A Sample Chapter from Ken Hanko’s New Book on Judges, Once I Have Sworn
The story of Gideon shows us how faith varies from day to day, and how it struggles in constantly changing circumstances to lay hold of the promises of God and remain obedient and faithful.
The Midianites were in the land of Israel with an enormous army, ready to do, and probably already doing, what they had done for each of the prior six or seven years. They were interested not only in plundering, but also simply in destroying. Israel had suffered severely under these annual incursions and was greatly impoverished by them.
This year, however, was different. Gideon had gathered an army and gone out to fight them and try to drive them out of the land. His original army was 32,000 men but, through the refining demanded by the Lord, he had only 300 left. These 300 had provisioned themselves with food and trumpets (not swords, but trumpets. That’s interesting, isn’t it?), and had everything ready: So, the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands (V. 8). The time to fight had come, and the Lord again wasted no time giving Gideon new instructions: It happened on the same night that the Lord said to him, “Arise, go down against the camp, for I have delivered it into your hand.”
At the same time the Lord recognized Gideon’s need and made provision for it: If you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant, and you shall hear what they say; and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.
Gideon’s Need
Gideon’s faith was still not perfect. It is clear from the text that he was afraid. The Lord said to him, If you are afraid… And Gideon tacitly acknowledged his fear by accepting the Lord’s offer of help.
This fear was the same fear that he had felt when the Lord commanded him to destroy the worship of Baal in his father’s house. It’s the very same word that is used in chapter 6:27. It was also the fear that disqualified 22,000 of his men in the test to which the Lord had subjected them that day. In verse 2 of this chapter the Lord had instructed Gideon to tell his men: Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead. That word fearful is again the same word that the Lord used in talking to Gideon just before the battle. The plain implication is that Gideon was, at this moment, as unfit for battle against the Midianites as the 22,000 who had been sent home not 24 hours earlier. His faith was wavering again.
That was not good. Gideon had God’s command: Arise, go down against the camp. He also had God’s promise: for I have delivered it into your hand. He had everything else that had happened before this moment. All of that surely should have been enough. The foundation of faith is the word of God, and Gideon had that word in abundance. We may well be inclined to say, “Come on, Gideon. Get it together. You have already received from the Lord all the help and reassurance you could possibly need. You should not be afraid anymore. Just go out and fight.”
But let’s remember a couple of things.
First, circumstances had changed. The Midianite army was as large as ever, but Gideon’s army had gone from 32,000 to 300. Put yourself in Gideon’s shoes for a minute and ask yourself the question, What would I do if I had to fight against this vast horde with 300 men? That’s not such an easy problem to solve, is it? The odds of victory weren’t exactly promising. Faith must adapt to changing circumstances, and it’s not always easy for faith to keep up with the rapidity of the changes. That’s what happened to Gideon. In fact, I think that is the point of verse 12. Gideon had accepted the Lord’s offer of help and was going down with his servant to the Midianite camp. It’s at that point that the Holy Spirit breaks the flow of the story to remind us again about the size of the Midianite army: Now the Midianites and Amalekites, all the people of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude.
The effect of that on these two men, representatives of a very small band, must have been devastating.
That brings us to the second thing we must remember. Faith itself is not a static, unchanging thing: once you have it, there it is; you’re good forever. Gideon’s faith may have been very strong through all the refining of his army, and then suffered collapse when he found himself alone in his tent that night thinking about how to fight so many with so few. Think also of Elijah on Mount Carmel: he was strong in faith, mocking the prophets of Baal, seeking fire from heaven to burn up his sacrifice, destroying the prophets, praying for rain, running before Ahab’s chariot. But after all that, Jezebel sent a message to him threatening his life, and he collapsed completely.
That’s a good thing to remember. You thank God today that he has given you faith to resist temptation and to face and overcome severe trial? Good. That is as it should be. But we must also remember that tomorrow’s temptation, tomorrow’s trial will be different and perhaps more severe. There’s no time for relaxing, for congratulating yourself on victories won. Thank God for what he has done and turn to fight the next battle by faith.
This changeability of faith is our weakness, not a failure on the Lord’s part. And Gideon must be blamed for the weakness of his faith at this moment. But he was a man like us, subject to the same temptations. He was sometimes strong and sometimes lamentably weak. Leaders among God’s people are not extraordinary men, men who always stand on the mountaintops, setting us an example by their unwavering faith. They are men of like passions, clay pots – fragile and easily broken, just as unworthy as ourselves to have a place in the host of the Lord. They need help, just as we do, and sometimes we can be the means to provide it, through a word of encouragement, or admonition or exhortation, or through prayers that even they may not know about.
Faith needs support and constant nourishment. It’s not a stone wall that, once built, stands unchanged forever. It is a living thing, and, like all living things, it needs food. Gideon’s faith too, especially in these severe tests, needed support. That is what the Lord provided.
The Lord’s Provision
The Lord is sympathetic and gracious to us in the weakness of our faith. Instead of constantly upbraiding us for it, he is always present to help us.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
So the LORD pities those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust. Ps 103:11–14
That means that he not only remembers that all men are weak and sinful creatures, but that he knows the particular frame and the particular dustiness (if I may put it that way), of each of us. He knows the heart, the thoughts, the desires, the fears and doubts, the temptations, the character of every single person, and can supply exactly what is needed at exactly the right time.
This also is part of the story of Gideon. At every step along the way the Lord was there to support, strengthen and encourage his faith. He knew his man, he knew his weaknesses and needs, and he walked right there alongside of him all the way to help him take every step. He came to him directly, not via a prophet but in the person of the angel of the Lord. He addressed him in a very reassuring way: The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. He gave him the command, but provided his promise with it: The Lord is with you… Have I not sent you? … Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. He complied with Gideon’s request for confirmation that it was indeed the Lord who spoke with him. He defended him from the anger of the men of Ophrah. He submitted himself to the testing of his sure word. And here the Lord himself freely offered Gideon another opportunity to strengthen his faith. This time Gideon didn’t even need to ask. The Lord came to him. He didn’t just give Gideon his command and his promise but was present with him all along the way to nourish and strengthen a faith that could not continue without him.
That’s the point of the means of grace. We do not seek signs, visions and direct revelations any longer because we have a more sure word of prophecy, a light that shines in a dark place. The Lord gives his word and the sacraments faithfully and regularly. We have his command and his promise, the foundation that our faith needs. We have the food we need to sustain that faith continually through every trial and all the changing circumstances of life. He is there, at our side. He will not let us fall.
But we need to look also at the means that the Lord used to strengthen Gideon’s faith.
The first thing that the Lord did was to give his command and to repeat his promise. This was not a new command, in the sense that Gideon had not known before this what the Lord expected him to do, but it was new in this respect: that this was the explicit call to battle. Here and now was the time to fight. But the Lord also repeated the promise of victory. This time that promise was worded even more strongly: I have delivered the Midianites into your hand. The Lord gave Gideon a glimpse into his eternal counsel. He did not say: “I will deliver…,” but “I have delivered…” As far as the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God were concerned, the outcome of this battle was already fixed.
That’s always the nature of the promise. God tells us what he is going to do, and he can do that because he has determined all the future in his eternal counsel and has the strength and authority to carry out his purposes regardless of men and nations. But sometimes he reminds us of that in very striking ways, as he did here for Gideon. He basically put the defeat of the Midianites in the past; he told Gideon that it was already accomplished.
The second provision that the Lord made was in the offer of further help. When he offered Gideon help this time, he required that Gideon exercise his faith. This comes across in the way that the Lord worded his offer: If you are afraid to go down, go down… If you stop there for a moment, then you see it. God seems to be saying, if you’re afraid to go down, just do it… This was not an easy thing to do, whatever the purpose: it was dangerous to go as close to the enemy as Gideon and his servant did to overhear that dream. Furthermore, the Lord promised Gideon that he would hear something that would do him good. In other words, he required that Gideon take hold of the promise, and act on it. Faith is strengthened by exercise.
The third provision was the telling of the dream that Gideon overheard. There are several things that we need to say about that.
First, we see in this the truly astonishing providence of God. He arranged all the circumstances and brought all the players together at exactly the right moment. He gave the Midianite soldier a dream. He arranged for him to awaken, perhaps because the dream felt to the soldier like a nightmare. He arranged for him to have a wakeful companion to whom he could tell the dream, and for the companion to provide an interpretation of it. And he also arranged for these two ordinary soldiers to be talking at exactly the moment that Gideon and Purah were near enough to hear. He brought them to the precise place where they could hear, without being detected, exactly what the soldiers were saying. That is amazing.
Second, was this a prophetic dream? That is, was God revealing his purpose to the Midianite soldier by means of the dream, and then providing an interpreter as well, so that the dream was properly interpreted? Not necessarily. It is possible that, from a human perspective, this was an ordinary dream that reflected the Midianite soldier’s preoccupations and worries at the time, and that there was no legitimate interpretation possible. It’s all under God’s sovereign control, of course, but it is not necessarily the case that God was revealing his will to these soldiers.
Third, whether the dream was prophetic or not, what was important to Gideon was that it revealed the state of mind of the Midianite soldiers. They were afraid, and the whole army was afraid. Despite all their successes over the past seven years, morale was at a record low. They knew about Gideon and his intention to fight: the second soldier made that clear. How much they knew is not mentioned, but the situation is beautifully ironic. Here was the vast host of Midian, spreading over the land like a plague of locusts. There, just on the edge of the camp, were Gideon and Purah and, a little farther away, Gideon’s pitiful army of 300, and the Midianites were shaking in their boots.
Why should they be so afraid? It doesn’t make sense unless we understand that they knew the reputation of Israel’s God. The Midianites were afraid, not of Gideon, but of Gideon’s God. Because Gideon and Israel were actively resisting, they drew the conclusion that the Lord was also awake and ready finally to fight for his people:
Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
Like a mighty man who shouts because of wine.
And He beat back His enemies;
He put them to a perpetual reproach. Ps 78:65-66
It’s no wonder then that Gideon worshipped. The text indicates that he did it right there on the spot, so I’m sure that it was silent worship, a short and fervent prayer of thanksgiving and adoration to the God who works marvelously for his people. There would be in his heart thanks for the gift just given him, a gift that showed him the way to victory, for the certainty of the promise that he had not yet been able to believe fully, for the help the Lord gave him in his weakness. And there would be adoration for the power and wisdom of God who could make all these circumstances coincide to supply the need of the moment. How great a God he is!
Do you have trouble resting in the promises of God? Do your worries keep you awake at night? Listen to the word of God:
I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me all around. Ps 3:5,6
Do you fret about the future of the church here or anywhere? It’s in God’s hand. His arm is not shortened. Are you anxious about anything to do with yourself, your family, the church, the world, anything at all? Trust in the promises of God and he will bring to pass all the good that he has planned for you from the foundation of the world. It may not be what you ask from him today, and, if you knew it in advance, it might not even sound very appealing to you now, but it will be far better than anything you have ever imagined.