You irritate people when you stay focused. Sometimes.
Some people. You say, nope, that's not the mission. This is the mission. It's a good mission. Let's get it done. But you've got them right in your hands. It's not the mission.
Stay with this. And that's Gideon. Sort of David, you know, in the cave, like, you've got Saul, kill him. Or out while he was sleeping, I'd drive my spear right through the ground and just kill him. And David is just focused.
Nope. God made him king. God can take him out.
And I'm not doing it. 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. Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through Judges Chapter 8 and his message called Unexpected Opposition. Critical mission, which is an admission of guilt. Yahweh was in none of their thoughts. He each did what was right in his own eyes. Show us their heads. And Gideon, he's tired. He's hungry. He knows he's got these guys.
And he's not getting help from where he would have expected it the most. And he's got to face his men. What are they to do, slaughter Sukkoth and turn on their own people? Well, he's going to punish them.
He's just not going to do it now, which is another lesson that comes out of all of this. Now, you might say, well, the people of Sukkoth had good reason to fear. No, they did not. The fact that Gideon is chasing and retreating a full army and full retreat, the fact that he's chasing them out of the land is evidence enough. They should have rallied.
We see you got them. They don't offer troops and he doesn't ask for any. Remarkable how people of inaction can almost ruin the war and break your heart in the process. They offer him nothing, no food, no troops, no blessing, nothing. In fact, we're told in latter verses, in verse 15, that they even mock him.
That probably sealed their fate. So, here is another lesson. He doesn't stay to argue. He doesn't stay to deal with them. He doesn't major in the minors. He majors in the majors.
He stays focused on the important things. He goes after the Midianites. The war continues and here's another lesson. God's forces will march forward without you or with you.
It's up to you. It was up to the men of Sukkoth. They could have joined ranks. They should have joined ranks. Anybody thinks that they're just so important that if they leave the church, the church is going to crumble.
I can't tell you how many people have implied that over the years. I'm leaving and I'll be taking a bunch of people with me and you'll be out of a job and you won't be able to go, gosh, Satan gets in the heart of the best of us. This was a war that everybody had to take a risk in. They didn't know that they were taking a risk with the wrong side, these men of Sukkoth, but they were. Well, Gideon was risking his life and his men on the battlefield. He gets worse.
Don't worry, it gets worse. Verse 7, so Gideon said, for this cause, when Yahweh has delivered Zeba and Zalmunah into my hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briars. That's probably the point where they started mocking him. Oh yeah, sure, uh-huh, right, we're always shaking in our sandals. But Gideon, knowing how big this army is he's chasing, knowing how small his company is, we're going to take these guys. I don't have to kill the whole army. I just got to kill those two.
That's all I've got to do. What a man! I bet he messes it up, messes it all up at the end. Not completely, but he does damage. Anyway, this brand of neutrality in the war is going to cost them, and it's going to cost them severely. He could have, again, dealt with them on the spot, but he remains focused, refusing to help the servants of Israel. They ended up helping the enemies of Israel.
What a lesson! Jesus said it this way, He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters. And that's the men of Sukkoth, and don't worry, as I mentioned, there's more. Verse 8, Then he went up from there to Penuel, and spoke to them in the same way. And the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Sukkoth had answered.
More countrymen from Gad. Again, he's six miles hungrier, and more tired, and more irritated. He's got to be asking himself, what is with these people? Audolatry is with these people, that's what. Jesus is saying, is it me?
Why am I the only one that can understand? I've got my teeth in these guys, and I can't let them go. Don't you see the enemy is in full retreat. It's not even a sensible retreat. They're not even setting guards to slow us down.
They think that they just need to pell-mell out of here, and they're safe. And that's going to be the enemy's downfall. Verse 8, So he also spoke to the men of Penuel saying, When I come back in peace, I will tear down this tower. He will, and it's going to hurt, but he's going to hit them where it hurts.
He reminds us a little bit of Nehemiah, he didn't play around at this point. But he's going to do more damage to them than they're ready for. There's going to be blood. So he gives them a heads up, and he says, you can't be neutral.
Not in this, you will be scourged for it. Verse 10, Now Zeba and Zalmuno were in Carcor and their armies with them, about 15,000, all who were left of all the army of the people of the east, for 120,000 men who drew the sword had fallen. It's 135 warriors, 120 killed already and being killed probably as this is going on west of Jordan back in the promised land. And he's in Carcor, we know Carcor is in enemy territory, so that's how far he chased them. Gideon is outnumbered 50 to 1. The size of his, he's got 2% of their army, just 300 divided into 15,000. He's at 2%. 11% of the Midianite army has survived, and he doesn't again, he doesn't have to wipe out the whole army, he just has to take out the leaders.
Incidentally, Carcor means flat or a plateau, so it's an ideal battlefield and it's an ideal campground, but it doesn't offer any coverage. We're not going to be told how Gideon gets these two guys, but I'm suspecting there was, you know, a night mission involved and they just swooped in and took them and went on because it just, I mean, you can't, 300 men just can't kill 15,000 men with a sword, not in a day. I mean, you only get tired.
Even if you're eating a sandwich while you're just chopping them up, you just can't. It would be foolish for us to think that he will not annihilate them, he'll do some damage to some of them, but he gets away with it. Verse 11, then Gideon went up by the road of those who dwell in tents on the east of Nabah and Jogbetha, and he attacked the army while the camp felt secure. Well, the road, where it says the road of those who dwell in the tents, that's a caravan route, and he is surprised, the reason why he gets the advantage of a surprise attack is because they let their guard down. They're like, we're out of Israel's territory, we're not even in Gad's territory now, and they felt pretty good about themselves. I guess, you know, if Gideon had several hundred thousand men with him, they would have kicked up enough dust to be seen, but 300 men get away with it. He attacked the army while the camp felt secure, another lesson for us, don't feel secure. You can have peace for a while without feeling secure.
It's just a mindset, you understand, you set your guards. Verse 12, then Ziba and Zalmunna fled and pursued them, and he took the two kings of Midian, Ziba and Zalmunna, and routed the whole army. He doesn't say annihilate them or slaughter them, he defeats them, somehow, some way. What probably happened, they're engaged with the enemy once they capture the two kings, which really wouldn't have been too difficult in this sense. I mean, I wouldn't want to try it, I wouldn't advise you, but the kings would have had their garb on and been identifiable, or even if they didn't, they would have been able to determine where the kings were by how much the enemy concentrated defense around those people, and so they identified them, they attacked them. Once they captured the kings, the rest of the army would not have had a stomach for the fight. They're afraid that their kings would have been killed, so they all went back to their houses in defeat. We see this throughout scripture.
The story has to be believable, unless we are told that there's another miracle involved, which this is a form, it's miraculous, it's certainly fantastic. He routed the whole army, not annihilated it, he defeated it. Verse 13, then Gideon, the son of Joash, returned from battle from the ascent of Hariz. Now the King James, the old King James version, interprets Hariz as, the word means the son, but those who handle the words and other translators, they've not interpreted it that way. I think the King James has missed the translation.
It is the ascent of the son, the word is used elsewhere in Judges, so anyway, it's just a small thing if you're reading from the King James version, and you've listened to me read the verse, you've said, hey, mine says the son was up. It's probably not a very good translation. If, if, just say the King James is the right one and all the other ones are wrong, you've not really lost anything.
It's not a contradiction. You go to the original language and it's tenses, it's not enough to just have the words, you have to understand how the words work together, and that's how the translators do their thing, and we should be very grateful for them. Not the wicked ones. Incidentally, Jehovah Witnesses, Watchtower, they don't have translators. They have paraphrasers. That's what they have.
They're plagiarists. They have interpreters, but they do not have translators of the original languages. Verse 14, so he caught a young man of the men of Succoth and interrogated him, and he wrote down for him the leaders of Succoth and its elders, 77 men. Gideon is finished with the enemy. He's still got these two prisoners. Nobody's going to try to come and take him back. They're not that interested in him. Plus, Gideon can kill him at any point and that would defeat the purpose. So, but he's going to deal with Gad before he heads back home across the east of Jordan, and he catches this young man, and he says, hey, you're from Succoth.
We're going to let you live if you tell us who are the decision makers in your village. So the guy starts singing. The canaries are telling them, well, there's Joe Smacatelli. Then he just goes down the list.
You know, what would you do in that space? I never really liked those guys anyway. That's when you showed up. They should have gave you some biscuits or something, but mm-mm. Anyhow, Gideon is taking names.
This is deliberate, premeditated, well done. Their action was inexcusable. I mean it couldn't give bread to their own people fighting the enemy.
Probably a sizable village. Verse 15, then he came to the men of Succoth and said, here are Zeba and Zalmunah about whom you ridiculed me, saying, are the hands of Zeba and Zalmunah now in your hand that we should give bread to your weary men? Remember that? Remember?
That was just a few, remember? We stood there, we were parched, we were exhausted, we were hungry. Me and the 300, here we were. Ready to fight though. We were still ready to fight. But you people, you're not backstabbers, you're face slappers. You insult us. You do us harm in a cowardly way. And now it's time for payback.
Success is sweet revenge. That's what Gideon is saying. He's got these two kings there. He's saying, here they are, boy, I told you I was going to be back. Had to be a sickening feeling in the men of Succoth's stomach, especially when Gideon pulls out the list.
If I call your name, take one step forward. Verse 16, and he took the elders of the city and thorns of the wilderness and briars, and with them he taught the men of Succoth. Now, when he says he taught the men of Succoth, he didn't say, now this is a briar, it grows in an arid land, doesn't need full sun, it has a yellow flower in the spring, he does not give them any kind of lesson. He is beating them up. He may be killing them. We get that because that's what he's going to do at Penuel.
It says that. Some of the commentators believe that he, the way you thrash wheat, he did to them with these thorns and briars. I don't know if they've got enough basis from the text to say that, but anyway, briar beatings and taking names. That's Gideon at this point. He was really, really disturbed by how he and his men were treated. Gives new meaning to Hebrews chapter 13 where the writer says, let brotherly love continue. Then he goes on to say, do not forget to entertain strangers for by doing, some have unwittingly entertained angels. Well, in this case, it wasn't an angel, it was Gideon. The writer is talking about Abraham. Abraham received the strangers from heaven. He didn't know they were at the beginning, but he found out later. And so the writer to Hebrews says, as Christians, you don't know who's in front of you. God may bring somebody into your life and it's the Lord.
You better be careful. You better have that brotherly love. Well, there was no brotherly love coming from Sukkoth and Penuel towards Gideon in verse 17.
Then he tore down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city. He could have done this again first time when they said no, but he had bigger fish to fry, stayed focused. He stayed focused.
You irritate people when you stay focused sometimes, some people. You say, no, that's not the mission. This is the mission. It's a good mission. Let's get it done.
What do you have got right in your hands? It's not the mission. Stay with this. And that's Gideon. Sort of David, you know, in the cave, like, you got Saul, kill him. While he was sleeping, I'd drive my spear right through the ground and just kill him.
And David is just focused. Nope, God made him king. God can take him out. I'm not doing it.
And I'm sure that there were those that were inconvenienced by that. Abishai probably said, you know, I'm getting tired of being chased by Saul. David, just kill the guy. We can just get on with the whole nation thing. And David is, no, I'm king and this is how I'm doing it.
I've got this in my heart and I'm not going to give it up for you. You make enemies that way. You make enemies out of even nice people and people who you wish didn't feel the way they felt. Verse 18, and he said to Zibunzal Muno, what kind of men were they whom you killed at Tabor, Mount Tabor area? So they answered, as you are, so were they. Each one resembled the son of a king. So Gideon's dialoguing with these two kings he's captured. He's contemplating, you know, what am I going to do with them? Am I just going to kill them? Because if it were just that easy, he would have killed them.
And of course, there's time lapsing between these events. Gideon is home now. He's not at Sukkoth or Penuel.
We know that because the following verses Gideon's son shows up and he's a lad. And he certainly wasn't on the battlefield with them. So he's now home.
He's been returned to his hometown. In addition to ravaging the land, the Midianites were murdering people. Remember, we read about the people hiding in caves from them. And the local population being oppressed is serious stuff. I mean, imagine if it was happening in your neighborhood.
Invaders from another country coming and killing people and nobody able to do anything about it. We're not told when or where these murders, well, you know, Tabor area, we're not told when they took place. But these kings owned it. And they answered the question, yep, we did it. And Gideon says, what kind of men were they? Were they like peasants or were they renowned men of stature? The Midianite kings, they were like kings.
They had a regal manner about them. So they confessed to killing them. Then verse 19, surprise, and he said, Gideon speaking, they were my brothers, sons of my mother. As the Lord lives, if you had let them live, I would not kill you. So Gideon, can you see the look on their faces when he says, you know, they were no, they weren't my like brothers of my country. They were actually my brothers.
Same mom. And you killed them. This is not, you know, nepotism is the undue favor of family. When you slight everybody else to a fault, it's actually becomes a crime, because you're so busy looking out for your family. I mean, there are times you have to look out for your family.
Of course, I'm not saying you're not supposed to, but you can certainly abuse that. And Gideon is not abusing it. He has a right to kill these men as an avenger of blood, according to Numbers 35, clearly laid out in the law. These men were not only invaders, they were murderers. And not only that, they were murderers of Gideon's family, which may explain why he was hiding out in the wine press thrashing wheat because, you know, it has struck home. His family had been killed and he was, you know, he knew that he better not take chances. Verse 20, and he said to Jethur, his firstborn, rise and kill them, but the youth would not draw his sword for he was afraid because he was still a youth.
Well, youth by definition is an experience. Maybe we don't have told his age, but maybe Gideon shouldn't have put the kid on the line like this, you know. I'll make him, today I'll make a man out of you, boy. Just kill these two guys for me. Anyway, before we get back to that, how a soldier died in battle meant a lot, even to this day. I mean, you don't want to die in battle, you know, backing up a jeep in the rear or get hit by a truck. I mean, if you're going to die, let it be on the battlefield in a blaze of glory. Not trying to romanticize war, there's nothing romantic about war.
Anyway, it was important to their reputation. Abimelech, who is Gideon's son through a concubine, we'll get him in the next chapter, not a good person. He did not want to die at the hands of a woman.
She threw a stone off from on the wall and clunked him in his noggin, and he was dying and he knew it, and he had someone kill him. Saul, he did not want to die at the hands of the Philistines, so he asked, of course, his armor bearer to kill him, which he certainly refused to do. So if you're a king and someone is asking a child to kill you, that's an insult.
And that would have been just a humiliation those two kings certainly would not have wanted. And inexperienced, he doesn't know where to begin. Son, kill him, and he's not moving.
What do I do with this guy? Can't you give him poison, Dad? Verse 21, so Ziba and Zalmunna said, rise yourself and kill us, rise yourself and kill us, for as a man is, so is his strength. So Gideon arose and killed Ziba and Zalmunna and took the crescent ornaments that were on their camel's necks. This was apparent sarcasm intended to provoke Gideon to kill them. They knew if this lad all of a sudden decided okay, let me try, he was going to hack them up, and it would have been a torturous, gruesome, slow and painful death more than likely.
And this is in his, even you have, you know, professional henchmen mess it up, where they don't hang the guy the right way, they go to chop the head off and they miss to get the back, I mean the side of the head. So they knew about this and they wanted Gideon to just make this, get this over with. And they probably provoked him because, you know, they killed his brothers. It didn't take much to make Gideon say fine and go ahead and kill them. They were wise in doing that as men ago, and that's the end of those two men, verse 22. Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us, both you and your son, and your grandson also, for you have delivered us from the land of Midian. They offered him a hereditary monarchy, a dynasty, your whole family, your family will reign over for us forever. That's kind of the spirit here. Shows you how great a victory this was.
I mean he was just a star at this point in the nation. Gideon, nobody else could do this for years. We've been, the Midians have been coming in, and here you come and you beat all up. We want you to be king.
And it's not, of course, the first and only time this has happened in history. One of the key themes of the book of Judges is that there was no king in Israel. The historian, the scribes who published the final print that we have, or at least what contributed to it, recognized this. Recognized that there was tribal division, there was corruption, moral corruption, and that a king would very likely be able to stabilize this because the judges were, they were not over all the people all the time.
Mainly their tribes and surrounding tribes, but with perhaps the exception of Ahnoh El, they really were not ruling over all the people as a king would. 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, California. 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.
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