LET HIM WHO BOASTS BOAST IN THE LORD
Judges 7  1 Corinthians 1:26-31

INTRODUCTION
Well congregation, the Lord has certainly got a lot of strings to his bow hasn’t he?  Last week we began by reading “And the land was undisturbed for forty years.”  And all the while we thought that "God was in his heaven and all was well with the world,” as the little Victorian poem had it, he was actually testing Israel.  And here he is testing them again.  No big deal, Gideon just says to his ten thousand men, “Listen chaps, before we go down to attack the Midianites, we should just pull back to the brook and have a bit of a drink.  It’ll be thirsty work once we get going.”  

But blow-me-down, while all the men are there, drinking away at the stream Gideon, sneaky fellow, was quietly standing over there on a rock, psycho-analyzing them.  You can’t be too careful in this world, can you?  You never know how any little innocent act is going to be looked at sideways, cut up and fed through a Taylor-Johnson personality test and interpreted.  This must be the ultimate in body language reading.  You better check where the elders are afterwards I think.  Watch how you drink your coffee.  They might be watching.  

Well you see congregation, we are very slow learners. Ever since the fall we’ve had this terrible habit of putting our right hand over left shoulder and patting ourselves on the back.  It comes automatically. "My own power has delivered me." Or like Nebuchadnezzar as he looked at Babylon that day, “Has not my hand made this great city?"  Then we forget the Lord. That is the very reason the Midianites were down there in the valley in the first place.  And when God came to save Israel from them, he was going to make sure it was very obvious to them, and to the Midianites, that it was he who had saved them and not they themselves.  

As we have worked our way through this book we have so far seen Ehud, the guy bound in his right hand, the guy for whom everything was left-handed. We’ve seen God use Barak – good, stolid unquestioning Barak.  Plain ordinary bloke. Now it was time to use Gideon, the youngest son from the smallest family in a rejected tribe.  How does God do it?  Let us see.  

1.	THE LORD DOES NOT NEED GREAT NUMBERS
Here is Gideon. He has blown the trumpet.  He has sent out the summons throughout his reject tribe Manasseh and also the tribes of Asher and Zebulon and Naphthali. And in they flock.  I think he was probably a bit overwhelmed. Thirty-two thousand of them came at his call.  

They’ve all gathered there on the hill of Manasseh, just south of and looking down into the valley of Jezreel where Sisera’s chariots had got bogged down just forty-seven years ago.  They looked down into that valley and it was full of Midianites and their camels. A hundred and thirty-five thousand of them.  Every Israelite was going to have to take on four and a half Midianites.  There were going to have to be a few Gimlis and Legolases among them doing their Helm’s Deep bit, taking out twenty-eight and twenty-nine-a-piece. 

But the Lord says to Gideon, “Too many, Gideon.  Oh, they’ll win, but at four and a half-a-piece they’re just going to think they’re great. You better tell those who are afraid to go home.”  Poor old Gideon couldn’t argue against that because it was written in the Law – Deuteronomy 20.  It was allowed.  

Nothing happens for a bit. Then one poor trembling fellow out there on the side quietly slunk away hoping no one would see him.  Ha, ha, no such luck mate!  You’ve no idea how many others were waiting for you to be the first.  So a few more went, and then poor Gideon wondered just what on earth was going on, as one after another hung his head a little sheepishly and turned tail.  But soon the whole parade ground was moving and Gideon could see more backs than faces.  

It must have been all terribly demoralizing.  When he’d finally restored order, he had a whole ten thousand.  “Lord, do you really mean every second one of these guys is a Gimli or a Legolas?"  For those of you who have not read The Lord of the Rings, the film will be out later in the year. It won’t be up to the book, but see it anyway.  

And the Lord says to Gideon – he just ignores his question – “There are still too many Gideon.”  “But Lord," says Gideon, "have you looked over the hill there?" "The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the East were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts and their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore.“ "Have you seen them Lord?”  The Lord takes no notice. So Gideon has to administer this drinking test.  

I’m not sure we can make much out of this test.  The best I think we can do is to say that the three hundred God chose were those who scooped the water out of the stream and lapped it up out of their hands and while they did that they could still be on the alert, they could still be watching for the enemy. But the others knelt down and drank straight out the stream.  

But as one commentator says, and I think he’s dead right, if we look at it like that, we miss the whole point.  Because the point God wants to make is that the battle is his, not Israel’s – whether it is won by thirty-two thousand regulars or three hundred SAS troops.  Can’t you see those three hundred – swaggering around with their shaved heads and their wrap-around shades and black suits over black vests thinking they’re just classy.  But the point was precisely the opposite: to draw attention away from men, to God.  And apart from reasonable discipline, absolute quietness for an hour, no military skills were required.  

Whether Gideon knew what he was going to do, I’m not sure, but as another writer put it, "You know Lord, that unseasonable thunderstorm was just the ticket for Barak, but you’re really going to have to pull the big one out of the hat this time.  It’ll have to be something like a meteorite dropped in the middle of those guys down there in the valley."  But that is just where God is going to show us up, as we see, 

2.	THE LORD STRENGTHENS THE DOUBTERS
It Is almost as if God has got the measure of Gideon by now.  Well of course, God’s got the measure of us all the time, but sometimes he plays us along.  He knows that Gideon is susceptible to the fiery darts of doubt that the devil throws at us and so instead of waiting for the next of his interminable questions, God simply says, “But Gideon, if you’re afraid to go down, take Purah your servant, go down to the camp and you will hear what they say and afterward your hand will be strengthened."  

So they go down there and they hear one fellow tell another of his dream in which a barley loaf comes rolling down the hill and bowls over a Midianite tent. Barley was the food of the poorer sorts of people and perhaps it symbolized Israel, tied to the soil, growing barley; whereas the tent was the symbol of the freedom of the proud Bedouin raider.  Only this time, as the dreamer’s mate recognizes, the peasant farmer with his loaf of bread is going to take out the nomad warrior.  "This can only be Gideon, the son of Joash. We’re done for."  

Now what is God saying to us in this?  "The Greeks strive after wisdom and the Jews clamour for signs," Paul tells us. Neither are happy with the simple Word of God.  On the other hand, "God never leaves himself without a witness."  Our faith is not an unreasonable faith and nor is it powerless.  

In Isaiah’s day, God sent a message to Ahaz, the good king Jotham’s son who had just become king.  And to assure him, Isaiah invites him to ask of God a sign that would attest Isaiah as God’s prophet, bringing God’s message. But all of a sudden this rapscallion Ahaz decides to get all pious.  And he says, “Oh, far be it from me to test the Lord by asking for a sign.”  "Oh?" the Lord answered, ”Well you’ll get a sign anyway.  I bring you a message of comfort and deliverance and you don’t want it.  Well the sign will be the Babylonian captivity, just because of your willfulness.”  

The point is this congregation, God loves us as his people and he speaks to us and he seeks to strengthen and encourage us for the work he calls us to do.  And it is not up to us either to quibble about the means he uses or to think we‘re strong enough to do without them.  So God has given us to each other as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.  He has given himself to us as his head.  He gives us the communion of the saints to foster our life in Christ.  And he gives us the Church and her ministry to teach us and to guide us.  

The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4, “Christ gave some as pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of service, to build up the body of Christ until we all attain to unity, to the knowledge of Christ. Until we attain to maturity and stability in Christ, each one of us in turn, building up one another in love."  Why then are we so easy going about our church life or attendance at the Lord’s Supper or our fellowship with our brothers and sisters whom God has given us to help us?  

It's the old temptation from the beginning that God was dealing with here with Israel.  We’re inclined to think we are strong enough to stand on our own.  Now, we are to grow strong in the faith.  We are to become mature.  We are to strive to be teachers of others and not always needing milk ourselves.  But that strength is still from and in Christ and given to us through the ministry of his body.  Too many times, people of God have we seen Christians thinking themselves strong, fall away from the faith.  

"Let us hold fast our confession of faith,” says the letter to the Hebrews, "and let us consider one another to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together but encouraging one another.”  And why is all that?  So that we can hold fast the confession of our faith.  That’s the context in which Paul gave that exhortation.  And if the Lord says we need these things, then we need them.  Whether we can see or understand how they help us or not.  A little later in Hebrews it says, “Do not despise the discipline of the Lord.”  

Well, if we are not to despise the Lord's discipline, surely we are not to despise what the Lord gives to encourage and strengthen us. So Gideon bowed his head in worship and, just as Jesus told Peter when he had restored him to grace after his great defection and denial of his Lord, then he strengthened his brethren,   “Up men,” says Gideon, “for the Lord has given Midian into your hands.”

3.	THE LORD GIVES GREAT VICTORY IN HIS OWN WAY
Now whether the Lord told Gideon directly this plan of action or whether his questioning mind had slowly put it together over the last couple of days, I don’t know but we all know the story. 

Just after midnight there’s this enormous racket as three hundred men at once crash their wives' best crock-pots – earthen-ware pitchers.  Then the night is ablaze with three hundred flaming torches. Then there are three hundred trumpets sounding the advance.  Think about that.  Normally of course, when an army goes into battle, there are a couple of drummer boys and a few buglers, but they’re a kind of side-show just to give directions to the real army.  Imagine how big an army the Midianites must have thought was coming when they heard three hundred trumpets blasting away.  

And what a scene, what pandemonium!  There they are, deep in sleep, just after midnight and suddenly they are woken by this enormous racket.  Every police-state knows the tactic.  Read Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  The secret police always knock at the door in the very early hours of the morning when you’re fast asleep.  And they pour on the action.  They demand a quick response when you’re completely disorientated and hardly awake.  So the Midianite soldiers wake, bolt upright, and straight away they see men moving outside the tent because, of course, its just after the change of the watch, so some of them are just coming off duty, back to their tents.  But you wake up suddenly in the middle of all that racket and you think it’s the enemy in the middle of the army right away.  

And before you can say Jack Robinson, or "The Sword of Midian against Gideon” or whatever their war cry was, every man had his sword out and was slashing away. No time or inclination or thought to see the need to identify the target.  The Midianites, you know, often got on with the Ishmaelites (cf.8:24).  Well it was Ishmael’s blessing all right – wild men.  "Every one’s hand against every one else and everyone else’s hand against him."  

There was one other factor. It's not mentioned but I’m sure it played its part – the camels. That racket of the breaking of the pitchers would have woken them as quick as the men and they would have been terrified by the waving torches.  They would have been up and off from one end of the camp to the other. Only in the middle they met the others coming from the other end and they would have turned round and gone charging back, come face to face with the torches again and back they come in again.  And of course, under their long panicking legs and big padded feet as they charged to and fro across the camp were the tents, the piles of equipment, the cooking fires and flailing and slashing, terrified Midianite soldiers. And so their very great strength turns out to be their greatest weakness.  

Who needs thirty-two thousand or even ten thousand with a tactic like that?  All Israel had to do was to pursue a defeated enemy.  People of God, we’re in the same position.  Has not our great enemy been defeated by a similarly unexpected ruse, as it were? Paul tells us that "if the rulers of this age had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory."  So all that great but merely human wisdom and the understanding of unbelievers is the very thing that trips them up and keeps them from salvation.  So we read in 2 Corinthians 4; “The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,'" just as it did all of a sudden on that night," is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels."  Well Gideon and his three hundred had something in earthen vessels that night too which was a treasure to Israel in the end.  "We have this treasure in earthen vessels."  Why? “That the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.”
Congregation, the Lord has won a great victory for us, indeed far greater than this and he now calls us and sends us out to do even greater things than this, Jesus said, and we’ll see more about that next week.  But the victory is won.  And it is won through "the servant who came to do thy will, O God."  That is the way God works.  As we are obedient, he uses us.  It doesn’t matter if we’re only a few.  It doesn’t matter if we’re apparently weak and unarmed.  "God has chosen the weak, the foolish, the base things of the world to shame the things that are.  The things that are not to nullify those that are" – or appear to be. And then lastly.  

4.	THE LORD GIVES AUTHORITY
We have in this country a Christian Heritage Party.  That’s fair enough.  We are called to be witnesses for the Lord about life in its fulness. But it is unlikely to be greatly blessed until we get first things right first.  God used Gideon, in the first place, because he had first made him a godly man, from all the evidence that we have.  Gideon then set his own household and family and town to rights.  Then he called on his tribe and neighbours.  Those who were likely to be antagonistic, Ephraim, he left until later.  

Because of all that, God has now used him to put the Midianites to utter rout.  And to make sure the job is done completely, he calls on Ephraim now. “Quick men, down to the fords of the Jordan and cut these blighters off.”  And they certainly did, in fact they cut two of their princes' heads off.  

But it was not just a call.  It was not just a cry for help.  It was an order. “So the men of Ephraim were summoned,” we read.  This was the tribe, remember, that would be inclined to think it was superior to these men of Manasseh – and they obey on the spot! They barely had time to hear a few garbled reports of the whole show. 

Why did they respond so quickly? – because their noses were out of joint, as we see from 8:1 next week (Lord willing). Perhaps only because the Midianites were fleeing through their territory, right past their front doors. At any rate, they do obey.  The Lord has given Gideon an authority now. The lynching party was searching for him in his own home town only a day or two before. Now Ephraim is snapping to attention and clicking its heels to him.  Because Gideon was faithful in his home town, God was giving him authority over many cities. Because Gideon had proved himself, he was now given authority over the household of God. That is the way God works. 

To the Jew first, within the circle of the Covenant first, then all Judea, then Samaria, then the uttermost parts of the earth. I am not saying we should not have Christian Heritage Parties and so trying to bring the righteousness of God to our national life. I am only saying don't expect to be used out there if we are not obedient here – in the home and in the Church. I am not saying we shouldn't be seeking to evangelize the world. I am only saying don't expect to be blessed over there if we are neglecting to read the Word of God to our own children or we haven't begun or are not working now in our own neighbourhood or workmates. The Lord gave Gideon wider authority because he was first obedient in the closest circle. Daniel is another excellent example.
CONCLUSION
People of God, sometimes we're inclined to think the world is unsaveable. I often think the West has a long way to go before we will see any great turning to God. And frankly, the Church too, enjoys too much of the good life and so obedience comes hard. Maybe we also need seven years of Midianites to bring us to the end or ourselves.
Maybe we all do.  Sometimes I think the spirit of the age is completely contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. Of course, it is. Because the spirit of the age is always the spirit of the anti-Christ in one form or another. But when we think about things like that, are we not doing just what Gideon did? Thinking we would have to amass soldiers against soldiers, sign against sign, intellect against intellect, night-club church against a night-club world?
The Lord is not fazed by great numbers. And if we try to take on the world by its own methods, the Lord will simply say, "Too many." Or, "Wrong way." Or some such. The victory is always the Lord's and it is always won by his ways and generally by what looks so utterly foolish over against the sophisticated ways of the world.
But when the Lord goes out – be it with daft-looking things like 300 hill-men hiding torches in earthen-ware pitchers and old rams-horn trumpets – the Lord always wins. All he needs is humble and obedient servants who know their God and trust his Word. And he'll do it all over again, O valiant warriors. So go, people of God, "Go in this your strength, for the Lord is with you."			Amen
        Rev. John Rogers, Reformed Church of the North Shore, 1st July, 2001