Judges 6 relates the story of Gideon, a man who was basically a wimp! When we first meet Gideon in this chapter, he is hiding in fear from the Midianites in order to thresh wheat for his family. And yet when the angel of the Lord approached Gideon, his greeting in verse 12 was, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” You can imagine that Gideon’s response would be: “Who me?” and it was.
In his own eyes, Gideon was a zero, a nobody, a failure, and certainly not a “mighty man of valor” as he had been addressed. He was pretty sure God could not use him for anything, much less something that required boldness! But God was saying to Gideon: “You don’t know what you can do when you allow yourself to be accompanied by My presence and filled with My power.”
Gideon was slow to warm up to the idea of being a mighty man of valor, to be the one chosen of God to engage the entire Midianite army in battle. He could not comprehend that God wanted him for the task at hand. He was not some superhero, but he had two things in his favor: God’s power and presence.
With God’s assurance that he was the man for the job, Gideon chose to obey God. He quietly issued a call for the people to gather and was astounded when 32,000 showed up! But God had a different plan, one that would further challenge Gideon’s dependence on Him. Imagine his dismay when God told Gideon the army was too large and introduced His plan to streamline the troops to a mere 10,000 men. Even then, God determined that number to be too large and devised one further test that sent 97% of them home as well.
Three hundred men! That was Gideon’s army. The Midianite army was said to be “without number.” (See Judges 7:12.) Yet Gideon obeyed God’s very specific instructions. Each man was to carry a trumpet and a pitcher with a torch inside. The men were divided into three companies of 100 each and spread around the perimeter of the Midianite camp. At the appointed time, they were to blow their trumpets, smash the lamps and yell, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon” (Judges 7:20b.)
When the cacophony of noise awoke the Midianites, they were seized with panic and fled before the army of the Lord. Gideon pursued the enemy until it was vanquished. Gideon could have walked away from God’s plan at any time. In the natural, it must have seemed totally impossible to win Israel’s freedom from the marauding, murderous Midianites. However, Gideon chose to believe that the power and presence of Jehovah-Mephalti, the Lord my Deliverer, was greater than the multitude of Midianite militia.
