40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 6:25-7:7 (Episode 204)

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

Gideon takes a group of men and destroys the altar of Baal. People want him to die but he gets a nickname instead. God has more for him to do but Gideon has some doubts and tests God with a fleece. When Gideon agrees to go to battle, God thinks he has too many men with him and comes up with a strange way of reducing the forces. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Great Freedom Conference in Germany Freedom Conference in Stockholm Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts over there. And while you're over there, go to the events page. We've got events coming up. We're going to be in Houston. You know, when this releases, guys, I think if I'm on my game and I release this at the appropriate time, which doesn't always happen,

but if it does happen this week, man, you've got, like, hours to get over to St. Mark in Houston, Texas, because we are doing a city event there. And Chad will be there, and I'll be there, and Scott Keith, and Loso, and Gretchen Ronovic and Big Matt Papa-vitz. So you should come on out to that. If you're listening to this and Saturday, February 22nd, has not come and gone yet, come hang out with us in Houston, Texas.

It's free. At that point, you probably don't need to register. You just show up, but no one's going to kick you out. Come hang out with us. Also, if that date's come and gone, but you're like, I don't live in Texas anyway. I live in Nevada, or I live in Southern California. Well, we got you covered at a Las Vegas City event March 21st.

Now, unfortunately, Chad won't be there, but I'll be there. And, you know, I have some thoughts on the Old Testament, but we're not even going to be talking about the Old Testament. That's why we didn't bring Chad out. We're talking about Galatians, talking about how all that Old Testament stuff is done. But you can come and hang out. I'll be there. Eric Sorensen, Scott Keith, Cindy Koch, Blake Flatley, and Adam Francisco.

We'd love to hang out with you. That's also free to sign up and show up. I will put a link in the show notes to all those events. If you are in Germany or Sweden, we will be there the first two weeks of May. We'd love to hang out with you at those events. Those are filling up. I will put links in the show notes to the websites where you can register. So, hey, our German listeners, our Swedish listeners,

our listeners that are around those areas possibly that can travel. I don't know how this all works. Get on one of those fancy European trains. Get over to one of those places. we'd love to hang out with you link in the show notes first two weeks of may will be over there in europe chad how's it going man it's going good yeah i was uh just working on my uh finishing up my presentation for houston right before we started so i am ready to go nice all right yeah well i have to do that later today i do that later today plenty of time plenty of time

plenty of time we're good to go we're good to go all right man so uh we ended it kind of uh right right in the middle of a story uh i don't know if we'll finish this story this this episode either but uh this is a little one of the longer ones yeah yeah we uh we won't finish gideon's story i'm sure we'll uh we'll finish this chapter and get into chapter seven so we yeah we started gideon last time and uh we we encountered him when he was kind of hiding out in a in a wine vat uh getting some grain ready and the angel shows up and they have that kind of back and forth in which he's telling Gideon what he wants him to do. Gideon's coming up with all these Moses-like reasons why,

excuses why he can't do it. Anyway, in the end, the sacrifice is offered by Gideon. The angel of the Lord vanishes from his sight. And then Gideon is amazed that he's still alive. God says, chill, everything's going to be okay. Gideon builds an altar, names it Yahweh Shalom. The Lord is peace. And that's kind of where we left it.

We finish there with verse 24 of Judges chapter 6. So we're not skipping forward. We're going to pick up that same day or rather that same night. And we're going to find out right away what the Lord is going to have Gideon do as his first task. It's a little bit different than some of the other judges because a lot of the other judges, I mean, they're called, they go to war. They go to deliver Israel. But before Gideon does that, God seems to take his time with Gideon. There's a lot of like where you think you're going to go on right to the next sequence of actions and everything's put on pause because God has to help Gideon along or reassure Gideon or tell him it's going to be okay or let him hear a dream in which he is made a little bit braver because of his enemies.

Anyway, there's a lot of kind of slowing down and speeding up in the story. So we're going to slow down here. Gideon is not going to march off to battle and said first of all he's got to take care of some stuff at home because as it turns out as was probably pretty common with a lot of Israelites of the day because of this increasing canonization that was taking place in Israel his own dad has an altar not an altar to to Yahweh but it's an altar to Baal and as if that wasn't quite bad enough there's also an Asherah pole that's right beside the the altar so Baal and Asherah as we've talked about before were probably worshipped as a couple quite frequently uh Baal was kind of the

even though Baal wasn't like the head of the pantheon he was like a junior god he was the most popular god in uh in the Canaanite culture kind of the god of the skies and weather and storms and that kind of thing. Whereas Asherah was his consort. She was fertility goddess, as were many of the female divinities of this day. This Asherah pole, we hear about those all through the Old Testament. Chances are, if it was like a lot of the figurines and stones that had been preserved and found by archaeologists, there would have been some sort of exaggerated sexual features on this pole, exactly what that looked like. We don't know, but because she was a fertility goddess, that was often the way that they were depicted. So anyway, both of these,

the altar to Baal and the Asherah pole were right there on his dad's property. So picking up with verse 25, it says that same night, so the same night after the day in which Gideon was called, God speaks to him and he gives him these directions. It says, take your, a little confusing here i'll explain it in a minute it says take your father's bull and a second bull seven years old and pull down the altar of baal which belongs to your father and cut down the asherah that is beside it so that's the first instruction the second instruction follows that so after doing that verse 26 build an altar to the lord your god on top of this stronghold in an orderly manner and take a second bowl and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah

which you shall cut down. So this is, first of all, this reminds me of a story that probably some of you are familiar with. I think it's from the 8th century. Saint Boniface, he was a missionary and uh he showed up in in modern day germany and uh he he cut down the sacred oak remember the story so he cuts down this sacred oak that was you know a one of the pagan belonged to one of the pagan gods thor i think anyway he cuts down this uh the sacred oak and of course everybody expects the the god to like strike him down but he doesn't just takes his axe chops it down and uses some of the wood actually to build a chapel to christ on the same spot i do not know this story but this guy this guy sounds like uh my my kind of missionary yeah yeah uh cowardice uh was

he was never accused of cowardice let's put it that way yeah it ended up being martyred later later in his life but yeah kind of a that's the most well-known story about saint saint boniface i mean it's kind of the same thing that giddy is supposed to do here because he's supposed to tear down the the pagan worship site and not only just tear it down but he's actually to use the very wood of the asherah pole to light the fire in which he's going to offer the sacrifice to sacrifice to god so i mentioned before i started reading that it was a little confusing it i can't get into the details because it's too technical with hebrew but it's a little confusing as to how we should translate that because most of your english translations come across as if

there's two bulls right there's a it mentions your father's bull and then also this second bull that's seven years old the hebrew can be translated uh possibly a couple different ways to where this is actually like one bull that's seven years old we don't have to worry about that but if you're wondering why the second bull or you know one of the bulls is never mentioned again that could be just some confusion with uh with translation that being beside the point he's going to use this bull or bulls to pull it down. You know, it's a full-grown, seven-year-old bull is full-grown, pretty powerful, going to use it to tear down the altar. And then the bull itself is going to be the sacrifice and use the wood of the Asherah pole. All right. So what's interesting,

I mean, there's a lot of interesting things here, but I find it particularly interesting. The very next verse says that Gideon did this, but he kind of tweaked it a couple different ways. first of all, it says that he didn't do it by himself. That I think is fascinating. It says he took 10 men of his servants and did just as the Lord had spoken to him. Now, I mean, I don't guess there's anything wrong with that, but I do find it kind of interesting if we, the more we find out about Gideon, kind of his personality, that he doesn't, he deals with fear a lot. He deals with hesitation, and so it's like he wants people to be around him when he's doing this. He doesn't want to do it alone, and the second thing that is perhaps even more telling

is he did it by night because he was afraid of his father's household. Now, we're going to encounter Gideon's fear over and over again. We're going to see it, in fact, at the end of this chapter. We're going to encounter it one more time in chapter 7. So in that way, I guess he's not much different than some of the other people that God has called to do various tasks, whether it's fear or whether it's just doubt as to their abilities or whatever it might be. There's always an excuse that people can give. Now, in Gideon's case, God is very patient with him. He gives him sign after sign, promise after promise, and finally, it seemed to get through to Gideon. and in the end when you get to chapter 7 he actually is able to see the see the success

that god has given to him so anyway that's where we're at so far got the instructions to demolish and then to rebuild and then it says gideon did it he took uh 10 of his servants and uh he did it by night and then we get to verse 28 don't you think that this so this is something that's common between gideon and then barack is this sort of you get like a a commissioned to do something and gideon's case right from god uh in barack's case by god via deborah if there's one thing i empathize with like maybe this is because like i don't i i don't like to do things all by myself especially things like that i i completely empathize with that hey i'm willing to do this Can I take, like, some of my boys with me?

Yeah. Right? I mean, like, this is pretty human nature. I mean, if I was, like, in war and I was, like, they were like, hey, we want you to go on this mission. I'm like, can I take one person with me? Yeah, do I have to do it by myself? Dude, just, like, you know, you feel more like it kind of, like, firms up your steel, man, right? You're like, okay, we're doing this together.

You can, by yourself, you start talking yourself into all kinds of crazy stuff. You start believing your doubts and all that stuff. You need, hey, man, it's not good for man to be alone. Even Jesus sent him out by twos. I understand the inclination to be like, I'll do it, but I need at least somebody going with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I completely understand that too.

And you see in the other stories too, that most of the time that's what happens, right? Aaron ends up being, well, of course he's Moses' brother. He ends up causing sometimes more problems than he is helpful. uh and then you know later in this story he sends uh he sends gideon with his servant and uh yeah i mean you when you look at what a lot of the prophets went through when they sort of stood alone against the world and man you can you can see just how it the effect it had on him you know you read some of the things that jeremiah wrote man that's some torturous

stuff you know he just he feels just like completely beaten down everybody's against him uh so standing by yourself or even doing this explicit commission from the lord by yourself that's uh it's rough it's pretty rough vocation yeah i think it's even interesting i think you yeah you see that that desire to not be doing things by yourself throughout scripture now there's guys that have to do things alone uh ultimately this culminates in christ who like does the ultimate work of god alone but uh you know even abraham's like all right i'm heading out you know that's sort of your first instant like i'm heading out lot come with me like he takes his nephew he takes his nephew with him you know uh which ends up being a huge pain in the

neck you know this isn't he probably would have been better off not doing that but yeah you can just tell there's this desire that like i don't want to do this all by myself like this is not this is not what i want to do at all yeah it's just i mean in many ways this is kind of our built-in human tendency we're not like islands unto ourselves uh we uh we know the people so god is grace uh gives that yeah and i don't say i don't say like that to make any like deeply theological points other than like hey don't be too hard on gideon for this this part of it like i think most people would would we've already seen it with brock i think most people be like in would be in that that same state of uh of mind where you're he is willing to do it at least he

He just was nervous about doing this by himself. Right, right. You know, what's fascinating is how his dad reacts to this too. So when the story goes on, it says everybody gets up in the morning and they see, you know, the Baal's altar is torn down, the Asherah is cut down, and the bull has been offered on the altar. And they're like, who did this, right? and so they like do this search this inquiry they're finding out and somebody uh spills the

beans and says a Gideon the son of Joash did this so they don't go straight to Gideon they go to Joash to his dad presumably he was still living at home we don't know his age I don't know if we're ever told his age maybe later in the story I can't remember we don't know how old he is at this time but he's still he's still living at home um and so they go to his to his father as the head of the extended family. And they say to him, bring out your son that he may die because he's torn down the altar of Baal and he's cut down the Asherah, which was beside it. Now, just stop and think about that for a minute because you got to catch the irony. because these guys who are mad at Gideon

for tearing down these idolatrous altars and poles, they are almost quoting verbatim the command that was given to Israel as to what was to be done to idolaters. So idolaters were to be killed. They were to be executed. Whereas these guys are wanting to execute Gideon because it destroyed their idolatrous fortifications and altars and poles.

So, I mean, it's one of those kind of where everything is backwards in Judges. You know, you have Israelites worshiping the gods of the Canaanites, and you have them getting angry and wanting to put to death an Israelite who destroys their Canaanite worship sites. It lets you know how deep the idolatry has gone. I mean, this isn't just, yeah. I mean, we'll play nice. We'll set up this thing over here.

We all know it doesn't mean anything. No, he's got it serious, right? I mean, a grave sin has been committed here. Or they weren't just like, well, yeah, I guess we shouldn't have been doing that. Gideon was right. We stand corrected. There's none of that. I mean, they're out for blood.

Now, his dad's response is what I find most fascinating about this whole part of the story. Because, I mean, presumably if Joash had built the altar and belonged to him and the Asherah, and I'm assuming that he offered sacrifices there too, then you would think that he would be angry, at least partially, with his son. But he turns things completely around. So Joash says to everybody who surrounded him and made these accusations and threats, he says will you contend for baal or will you deliver him or save him whoever will contend for him shall be put to death by morning if he's a god that is if baal's a god let him contend for

himself because someone has torn down his altar in other words well if if baal is such a good and powerful God, well then let him defend himself, right? Somebody tore down his altar, so isn't Baal going to tear him down? So this verb, this Hebrew verb that I have translated here as contend, is often used in legal context. In fact, it kind of becomes, later in the prophets, becomes a form of an oracle, where it's kind of like this whole legal judgment scene that's set up between God and Israel. So here it has, sometimes it just means like contend, but this is more of kind of a legal framework. So if Baal needs to be his own defense attorney, basically, he needs to contend, legally contend for himself. And then we have the same, that word for deliver

is the same word that we see elsewhere for save, yashah. So is he going to contend for himself? Is he going to save himself? What kind of God is he? So Joash just throws this right back in their face. I mean, without any hesitation, he doesn't kind of dilly-dally around about it, doesn't try and take two sides. He's fully in defense of his son. And presumably, he had some pretty powerful sway in the community. Otherwise, they would have said, get out of the way, we're getting him anyway. So I'm thinking that Joe Ash was probably either the leader of this particular community, or at least pretty high up, just to be able by those words alone to stand behind his behind his son this is the way you see a lot of people deal with uh when they're

contending with gods i mean this is this is sort of uh elijah move right where you sort of say like hey let's see let's find out what kind of god this is i know i know when uh when we got mixed up in some idolatry back in the day like the ground opened up and ate some of us so you know like so let's just see let's see what happens i mean like is this god so weak that he needs you to do something for him it reminds me of uh of the story that we talked about way back in genesis when jacob is heading back to uh to his home country and you know rachel steals the household gods and sits on them while she's on yeah while she's on her period so it's like this double insult to the gods you know first she steals them so these gods can't even keep themselves

from being stolen and then she sits on them so they can't even get up and then they're made unclean because she's on her period when all this is going on it's like i mean this is these are some of the ways in which you kind of have these built-in insults uh in the old testament against idolatry i mean if there's one thing that the old testament is not um in distinction from the way we tend to be today i mean we we're very careful right about not offending someone's religious sensibilities right it's you know you got to be got to be uh respect of the people's religions and not say anything that's like sarcastic or derogatory. Well, when you get to the Old Testament, and I'm not saying that's wrong,

but I'm saying if you compare that to the Old Testament, it's a whole different ballgame. I mean, they make up slanderous names against Baal, for instance. If somebody has a name that ends in Baal, very often they'll change it to Boshet, which means shame. So instead of Ish-Baal, it'll be Ish-Boshet. So instead of a son of Baal, it's a son of shame. You have that all over the Old Testament.

And they make up all kinds of names to refer to these pagan deities. So this is one more instance of that. I mean, this is pretty tame compared to some of the other invectives against the false gods. But same thing is kind of going on here. You know, he's such an inept god. He can't even save himself. He can't even protect his own altar. So why in the world would we worship him when he's basically a weak and ineffectual God?

You see how God, I mean, God knows that these other gods aren't real gods, obviously. But he's still like deeply offended by the worship of these false gods. And you see him like do that sort of thing all over again. So what does he want you to do? I want you to cut that down and I want you to burn it. And then I build another thing to me on top of it. He's at war with this non-God. But this happens all over.

I mean, it's like when you talked about this in the episode with the golden calf, where it's like melt it down, grind it up, drink it. Man, this is deeply personal. He's going to show you just how lousy your God is. One of my favorites is when they put the Ark of the Covenant in the same space as Dagon, and God's just smacking this idol around all night, breaking his hands off and stuff. Yeah. This carries over to the New Testament as well.

You know, when Jesus cast the swine, the demons into the swine and they run off the they run off the cliff. So, I mean, this this contention between basically this war between heaven and hell that's already going on in the Old Testament continues into the New Testament. I think the reason is, you know, Deuteronomy talks about this and then Paul talks about it. First Corinthians, that the that all these false gods. Yeah, they're not gods, of course, but they are basically the mask of demons. that's the real threat here so anytime that god is declaring war against gods or insulting gods or anything like that this is his way of either having a physical or spiritual or verbal war against the forces of forces of evil yeah so this is just kind of a part of that bigger story

another one of those great stories is like when moses throws down the staff and it becomes a snake these other guys are like no problem we got this and they throw down their staff see that there's all these snakes now because they and then moses snake eats them all yeah all right it's really rather humorous yeah god he is all about that kind of stuff man yeah he's not like sitting there they're gonna cover sitting there with dagon he's like well i mean i don't want to offend anybody right yeah yeah he's smacking on these false gods left or right okay so uh anyway that basically takes us through that story the only part that's uh to sum it up, is it says on that day that Gideon's father renamed him, nicknamed him, most likely.

He called him Jerob Baal or Yeruv Baal, which means it's taken the name of Baal and it's joining that verb about contending to it. So let Baal contend against him. So he's got a good nickname now, right? He's like a, basically a God destroyer. So that takes us to the end of that particular part of this chapter. Picking up at 33, it says that the Midianites and the Amalekites and the sons of the east that we met at the very beginning of this chapter, so these enemies of Israel who are going in and devouring the land, they assembled again, they crossed over and they camped in the valley of Jezreel. Jezreel is a very fertile place in Israel. We hear a lot about this valley of jezreel throughout the old testament so they go there and set up their tents

and presumably they're there to do exactly what they've been doing over the past few years they bring their camels and they devour everything they steal they take whatever they want and basically rape the land so what happens verse 34 says that the spirit of the lord came upon gideon i mean i want to correct that translation i noticed i think esv does that too uh that the spirit of the lord came upon Gideon. The Hebrew there is actually clothed, which is kind of a stronger word. I mean, a lot of times we have the Spirit coming upon some person, but I don't know, maybe I just like the metaphor better, but the idea of the Spirit clothing him connotes more of how he is completely enveloping him to use him in the service of delivering Israel. So anyway, the Spirit of

Lord clothes Gideon, he blows a trumpet, and the Adiezrites, that's his clan, were called together to follow him. So this is kind of strange. I mean, this is unexpected because they were just trying to kill him before, right? This is his clan, so they come to his dad, Joash, we want to execute Gideon, and now everything's changed. So maybe it's just the work of the spirit. I don't know what went on but uh the the very man that they wanted to kill before now the spirit closed him he blows a trumpet and they're like gung-ho so whatever happened they're following him now well apparently this argument that his dad made held up pretty well they they're like oh all right i guess we'll see if anything happens this guy nothing happens and they're like oh okay i guess

okay yeah it was convincing right i guess that they went they went along with the wait and see approach and nothing happened so they're like i guess i guess this guy is a god destroyer yeah must be. So we'll be on his side. And not only them, but it says that he sent messengers through Manasseh and to Asher and Zebulun and Naphtali. So all of the tribes that were in that particular area. And of course, they would have been the ones who were suffering the most from the invasion of these Midianites. So he sends messengers to gather them together. Now, at this point, you would think that the very next sequence of events would be Gideon gathers his soldiers and they prepare to attack, but not yet. First of all, we have to deal with fleece. So beginning with verse 36 and going

through 40, we have Gideon's hesitation once more. This is another one of those kind of fast forward, slow down, fast forward, slow down moments in Gideon's story. So Gideon says to God, If you will truly deliver Israel through me as you have spoken, then here's what I want you to do. I'm going to put this fleece of wool on the threshing floor. And if there's dew on the ground, I mean, if there's dew on the fleece only and it's dry on the ground, then I will know that you will deliver Israel through me as you have spoken. And that's what happened, right? So he gets up early and he squeezes the fleece.

he drains the dew from the fleece and he gets a whole bowl full of water all right you think that'd be good enough but no then gideon says god uh don't get mad at me but i want to do one more thing i'm gonna i mean let me make a test once more with the fleece let it now be dry only on the fleece but let it be wet everywhere else and once more god did that it was dry on the fleece and the dew was all over the ground you were saying earlier you begin to believe your own doubts and i think that's kind of what's going on with it you know he's everything went well with the altar of baal turn that down and uh he's clothed with the spirit now and all these people are gathered around him but he's still struggling with these uh with these doubts

now what's interesting about this is that this is the only time i think this is the only time when someone tests God in the Old Testament, and there's not a negative repercussion as a result of it. This is the same word that's used, the same verb that's used for when the Israelites were at Massah and Merivah. So Massah means testing, and the root of that word is the same word, verb, verbal root that's used here. So most of the time when you test God, things do not go well with you but god is patient with gideon and uh and works things out by the way do people do people still say like if they're trying to make a decision i'm gonna put out some fleece yeah yeah i've heard this before yeah yeah well if you say that please stop yeah because if if you're

listening along and you know this story and you know what gideon is doing then you know that that's not like some example that's held up which is a good example to follow yeah and i think i think the reason why uh god goes along with this and so often in other instances he does not go along with it and this is maybe most notably uh true in the life of jesus where they're coming over and over and over again you read and then they put him to the test saying this or they'll say uh we need to see a sign like right so this happens all the time in the life of christ and he never goes along with it right i mean he's whenever someone's like show us a sign he's like he always has some and like just earth like scorching rebuke uh which because it's usually like he'll do so like feed

5 000 people and then they'll be like we need to see a sign and he's like is that all you can do Yeah, I understand the frustration here. But when people in the life of Christ and other places in the Old Testament, when they're putting God to the test, they are not putting God to the test out of sincere doubt. In other words, in a wanting to believe but struggling. In the case in the life of Christ, you see over and over again, this is always to try to trap him, to try to show that he's not who he is. It's not—it's a malicious—it's a testing whose end goal is not to affirm what God is doing, but to try to disprove or discount what God is doing. And so I think that that's maybe part of it, is that Gideon's a dude that's struggling.

He's questioning himself, like, am I really hearing from God? I don't know what's going on. It's not that he doesn't—he doesn't have a desire to say that it's not God or that he shouldn't do these things. I think this is just sort of a sincere doubt. And that, it seems like God has more patience for than, well, I'm going to test him or I'm going to trick him or I'm going to try to trap him, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I really do think this is a case where God understands where the person is coming from. And maybe we can't always see that, but he does. So, you know, Gideon wants to believe. He wants to remove his doubts. He wants to be completely sure. and so god kind of plays along with it and gives him these uh these particular signs

okay uh chapter seven we'll jump right into uh another pretty well-known part of the story of gideon and this is the narrowing down of his uh of his armed forces so it starts out by kind of giving him both his names it says now yaruv baal that is gideon so his nickname and his real name and all the people were with him they they go up to camp at this place called the spring of herod h-a-r-o-d now i'll point out now because it's significant in a minute uh that hebrew word which is translated here as a proper noun herod me it comes from the word for trembling so kind of keep that in mind so this is the spring of trembling so they camped there and on the other side was the camp of Midian. So they were by the hill of Morah, which by the way is close to the

foot of the hill called Morah is where Nain is at, which comes up in the gospels, right? That's where Jesus raises the widow's son. So Nain is even the modern day city of Nain is located kind of on the slopes of the hill of Morah. So anyway, that's where they're at. They're by the spring, by the hill of Morah, and God just gave these signs to Gideon, right, to make sure that he was okay with this. Well, now God is about to make things more difficult for him. He says, look, all these guys that you have with you, there's too many. There's way too many for me to give Midian into your hands, because I know what's going to happen, because with all these people, if you go and you defeat them, here's what Israel's going to say. My own power has delivered

me. So what does God do? He says, well, we're going to, we're going to start to drastically reduce your forces. First of all, I want you to go out and tell everyone, whoever's afraid and trembling, there's your word. So they camped at the spring of trembling, the spring of Herod, same word that's used here in verse three. So whoever's afraid and trembling, like the spring of trembling, let him go home. So let him, let him return. And I mean, these, these guys volunteered for this, but there must've been a whole bunch of trembling and fear going on because there were 32,000 when they started out and 22,000 of those people went back home. So now Gideon's forces are reduced to less than a third of what he had before. Now you would think at this point,

God would be like, okay, I'm going to still give you 10,000 people, but he's not done. Verse four, then God says to Gideon, oh, too many people still. Bring them down to the water and I'm going to test them. Actually, the Hebrew there is refine them. This is not the same word for testing that we just talked about back in chapter six. This is a word that it's a metallurgical word for removing the dross from metal so this is god's process of refining the troops so i will refine them there for you and whoever i say this one shall go with you he's going to go and whoever says this one shall not he won't so he brings him down to the water and the lord says to gideon you shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps as well as everyone who

kneels to drink so i you know some kind of system they came up with they watched them and the only people who put water in their hand and lapped the water were 300 everybody else kneeled down to drink out of the water and so god says to gideon i will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands so let all the other people go each to his home now if I were getting at this point I would definitely be getting nervous well this is what a weird test right I mean it is a really strange test yeah after that I've heard I've heard sermons where people try to explain this like the like the practicality of it they're like we'll see because if you took water in your hand and lapped it you still have your eyes up so you can see yeah I mean this kind of

And you're like, no, dude, no, dude, this is, this is just more evidence that God is a weirdo, like that God does weird, weird stuff, man. That is all this is. Yeah. Cause there's no, like, I'm going to get you the best 300 guys that really know how to fight. Like, do you know how this battle goes? Like, it doesn't matter who the 300 are.

He's just trying to reduce it down to not very many guys. Yeah. These aren't like the 300 Spartans. Yeah. Yeah. these are like 300 and they're not like professional soldiers right they're just they're probably farmers and yeah they have some battle experience but it's not like we're dealing with you know 300 members of the israelite special forces or something i'm surprised 300 guys drink

water this way what kind of way is this but who drinks water like that that's probably why he said that right because he knew the numbers would be so low yeah you're like that's that's right that's So I'm saying I don't think there's anything practical about it than other than if you have 300 guys that drink water in a very weird, like a dog. What? Nobody drinks water that way. Yeah, I think this is nothing more than God choosing something that's going to get a low number. I wouldn't allegorize this. I don't think it has anything to do whatsoever with their fitness or battle.

I understand scooping water up with your hands and then like drinking it. But this is talking about scooping water up with your hands and then lapping it out with your tongue. Who does this? Apparently 300 out of 10,000. Yeah, 300 out of 10,000 did it. So that's where we're going to have to leave Gideon. I mean, this is all the setup, by the way.

It's kind of like you said earlier. This is just weird. Well, this is the way God works. He works in really weird ways. he always works in ways that you wouldn't expect that no military planner would put a stamp of approval on everything that he does here is uh is backwards to what we'd expect but the whole point is what he said earlier i want to make sure i mean i'm going to make it so patently obvious that i'm the one who gives this victory that i will go to ludicrous extremes in order to make

sure that nobody in his right mind would have gone about it this way and nobody in the right mind would believe that it was because of the military prowess of these 300 guys that israel's victory was secured it's gonna be me alone no god's gonna say like i'll make i'll be so here's how i'll make sure of it it's gonna be you and 300 guys that don't know how to drink water correctly that's how i'm gonna do it not only can these guys these guys can't these guys can't even drink water correctly. So obviously this is going to be

my work. Yeah, and to wrap it up with this, this is really one more example we have throughout the Old Testament of what we call the theology of the cross, right? Where God is working not the way that we

expect, so he's choosing things which are foolish, things which are weird, things which are upside down and backwards and just not the way the world works in other words well that's just happens to be the way that god likes to work in order that it might be clear that it's by his word and power alone that the deliverance of his people is is accomplished so this all basically is the background to the cross and the cross is what infuses all of this with an understanding as to how how god chooses to work among us yeah and that is it man we're

We're going to leave Gideon and his 300 dog guys there, and we're going to come back and see what happens next week. Guys, if you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so by going over to 1517, go to the Donate page where you can become a contributor. Thank you so much to those of you who do that. You make all of this possible. Chad, I'll see you next week.

All right, see you. See you. We'll see you next time.