Fifty Two Weeks / Judges 7

Bad Can Be Good

My dad used to say, “What this country needs is a good depression.” I can’t say that I was ever in agreement with that statement, but I understood what he meant, and since he lived through the Great Depression (he and mom married in 1936) I always thought he had the right to say it. 

What he meant, of course, was that when trouble comes people tend to turn to the Lord, or at least come to realize that what they have been doing isn’t working. This was the case in Gideon’s day.

The Prophet’s Words

The Lord sent a prophet. The prophet is unnamed but his words are recorded. 

“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”

There is no “bibidi babidi boo” and no “this is what is going to happen.” There is simply the word of the Lord reminding the listeners of what God has done and what they are doing.

“The Lord is with you mighty man?”

When the Lord comes to Gideon He addresses him with these extraordinary words. In the first place Gideon is hiding in order to thresh his wheat. That does not seem to qualify him as a mighty man. In the second place, we might well have the same question as Gideon. If the Lord is with me (us) then why…?

In this case the answer is a combination of what the prophet said and what my dad said. “You’ve turned from the Lord and this stuff is happening to get your attention turned back to Him.” That isn’t always the case. Sometimes we go through things for the benefit of someone else. (i.e.; a hospital stay results in a nurse or doctor coming to the Lord.) The point is that we can’t merely look at circumstances and determine if the Lord is with us.

What about this “mighty man” business? Gideon certainly isn’t acting like a mighty man. That is part of the wonderful grace and mystery of the Lord. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. He sees things differently from how we see them. This has always been the case. 

We see the story of Gideon echoed in Paul’s word to the church at Corinth. (1 Cor. 1:26-29) “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”

The Prayer of the Fleece 

Gideon’s prayer concerning the fleece has worked it’s way into the nomenclature of modern North American Christianity. “I wasn’t sure if this was God or not so I put a fleece before the Lord.” 

A word of caution here. 

To the best of my knowledge this is the only time in scripture when a person requested (seemingly unprompted by the Lord) that the Lord show a sign to prove the veracity of His instructions. This tells me that it can and does happen, but not very often.

In my own life there have been a couple of occasions where I have found myself “placing a fleece” before the Lord, but they were based on prayers that I almost immediately recognized as not originating solely in me. They were clearly prayers prompted by the Holy Spirit. They were prayers I almost wished I hadn’t prayed until I realized where they actually came from and said, “Well, OK, it’s out there now.” 

If we go around making a habit of coming up with our own “fleece” to put before God we should remember two things. One, testing God is not generally regarded as a pleasing or wise venture. Two, there is usually more than one supernatural power listening.