Typical God Victory (Part B)

The difference is sometimes we come up with an idea and we want God to bless it, but we're actually tempting the Lord. We're stepping.

We have no right to go out and do something and not giving us anything to do that. We just had a good idea and we step out thinking He's got to honor it and then it fails and then we're wondering how could God let this happen. I think in some cases, as I mentioned earlier, He's sifting out the leaders who will pick up themselves by their bootstraps and say, okay, Lord, what's next? But to be careful not to tempt the Lord. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Judges.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with his continuing study called Typical God Victory in Judges Chapter 7. So was this an indication that their character was less than ready for the elite mission? And I think so. God knows that. Now, they weren't rejects entirely because, as I mentioned, you'll see them come back, rejoin the battle. But not for this, the vanguard, the tip of the sword into the fight. Gideon will end up with the most suitable men and God picks them. I think there are lessons here. And the number of those who laughed putting their hands to the mouth there was 300 men selected.

So you have two postures and you can judge the significance one over the other. Verse 7. Then Yahweh said to Gideon, By the 300 men who laughed, I will save you and deliver the Midianites into your hand.

Let all the other people go, every man to his place. I think it's interesting that there's no second in command mentioned. That would have given Gideon another problem. But of course it is God who saves, whether it is through the 32,000 or the 300. It is again typical, a typical God victory that we're going to end up with.

Judges Chapter 5. Any leader should be familiar with this as well as any follower. You can't have one without the other. God does appoint some to be the leader and he appoints some to be the assistant leaders and he appoints others to be the troops. That's how things get done. You know, everybody cannot be a chief.

No Indians. Judges 5-2. When leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves, bless Yahweh.

And that is what we're watching here. The people are being led by Gideon and they're submitting to Gideon's rule. The 300 could have said, uh-uh, I am not going to war against those Midianites, just this little army.

We never read of that. If there were a second in command, or seconds in command, there would have been muteness. It would be shared that General MacArthur, when he laid out his plans to make his way to the Philippines, the commanders were saying would never work. But in typical MacArthur fashion, he was the commander. He gave his order and that was that. He didn't like it, he got court-martialed.

And he won. How much more should we expect that when God is working through his spirit? And sometimes, sometimes God intentionally allows the setbacks to sift out the doubts, to see if we're really in it. So you failed at your first attempt. Are you going to quit now? I didn't show you what's inside of you. That the fight is not yours to win.

What do you think? Because I said I'm going to be with you, we're just going to storm the gates? The battle will be won that day? It's too complex for that. Life's too complex.

Too many other things going on that you know nothing of. I just need you to surrender. We like to talk about, I surrender all when I'm good and ready. That's not surrender. Surrender means you have no option. Or actually it means this, the alternative is worse. To not surrender is worse than surrendering.

Force, there's force in life. Gideon is being forced into this situation. He's being forced into a situation where he's got to trust God more than anything else. At any point he could have gotten on his donkey and rode away.

He never does. So God says at the bottom of verse 7, let all the people go, every man to his own place. That means they are dismissed and there's not one recorded word of their protest. No one is saying, you mean you brought me all the way from Asher to here just to send me home? We don't get that. We don't get one, well this is my land and I have a right to fight for it.

We don't get that. Because the people, I believe, had a basic understanding that God appointed Gideon to this, that he was now filled with the Spirit for this. In verse 8, so the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands and he sent away all the rest of Israel, every man to his tent and retained those 300.

Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley. I will add that there will be some, you know, the fly in the ointment, as it says in Ecclesiastes, the dead flies in the ointment, something to spoil it. At the end of the victory, Ephraim is going to be pretty upset with things.

We'll get that in the next chapter, but Gideon is going to deal with it in a very successful way. But right now, the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands, and they were sent away. But they left supplies for those that were there.

You can't fight without supplies, not very long. Likely, you know, I have a horn, you can have it, food, water jugs, whatever supplies maybe have been lacking or whatever they felt maybe they needed more of. The word where he says, they sent the men to their tent is the prevailing word is their homes. It's an expression, to your tents, O Israel. But many of them were living in, you know, structures. Some may still have preferred tents, but overall structures. Verse 9, it happened on the same night that Yahweh said to him, arise, go down against the camp, for I have delivered it into your hand.

Cough, cough, with 300 men, Lord, I don't think so. That's what the natural response would have been. The difference is sometimes we come up with an idea and we want God to bless it, but we're actually tempting the Lord. We're stepping, we have no right to go out and do something.

They've not given us anything to do that. We just had a good idea. And we step out thinking he's got to honor it. And then it fails and then we're wondering how could God let this happen?

I think in some cases, as I mentioned earlier, he's sifting out the leaders who will pick up themselves by their bootstraps and say, okay, Lord, what's next? But to be careful not to tempt the Lord. Under the guise of faith, you have to have, you can't be outside the scripture. There's got to be prayer involved. The Holy Spirit's leading has to be present. And the situation has to be considered. And you have got to put all those together, and if you have that leading of the Spirit and everything else is not out of bounds, you press forward.

And if you do that enough times, it becomes sort of your training. You don't have to think so much about it. You know you're praying, you're talking, and you say, I've been here before. I'm going to step out.

I'm not guaranteed victory, but I am guaranteed to be with the Lord. And that's how it's supposed to be done. What happens so often, though, is someone has already got a plan.

They've implemented somewhere else, and they're going to implement it now. And you've got to get, you know, stir people up to participate. You've got to stir them up to contribute.

And, you know, it's just unfortunate. When we worked on this church, when we turned this structure into an assembly for God, those who came out to work were all volunteers. They wanted to do this for the Lord. They were honored to do this. You could see it in their faces. They loved it. They left the worrying to me, and there really wasn't too much of that.

One or two bumps, that's about it. I was always waiting for the big one. It never came. So, God, notorious for delay, because that's another part of how God leads. Hurry up and wait is with God, too. But, just like with military today, you better be ready when the command comes down. And this, of course, is the lesson of the ten virgins. Five of them were ready.

The other five were not. It's too late. So, God is notorious for delay, but we are supposed to be ever ready. Minute men. We like that when we hear about the minute men in our history, the history of this country, about when it's in our lives. Verse 10, but if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah, your servant. I just love this part.

I just love it. Maybe last time, I don't know how many years ago it was, five or six, probably more, whatever it was, I probably would have looked at this verse and said, yeah, Gideon had fear. But now I put myself in Gideon's spot and say, I would have had fear. You really can't get much done with a leader who doesn't fear.

You get them to be a little nervous about a situation, you're extracting the best from him. God knew the drastic troop reduction would rattle Gideon's faith. He knew it. That's why he says to him, if you're still afraid. God knows he's afraid. He's got it all ready for him. He's going to tell us. Three times already, he has assured Gideon that he is with him. But he understands that his methods with Gideon are breaking down that assurance. And so he's going to build them up again instead of just, you know, scolding him or something, you know, like that. He doesn't do that. He's already given him three special signs. It was the fire onto the rock to consume the offering.

It was the fleece dry and the fleece set. And he also stripped him of his fighting force. And God's going to help. He does that. God says, you know, I'll come back and I'll confirm again because I know in between here and there, there's a lot of stuff. Leviticus, God says, for I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful. Multiply you and confirm my covenant with you. God is telling future generations of the righteous, I will look favorably on you. I'll make you fruitful. As Jesus said, you can't bear fruit without me.

I'll multiply you. What happens when we get to the book of Acts? The church is magnified. The church is multiplied. The church is magnified because they magnified the Lord. The Christ was magnified. The church was magnified. And they were fruitful. They multiplied with believers. And it was such a basic formula. It was just so basic. And it's frowned upon today for churches to model themselves after the book of Acts. You got to do more.

You got to stir yourself up into something. Gideon was a practical man. He was neither cowardly nor was he lion-hearted. I mean, he wasn't like next to a Caleb or next to Benaiah.

But he was a practical man. And it took courage for him to act on what God is saying. So we look again at verse 10. But if you are afraid, go down and go down to the camp with Pura your servant. So God, the buddy system, he says, take your buddy with you because you're going to get up close to the enemy. You've got to get close enough to hear them in dialogue.

Well, that takes a little courage, I would think. And God is not unsympathetic to him. He says, take your servant with you in verse 11. And you shall hear what they say. And afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp. And then he went down with Pura, his servant, to the outpost of the armed men who were in the camp. He's up close enough to hear the sentries talking, their perimeter.

That takes guts. This is the kind of men God wants, the kind of women God wants. The Lord does not tell Gideon what he's going to hear. He told Gideon how he's going to react to what he hears.

And, you know, you say, why is he withholding it? Why doesn't he raise up a prophet to come and tell Gideon? The situation was such, God, that it didn't work.

It worked in other times with other people, but not every time. With Gideon, Padre would have dismissed. I can see Gideon saying, thank you, I know the Lord is on my side, I know that, God's been speaking to me, but I just got this uneasy feeling. Three hundred men, I mean, come on. What am I supposed to do with that?

Well, he's going to find out. Verse 12, and the Midianites and the Amalekites, their allies, and all of these are like the worst bikers you could have in your neighborhood with no law enforcement. You just see them with their vest on and Midianites across the back. All the people of the east, others other than these two people, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts, and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude. That would make your stomach drop. You come out, you see the enemy's forces.

It's just, no way. And they don't know that Gideon had only, well, they might have known he had 32,000 men come out because they would have counted the divisions. That's how they would have quickly assessed what they were up against.

They wouldn't have laughed at that. But they don't know now he's got three hundred men. And so, verse 13, and when Gideon had come there, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. He said, I have had a dream. To my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian.

It came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned, and then the tent collapsed. Then his companion answered and said, this is nothing but the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. Into his hand God has delivered Midian in the whole camp. Gideon's got to say, this is, you can't fake this.

This is not staged. These are the enemy's troops having a discussion. They don't know I'm, you know, low riding out here, listening to them. Hopefully, what we do as Christians, we read these stories and we absorb the lessons. But I will have to add, you can absorb all the lessons you want to when it comes time to face the hardship.

It's not going to be, you know, easy peasy Japanesey. It's going to be tough, nonetheless. But you will make it. And you will make it without going to the world for help. You will make it in Christ. And when it's done and you're all beat up, you will say, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. You can go through a rut with God for years. I know what I'm talking about. And nobody else can know but you.

It's possible. Then you come out of that rut and nobody knows but you unless you tell them. And the way to do it is you abide in Christ as the vine and the branch.

I mean, the vine and the fruit. You abide in him. You just stick to him no matter what. No matter, you got to fix that in your head. Get that in your noggin. No matter what, I ain't going anywhere else.

I will sop up none of the gravy of idolatry or this world's ideas about how I'm supposed to go through this life. Your option is, you can leaven it, you can depart from the Lord. Take your lumps. Talk about, I'm so depressed. That's life. Face it.

It won't last forever. You will get to the other side. You know, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. He's in the castle, in Doubting Castle. The giant has him prisoner for trespassing, for being where he didn't belong and the giant beats him in hopefuls savagely. And Bunyan is saying, I'm a Christian.

I'm going to use scripture verses to back up this illustration I'm giving you because I'm going through this here in Bedford Prison for 12 years. He wasn't just, I got a good story. He was living it. He knew about depression and doubt and Satan and all the things that are thrown at us in this life.

He knew it. So we listened to this story from Gideon and we have to put ourselves in Gideon's place. I am a commander of the Lord's forces and they're meager forces compared to the world's standards, but I'm in line for a typical God victory. I don't know how it's coming. I don't know what I got to go through, but I'll get there.

And that's how it's worked for me. Otherwise, it's just a bedtime story for children. It's just a fairy tale that has no bearing on what we face.

And as you roll through the decades, as you go through your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, as you go through these, you go through different stages. We'll go with the scriptures, that's all. As we would say, hell or high water. Well, we are here about these two centuries who didn't know Gideon's out there listening and not knowing how small an army he had. So the picture that's given to us is that of a stale hard loaf of barley rolling through their camp and collapsing their leadership and their army. Barley, the food of the poor farmer. Wheat was the bread of choice. Barley wasn't as good as the wheat. And that was Gideon.

It's just barley compared to the wheat. And yet this is who God is using. And the man who interpreted the dream, again, had no idea God was speaking through him to the servant that was hiding or out of sight, encouraging God's servant. Now God, he uses believers to prophesy, unbeknownst to them, once he actually spoke through a donkey. So that kind of sets the bar pretty high.

I mean, that's like the lesson to get to the point, and then I'll come and fill it in. When God cannot rule, he decides at times to overrule. And that's what we see here, and that's what we see when Abimelech had a vision from God, he was an unbeliever. When Joseph's fellow prisoners had their dreams that Joseph interpreted, when the Pharaoh had his dream that Joseph interpreted, God could have given the dreams to Joseph to tell them, but he did not. Joseph interpreted them. The witch at Endor in Saul's day, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams that Daniel interpreted. In the New Testament, Caiaphas prophesied being the high priest as his expedient for someone to die for the, for one to die for the nation.

There was the wife of Pilate, had nothing to do with this man. I have had a dream, a vision about him. So yeah, God, we overrule whenever he wants to overrule. He not only gives the unbelievers the dream, he gives the other one the interpretation on the spot. Sometimes Daniel had to walk away, I'll be back, I'll get this, I'll pray about this one. I love the Lord how he does these things when I'm reading it in someone else's life. I'm not too happy when it's me because I don't know what's going to happen and I don't know how I'm going to do. But if I'm afraid of failing, I'm not going to do much if that's all I've got.

It's okay to be afraid to fail, it's not okay to just leave it like that. And so, you know, once God uses a lying prophet, you know, 1 Kings chapter 13, where the man of God is told, you go preach my word and you come back this way and don't you stay with anybody or stop to eat or anything like that. Well, he's coming back and the other prophet hears he's in town who was bypassed, incidentally. God had to find a different prophet, so the lying prophet who was bypassed, he approaches the solid prophet and he says, no, no, God gave me a vision, he's lying. Come eat, and he's eating. And then while he's eating, he cries out, the lying prophet cries out with a true prophecy, oh, you're going to die.

You should not have been here. And of course the lion kills him, the true prophet. And you just shake your head and you say, let me not try to put God in a box, but let me operate within the confines that he has surrounded me with through his word.

Hopefully, that will keep me courageous and not so self-righteous and judgmental. I mean, there are times we have to judge. A person who's impenitent is judged by their actions and we just ratify it. Well, these events, God using these false, well, these unbelievers and backslidden prophet does not exonerate them or condone their lifestyle.

They're still guilty. It just means God can overrule when he is good and ready. The witch in Endor again, one of the great ones where God just says, yeah, I'm going to break this party up. And she didn't see that coming.

So I love that. Anyway, if he's not permitted to rule in the heart, he'll take control when he needs. Gideon, as he's going through this whole thing, as he hears this, he now feels, of course, strong, that God is with him. And the reason why he had to be there in the first place is because he factored God out. He limited God.

And that, in fact, was factoring him out. We do it. I do it. And I wouldn't believe anybody who says they never did it unless they never tried to do anything for the Lord. If you do anything for the Lord, you're going to come into contact with opposition. Ask the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. Did he face that? What did the Lord say? He said, my soul is troubled before he got to the garden.

But unless a grain of wheat dies, falls to the ground and dies, it brings forth no fruit. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross-Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross-Reference Radio.