven, Gideon's three hundred men. Now, this is the story of how Gideon had only three hundred soldiers and he won every battle that he fought with those men.
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Three hundred. Now, what what what other army do you associate with there being only three hundred soldiers, the three hundred
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Spartans? Right. There was a film made by Zack Snyder called The Three Hundred, which was done after the the comic book, the graphic novel of the same name.
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And, of course, that comes from the legend of the three hundred Spartans that went up against the Assyrians and won.
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Well, actually, they didn't. They were all killed, weren't they? All three hundred soldiers were killed. Now, here's a story that is even more spectacular because there were only three hundred soldiers with Gideon and they won every battle.
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Not only that, but they didn't even lose a single man. So let's look at this story. That's not the one that Hollywood wants to tell.
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No, no, no, no, no. Not the one that is more spectacular. Not the one that that recognizes the true
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God who protected his army against all of their enemies. Now, we can't have any of that story.
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We need to we need to have something that is that is much more man centered. So anyway, we're going to give we're going to give glory to God through this story as we see his might displayed through his people,
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Israel, even when they are small in number. Judges chapter seven, then Jeroboam, that is
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Gideon and all of the people who were with him, rose early and in camp beside the spring of Herod and the camp of Midian was north of them by the hill of Mora in the valley.
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And the Lord said to Gideon, the people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying my own hand has saved me.
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Now, therefore, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.
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Then 22 ,000 of the people returned and 10 ,000 remained.
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So 32 ,000 initially, that's a pretty substantial army. That's a bigger army than Barack had when he was going up against Cicero's forces, as we read about in Judges chapters four and five.
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He only had about 10 ,000 soldiers. And that's what God whittled it down to. If there's anybody who is fearful and trembling, return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.
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And so 22 ,000 people went away and then you just had an army of 10 ,000 that were left.
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So they probably would not have been very effective soldiers anyway. Those 22 ,000 that left because they were cowardly and afraid.
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They were fearful and trembling, whichever way you want to say it. So the Lord said to Gideon, the people are still too many.
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Take them down to the water and I will test them for you there. And anyone of whom I say to you, this one shall go with you, shall go with you.
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And anyone of whom I say to you, this one shall not go with you, is not going to go. So he brought the people down to the water.
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And the Lord said to Gideon, everyone who lapsed the water with his tongue as a dog laps, you shall set by himself.
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Likewise, everyone who kneels down to drink. And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men.
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But all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water. And the Lord said to Gideon, with the 300 men who lapped,
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I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand and let all the others go.
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Every man to his home. Now, there are some that try to read into this story and try to figure out, OK, why were these men more significant than these?
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There's really nothing there that that you can find to discover why those men were more skilled soldiers than the other men.
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It's just the method that the Lord used to single out 300 specifically that were going to go with Gideon.
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So the people took provisions in their hands and their trumpets, and he sent all the rest of Israel, every man to his tent, but retained the 300 men.
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And the camp of Midian was below him in the in the valley. So what happens is is
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Gideon goes down and he's kind of surveying the camp and he overhears a couple of the Midianites. One says a dream to another and says that he had this dream.
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There's this big barley loaf that came rolling into the camp and just destroyed everything. And the other guy said, yeah, that's
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Gideon. And so Gideon overhears this dream and the interpretation of the dream. And he worships the
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Lord because he realizes by these pagans having their dreams that God is going to deliver his enemies into his hand.
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So Gideon gets this strategy and he divided the 300 men into three companies.
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This is verse 16 of chapter seven. And he put trumpets into the hands of all of them and empty jars with torches inside the jars.
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And he said to them, look at me and do likewise. When I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do.
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When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me then blow the trumpets also on every side of all the camp and shout for the
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Lord and for Gideon. So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch when they had just set the watch and they blew the trumpets and they smashed the jars that were in their hands.
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Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. So you had the three companies separated into a hundred and they're imitating a
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Gideon and they held in their left hands the torches and in their right hands the trumpets to blow. And they cried out a sword for the
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Lord and for Gideon. Every man stood in his place around the camp and all the army ran.
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They cried out and fled. And when they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord sent every man's sword against his comrade and against all the army.
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And the army fled as far as Bathsheet toward Zerah, as far as the border of Abel Mahola by Tabath.
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And the men of Israel were called out from Naphtali and from Asher and from all Manasseh. And they pursued after Midian.
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So the Midianites, basically, they hear this commotion. They kind of wake up in a panic. And the Lord has already set in their hearts an understanding that Gideon was going to come and conquer them.
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You had a couple of the of the Midianites that were sharing a dream about seeing this barley loaf come rolling into the camp and kind of destroying everything.
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And so they they are already fearful because the Lord has placed the fear in their hearts.
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And so when they hear Gideon and his shoulders crying out, they kind of panic. They're like, oh, we're under attack. They start fighting each other and killing themselves.
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Gideon and his ragtag group were successful. And they had other Israelites that came and joined them in the pursuit of the
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Midianites. So then in chapter eight, Gideon goes after a couple of other kings of Midian, Zabah and Zalmunnah, and he tries to get help from some of the wise men of Succoth, the elders of Succoth, and they wouldn't help him out.
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And so then Gideon goes out on his own. Zabah and Zalmunnah were in Karkor with their army, about 15 ,000 men, all who were left of the army of the people of the east, for there had fallen 120 ,000 men who drew the sword.
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And Gideon went up by the way of the tent dwellers east of Nobah and Jogbah and attacked the army for the army felt secure.
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And Zabah and Zalmunnah fled and he pursued them and captured the two kings of Midian, Zabah and Zalmunnah, and he threw all the army into a panic.
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So then what happens is Gideon decides to go after the men of Succoth who wouldn't help him because they wanted
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Zabah and Zalmunnah captured first. And so Gideon punished those those men of Succoth that wouldn't help him out.
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Then he asked his son to kill Zabah and Zalmunnah, which his son wouldn't do because he was afraid.
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And so Gideon killed the two kings himself. Now we'll finish up chapter eight here, beginning in verse 22.
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Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.
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And Gideon said to them, I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.
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And Gideon said to them, let me make a request of you. Every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil, for they had golden earrings because they were
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Ishmaelites, descendants of the illegitimate son of Abraham. And they answered, we will willingly give them.
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And they spread a cloak and every man threw in the earrings from his spoil. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was seventeen hundred shekels of gold besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian.
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And besides the collars that were around the necks of their camels. And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city in Afra.
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And all Israel whored after it there. And it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.
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So Midian was subdued before the people of Israel and they raised their heads no more. And the land had rest for 40 years in the days of Gideon.
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So what happened here basically was that Gideon made the breastplate that was worn by the high priest and there was only supposed to be one.
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There was not supposed to be more than one. But Gideon did this kind of because he thought of himself as being a high priest in Israel and wanted the
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Israelites to consider him as such. He didn't really take on that mantle, but that was that was kind of probably what was in his head.
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And so it became a stumbling block for him. And it really messed up the people of Israel.
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They took it the wrong way and were not worshiping God the way that they should. Yet the land rested for 40 years in the days of Gideon.
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God was still merciful to the Israelites and let them have a generation of peace. And so then at the end of chapter eight, we read of the death of Gideon.
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Jerubael, the son of Joash, went and lived in his own house. Now Gideon had 70 sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives and his concubine was in Shechem, who was in Shechem, also bore him a son.
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And he called his name Abimelech. And Gideon, the son of Joash, died in a good old age and was buried in the tomb of Joash's father at Aphra of the
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Abizrites. As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the
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Baals and made Baal -bereth their god. And the people of Israel did not remember the
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Lord, their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side. And they did not show steadfast love to the family of Jerubael, that is
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Gideon, in return for all the good that he had done for Israel. Now in verse 33, where it says that they whored after the
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Baals and made Baal -bereth their god. Baal -bereth means a covenant with Baal.
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So the sin of Israel and their continued apostasy just keeps getting worse and worse.
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So now are they not only just worshiping idols? They're making covenants with those idols. It was the covenant of God that they were supposed to remember and hold fast to.
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But they've turned from God. They've started worshiping the pagan gods of the Canaanites once again.
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And this time they're even making covenants with those gods. So their hearts are getting further and further from God.
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The longer and longer this goes. We're going to wrap up the story there and then we will pick up in Chapter 9 next week and feel free to go back and review the story,
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Chapters 6, 7 and 8 that we read today and pick up even the parts that I skimmed over and kind of gave you the summary of some of those things.
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Our Lord God, as we wrap up what we have read here today, I pray that we would remember the promises that you have given to your people so that we might glorify you and we might worship you as the people of God.
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We wouldn't have any expectation of you as giving anything great to us. And if we don't have treasures here on earth that somehow
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God is not with us, but we would continue to seek your face and your glory and proclaim your gospel to the world and to the nations that they might be saved from their sin and turn from their worldliness and worshiping false gods and instead would worship you, the true
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God who created all of heaven and earth, who saves us from our sins and delivers us into your perfect kingdom.
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May we always remember your gospel and honor Christ as the great judge of all.
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It's in his name that we pray. Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.