paring down for a purpose

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.'"
Judges 7:2

God does the opposite of what we expect. This battle with the Midianites was intimidating. Yet, Israel was prepared to take them on. Thirty-two thousand men showed up at Gideon's call to arms. That was impressive. But God was not impressed with it. In fact, He wanted fewer volunteers. God wanted the outcome to clearly be divine salvation. And Israel would be tempted to claim a military and not a spiritual victory.

So God pared down the ranks. Gideon made one simple request: Anyone who was fearful could head back home. Two-thirds of his army quit right then. But God still thought that 10,000 were too many. God pared down the troops to an elite force of 300. And that group of 300 were going to take on the innumerable mob of Midianites so large that their encampment filled an entire valley.

God got the outcome He purposes. Those 300 men defeated the Midianites using nothing but torches and shouts. God clearly delivered Israel. Gideon just obediently and faithfully followed this unorthodox battle strategy because God had helped him to learn trust. And what looked like a certain suicide mission became a walloping of the enemy!

I wonder how Church Growth gurus preach this passage. It does not fit the American sensibility of the franchised box church of 3,000+ members. We always think bigger is better, that bigger gets the job done and is the measure of success. Could we be forgetting that the measure of success is really faith in God? That is the big lesson from Gideon's story. He faltered in trusting God from the beginning, and God led him the opposite way so that eventually all that Gideon could do was recklessly trust God in a plan that seemed irrational from human standards. That is where the victory is found... with God... letting him pare down our pride so that we are left with Him. He is all we need for success and joy!


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

leadership in the rough

Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor."
Judges 6:11-12

God is going to chisel away at Gideon and make him the leader He wants him to be. I have always found it funny that God called Gideon a "mighty man of valor" when He met him hiding out from the Midianites. These hardly seems to be a brave man at the moment. Like the rest of Israel, he is in survival mode, just trying to fly under the radar of Midianite oppression. But God sees something more.

Israel has begun a return to God after seven years of this experience. The text says that they had cried out to God (even though later in the text they seem to have hedged their bets with Baal and Asherah as well) and God heard them. He sent a prophet to prepare them for their deliverance as they acknowledged their sin. Now, Gideon was being prepared to lead the military campaign that would deliver the nation.

Gideon is a man full of uncertainties. He knows he has talked to God and eventually is very afraid at the significance of that. But then he confirms God's call on him not once, but twice, as if he struggled to really believe that God had spoke to him at the sacrificial altar. He does become a much more confident leader than Barak was under Deborah. But he still has much growth to achieve before the battle can be waged.

God chooses to use frail men. And God would whittle away at Gideon's confidence still more until his capacity to trust would be ready to be used by God. In the end, it will be very clear that God answered Israel's cry for help. Gideon would be a leader whose very leadership experience would be defined and known as God's work, not his own. And this insecure wheat-thresher was about to find this all out. How great of God to use us in all our insecurities, faith weaknesses, and slowness to believe! God finds people "in the rough" and chisels at them until they become someone who clearly had a work of God done in, through, and by them.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

lessons from the music of triumph

To the sound of musicians at the watering places, there they repeat the righteous triumphs of the LORD, the righteous triumphs of his villagers in Israel. Then down to the gates marched the people of the LORD.
Judges 5:11

The song of Deborah is a rare moment of art and joyful celebration in the book of Judges. After the defeat of Sisera, Deborah and Barak led the nation while it was still assembled for battle into a worship service of wild celebration. They wanted the people to rejoice in the victory that God had given them.

This Hebrew poem begins with an invitation to bless the Lord, and then gives a description of the conflict from God's point of view. God marched to Edom. God shook the ground and the mountains trembled before Him as He marched to war for Israel.

Then the battle poem is rooted in historical events as the events of oppression are described. It is clear that the normal life of villagers in Israel was awful... that is until God rose up Deborah to help lead the nation out of spiritual poverty and into renewed commitment. And Deborah is thankful that God raised up civil and military commanders who would be used to defeat the oppression.

From there an epic description of the battle is put to song. The Canaanite kings are defeated and the humiliating fate of Sisera at the hands of a woman is celebrated in song. The poem ends with a particularly humiliating bit of poetry about Sisera's mother waiting for her boy to return home. Her mommy's boy died at the hands of a woman who served him curdled milk! The irony and mockery are quite evident. The Israelites are rubbing it in because God has delivered them.

In terms of application of this lengthy bit of poetry stuck in the middle of a book that chronicles military battles and spiritual failure, I offer this: God's rescues are always worth celebrating. And we can look back on events from the viewpoint of His work in our lives and celebrate the moments when clearly His providence has led us. That is the theatre being put on in this passage. And it serves a great purpose. The chapter ends with a generation at peace with God and themselves. For forty years Israel was able to return to "normal". God had granted victory. And the turning point came when He used two women in unforeseen ways to deliver His people. God gets the glory. We get the benefits of giving Him that praise.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

faithlessness & the dumb things we say

She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, "Has not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded you, 'Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand'?" Barak said to her, "If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go."
Judges 4:6-8

The narrative of the story of Deborah is one of God moving despite the faithlessness of His people. First we need to know the characters. There were good guys and bad guys. First the bad guys... Jabin is the Canaanite king who is oppressing Israel at the time. Sisera is the general leading an elite force of 900 iron chariots. He is leading the military occupation. Israel is powerless to defeat this technology.

But there are good guys. And the leader of the good guys is a good gal: Deborah. She is called a judge, a prophetess, and a "mother in Israel". She has a "court" of sorts under a palm tree and the people travelled to the hill country of Ephraim for her assistance and leadership. When things got bad enough, she called upon Barak to lead a military campaign to overthrow Sisera and Jabin. She knows it is just a matter of force, and the right leader can motivate 10,000 men to eliminate the military advantage of 900 chariots.

But Barak is not a brave leader. He is at best just a little less than confident. He refuses to take on God's call unless Deborah joins him in the battle. She does so, but warns him that the humiliation coming to him would be that the general would fall to a woman's hand.

What really bothers me when I read this passage is that Barak made this choice readily. He was willing to modify God's call due to his own fears. Think about it: a spokesperson for God (the prophetess Deborah) approached him and told him to take on this task... that God would deliver the enemy over to him. There is an army ready to be led, just the right man to do the leading was all that was left. And God chose Barak to be the commander of that army. That should have been all the confidence that man needed. But faithlessness will lead you to say some bold and defiant things. And Barak refuses the assignment UNLESS a woman goes with him. He has more confidence in the messenger than he has in the message or the God Who spoke it to him. He is really dictating to God the terms of his obedience. But Israel needs deliverance, and God graciously allows for this in His sovereign plan. It does not make Barak's lack of confidence any less disturbing. But it makes God's victory even greater.

True to the prophecy, Israel wipes out Sisera's army. The general flees to an allied city, only to find death at the hands of a woman, Jael, who offers him refuge. He meets a gruesome end with a tent peg driven through his brain by an enterprising and scheming woman who also wanted to end his oppression. The Canaanite tyranny of Jabin is ended, and God is glorified, even in the faithlessness and dumb statements of a leader named Barak.

So the real lesson is between Deborah and Barak. God will use us sometimes, even in our faithlessness. That is the lesson of Barak. God wants us to be faithful, and will use faithful people even above what we might think, as evidenced by Deborah.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

divine testing

They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
Judges 3:4

Sometimes bad circumstances exist in the lives of God's people as an opportunity in God's plan to test our faithfulness and commitment. Israel's disobedience had led to the Canaanite nations living among them. But the text in Judges is clear with this statement that God had a sovereign purpose even in their choice to incompletely follow His command. These nations would be used to teach warfare to new generations (Judges 3:1-3) and to test the spiritual fidelity of succeeding generations of Israelites.




I am currently reading Jerry Bridges' book "Trusting God". It is an interesting and in-depth book on the sovereignty of God. That is a subject in short supply among evangelicals, at least in the sense that the scriptures treat the subject. This verse in Judges is just one example. God will have a sovereign purpose even in negative circumstances. This runs counter-intuitive to progress oriented success minded Christians today. But sometimes the greatest spiritual success comes within situations filled with physical difficulties. I am looking forward to reading on in Bridges' analysis of scriptural sovereignty. He treats the theological subject with intense practical and personal accessibility, which is the way I think all good theology should lead us.

When trusting God in the midst of trying circumstances, we must remember that none of the difficulty catches Him off guard. He is not scrambling to catch up. He is wise. He is all-knowing. And He is totally loving. Even when the consequences of our sin bring adverse circumstances to our lives, He is gracious and merciful. We can see His sovereign hand and His love even in these times.

Israel was given a chance to continue to grow in national relationship with God through the adverse circumstances of having pagan nations living among them. They could easily have trusted God and seen God deliver them from the temptations of idolatry and spiritual infidelity. The book of Judges details the struggle they had in so doing and is witness to the sovereign plan of God.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

cycles of sin

Whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.
Judges 2:18-19

This is important background to the book of Judges. It should not be overlooked. It is the precursor to the narrative accounts of individual histories of each judge. It shows us a tendency that we do well to learn from. We tend to fall in the same sins over and over. The book of Judges describes this on a national scale with Israel.

Their cycle was aggravated by several factors. One was that a new generation of Israelites had taken their circumstances of favor in the Promised Land for granted. It wasn't the Joshua generation that easily gave in to the seduction of idolatry. It was the generation that had always lived with Canaanites among them. That was the second big complication. This generation was being affected by the residual after effects of the incomplete obedience under Joshua. The Canaanites should not have been there in the first place. Now that they were, they became a source of cultural temptation for the nation. And the text makes it clear that Israel chose to give in to that temptation and suffered the consequences in divine judgment.

The third complicating factor has to do with the fact that sin tends to grow stronger in cycles, not weaker. That is something I know from my own heart. I might first struggle with an angry or bitter thought towards someone. Left unconfessed and unforgiven, it will move to a wrong statement or action. That might move into a full blown conflict or hurt relationship. The same thing happens in other areas. Sin cycles can lead people to ruin their lives morally... starting with a movie scene replayed over and over, going on to pornography, and then ending in a sexual affair that ruined an entire family. They never start with the affair. They start with the thought that they deserve to fill a sensual desire. They replay that thought over and over and it grows into full grown adultery. That is the way sin works.

So really, delving into the book of Judges will be a journey into the capacities of my own broken and sinful human heart. I am willing to admit that God wants to show me some preventative measures here, by making me witness in His word scenes of spiritual devastation. The instruction in these sin cycles can break cycles moving in my own heart. And for that reason I am glad God has included this book in the Bible.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13

The consequences of incomplete obedience

When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not drive them out completely.
Judges 1:28

The book of Judges opens with this description of how each individual tribe in Israel was left with challenges to complete the occupation of the Promised Land after the death of Joshua. Yet in every bit of territory, with every tribe, there was some unwillingness to complete the task. And "easier" solution was accepted, and each solution seemed to make economic sense: force the Canaanites into slavery. But this domination was not obedience.

The result was slavery, which was not God's will. God did not call Israel to be slave masters in the Promised Land. But the result of incomplete obedience was this new social system that God had not asked of them. These Canaanites grew quietly strong and resistant under a slave economy. Eventually they would rise to dominance in a generation or two, and the cycle of the book of Judges would decay Israel spiritually, socially, economically, and politically. All because they chose an expedient sinful solution that offered an easy way out.

If Israel had obeyed the military rules of engagement under Joshua (wipe out and forcefully relocate Canaanite people groups) they would not have suffered under the Judges. Incomplete obedience eventually has its painful consequences. That is a principle still bearing fruit today.


- Prepare your minds for action.
1 Peter 1:13