I.N.I.

A sermon to be preached at St. John Lutheran Church, Williston Park, NY on 5 August 2001, that is, the Sunday after Pentecost, but based not on the lectionary lessons for the day, rather on Judges 6:14, 36-7:7 – and especially Judges 7:1-7 — because they’re in the middle of a sermon series on Bible heroes.

Grace, mercy and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s lesson from the book of Judges tells us a couple interesting things about the life of Gideon. We’re only really going to look at the second. But, just in passing, it’s worth noting that Gideon’s use of the fleece to get direction from the Lord could be instructive for us as well. It never hurts – in fact it’s a very good thing – to seek guidance from the Lord as to whether certain doors are open or closed for us.

But I want us to focus our attention more on the second half of the lesson, that is, Judges 7:1-7, where Gideon gets guidance from the Lord on the size of his army. This whole thing sounds a little bizarre, doesn’t it? Too many men? When did an army ever approach a battle and decide it had too many soldiers on its side?

Have you ever had too many volunteers for an activity here at church and decided to send some home? Or do you remember your pastor telling you that there were just too many student in Sunday School? Too many students at the seminary? Too many voters at the voters meeting?

It just doesn’t happen. Which makes this passage all the more bizarre. When we have too many of something it’s always something bothersome or something that causes trouble. Too many mosquitoes. Too many days without rain. Too many cords plugged into an electrical outlet. Too many people in line ahead of us.

But Gideon had too many men with him in his army. Let’s look at that this morning and learn how that’s a problem. Then we can learn what God wants instead, and what He does about it.

I. Having “too many men” (7:2, 4) – Gideon had too many men, the Lord tells Gideon in verse 2. “Too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands” is what it says in the text. Midianites had been a real problem for the people of Israel. They had started raiding the area on camels. Very mobile. Very able to wreak havoc and then get away quickly. A real problem for the farmers and herdsmen of Israel. Something had to be done about it to protect the Israelites.

Gideon was called by God to do something about it (6:14). He gathered up an army and started off to see what they could do about the raiders. Maybe they were practicing their spear throwing and arrow shooting there in camp. Or working on setting up ambushes for the next time the Midianite camel riders came swooping down a valley. But the Lord came with the surprising word that there were too many of them.

Now, maybe from a strategic point of view it would work better to have a smaller force that could itself be more mobile than the 32,000 men Gideon had with him. Or maybe having that many men in the army simply left too few back home working the land and offering immediate protection to the women and children. Or maybe there had been a lot of enthusiasm whipped up by the recruiters and not everyone present really had what it took to be a soldier. Perhaps you can see how it could happen that there were too many men in the army.

But why would that be a problem? It appears that it was – as was so often the case in the Bible – that it was a problem of faith. The Israelites were clearly going to be tempted to rely on their strength in numbers to overwhelm the Midianites. Gideon’s original army was so large that, after winning, they would have thought to themselves about how strong they were, how well they fought, how their weapons hit their marks. All that could have been true, but it wouldn’t have been what had won the battle for them.

If they had won the battle, it would have been the Lord who had won the battle. Not the Israelites.

Nowadays we can have too many men in our own armies, so to speak. We talk about having ‘too many irons in the fire.’ We talk about being too busy, about being over-committed, about being tired from having to run here and there all the time.

It’s a real problem for us. Modern American society has convinced us that we have to do more and more and more. It’s a problem because it leads to stress. And the stress leads to physical problems, heart attacks, ulcers, and so on. It’s a problem because we lose track of the things that really are important: things like our spending time with families, building supportive relationships, cultivating lasting values.

And mostly, it’s a problem because being so over scheduled makes us like Gideon’s Israelite army. That is, it’s a problem for us because we start to think that if we just work a little harder, if we just do a little more, if we just march here or there, we’ll be able to overcome any difficulty headed our way. We really start to believe that by our own reason and strength we’ll be able to overcome every obstacle, able to accomplish everything.

And that’s a problem because we can’t. We simply can’t do it all on our own. Even is we group together and organize other people to back us up, we simply can’t do everything. When we get beyond the day-to-day and the things of this world, we will always run smack into a brick wall that we can neither scale nor smash.

II. “I will save you” (7:7) The plan that the Lord set before Gideon was this: thin out your army and (he says in verse 7) “I will save you.” How odd. The Israelites under Gideon were probably quite certain that with so many men on their side, the only people who were going to need saving would be those Midianites. But the Lord says he will save them, the Israelites. Save them from any Midianite power, any weaponry, any sneak attacks, any raids. All that, to be sure, but also save them from themselves.

It worked out that way, to be sure. The raiders were terrorizing Israel. And even with the greatly reduced army, Gideon was able to see a victory come his way. How did the Lord do this? First of all he told Gideon to send home anyone who was a little afraid. And did that ever clear out the ranks! Did you catch the numbers reported? In verse 3, we read that 22,000 men went home. More than two thirds of the troops! There were only 10,000 left after this. Then the Lord directed Gideon to use the little water drinking thing to whittle down the troops even more, so that just 3% of the 10,000 were left.

And it was this tiny army that went up against the Midianites and won the victory. What a powerful, memorable, clear and decisive lesson about the power of the Lord. You can easily imagine the victors coming home and people greeting them, sure that they had lost. “You won?? No way!!” Certainly not by themselves; there would have been no way to win. None at all. And that’s exactly God’s point. The victory was the Lord’s. It was only the Lord’s.

The Lord does exactly the same thing with us today. God saves his people just as much today as he did when Gideon was commander of the army. Our sinful selves are saved by Jesus, who died in our places, suffering the punishments due each of us for breaking God’s law. Then our Lord’s resurrection on Easter made ever so clear that we, too, are recipients of the forgiveness and life that comes from God. We don’t stand condemned any longer as we would have if we tried to win the battle for eternal life on our own.

Not only that, but our present lives are transformed by the power of this resurrection. Our continuing life now is redeemed from worthlessness, bought back from aimless wandering, straightened out from being curved in on itself. God’s Holy Spirit works in each of us to make our lives here on earth meaningful lives of service to God and other people. No longer are we forced to try to find meaning by doing more, achieving more, earning more, and gaining more. The fight for meaning isn’t our fight. We don’t have to keep 22,000 extra men in our army. God works through us today in simplicity and peace.

III. “Down to the water” (7:5) The way God gets into our lives and empowers us today is somewhat similar to the way he got into Gideon’s army: through the water. Gideon’s men, the 10,000 remaining after the fearful were let go home, had to go down to the water to drink. There were two fundamentally different approaches to getting a drink. The vast majority just got down on their knees and bent over the stream, sticking their faces down to the water to slurp in the cold, refreshing drink. (Wouldn’t it be nice if our streams and rivers were clean enough so that we were able to do that today?) A tiny minority of 300 men got their refreshment a little differently. That small group scooped up handfuls of water and lapped it with their tongues. That small sample were the ones God chose to stay with Gideon.

What was the difference? Some have speculated that the ones who drank from their hands were showing that they were naturally more watchful by drinking that way. They were less likely to be overcome in an ambush at a desert watering hole if they were up and drinking, than those who were down on the ground with their faces in the water. That could be. It makes some sense. The watchful ones may have been that 300.

We aren’t led to the water to drink. We have to go to the water to wash. Our Baptisms are the acts that marked us as ones chosen by God for his select band to overcome the enemy. And as in Gideon’s army there are different approaches to the water. Some people look at this event in their lives as something that happened way back when, and try to go on from there. For them Baptism is in the past tense. It’s history. Others view their Baptism as an event with a vital continuing significance. They live in it daily, maybe even recalling it daily and using the waters of Baptism as a shield against the attacks of the Tempter. Either way, in the words of Jesus in Mark 16, those “who believe and are baptized shall be saved.” But it looks pretty clear that the approach that uses Baptism as a daily reminder of salvation, saying ‘I am baptized’ to fight off temptations and oppressions, is the approach that leads to the overwhelming victory.

“Many are called but few are chosen,” Jesus said. In Gideon’s army 33,000 were originally called. In the end only 300 were chosen to participate directly in winning the victory. But you can be assured that all benefited from the victory. The watchful ones today are likely to be the ones chosen to participate directly, enjoying the thrill of seeing God work his wonders with their own eyes. If you don’t see it with your own eyes, fear not. God is still at work. He still rules. He still wins the victory. And you still enjoy its fruits as a baptized, believing child of God. Know that he is calling you and wants you involved.

Amen.

S.D.G.