Weakness - The way to perfection

Scripture often celebrates Israel's victory over Midian. Before it, God tells Gideon he has too many men. So that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her, changes are needed. Judges 7:2 highlights important principles.

Universal tendency

God speaks and acts as he does because of our tendency to boast. For unbelievers, pride is their necklace. Boastfulness is typical of these last days. How readily we boast. A sure sign of worldliness is boasting of what we have and do (Psalm 73; 2 Timothy 3; James 3; 1 John 2). It is somehow instinctive with us. Gresham Machen describes tourists boasting of conquering summits when they have simply followed guides equally able to get sacks of corn to the top!

Children brag about themselves. Adults blow their own trumpets. Even octogenarians crow about how young they look. Do you tell stories lionising yourself? We are subtle sometimes but the propensity is continual. Denying it is only another brag - 'others boast, I don't'! Are you aware of this proclivity?

God hates

Judges 7 proves God hates boasting. Recall his response when Nebuchadnezzar bragged that he had built Babylon by his mighty power and for the glory of his majesty. That arrogant man was soon eating grass like a cow. 1 Peter 5:5 urges us to clothe ourselves with humility ... because Cod opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. God esteems the humble and contrite in spirit and pronounces the meek blessed. He warns the wise not to boast of their wisdom, the strong of their strength, the rich of their wealth. Rather, if he must boast, let him boast that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight (Isaiah 66:2; Matthew 5:5; Jeremiah 9:23-24).

Undeniably, God hates all boastfulness and pride. Reject it and humble yourself. Ephesians 5:17 says find out what pleases the Lord. God abhors boasting and demands all the glory for himself. The only glory we can know is reflected glory. He must have the praise. To covet it for ourselves brings wrath. Certain famous prima donnas want everything to revolve around them, taking credit for everything. How mean-spirited and arrogant. God takes the credit because it is due. He is responsible for everything. Do you see that? Then honour him.

Avoid boasting

Clearly, we must do all we can to avoid self-promotion. Jesus says, when giving to the needy, not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give, but avoid drawing attention to yourself. Similarly, avoid praying standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. ...go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen .... Pray, even in public, as if it is just the Lord and you. And when fasting avoid looking sombre as the hypocrites do. They disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. ... rather put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men ... but only to your Father, who is unseen .... (Matthew 6:3,5,6,16-18). Philippians 2:3: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. We have a bent for boasting but God loathes it. Do all you can to eliminate it. Self-flagellation and prolonged fasts will only tempt us to boast. Deliverance comes from doing what God requires.

God's work

One of the wonderful truths of the Bible is that God himself helps us avoid boasting. The very way he saves us shows this. It is not a matter of intelligence or beauty, nationality or family nor how good we are in men's eyes. Rather, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of Cod - not by works, so that no-one can boast (Ephesians 2:8, 9). As we look from ourselves to Christ, he saves. Who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (1 Corinthians 4:7). Are you cleverer, better looking, abler than others? If you fail to see it is God's gift, you are a boaster.

Prayer is something else God uses to teach humility. How incongruous to brag about answered prayer. All the glory is God's. Think of Paul's thorn in the flesh. Whatever it was this Messenger of Satan was highly unpleasant. Paul wanted it gone but instead God enabled Paul to cope. Suffering can help us. It can promote maturity in Christ if we are teachable.

God whittles down Gideon's army in stages. First, he removes the fearful, as Deuteronomy 20 demands. Over two thirds depart. The rule was to counteract low morale but it must have been hard to see 22,000 depart! Nevertheless, God was determined to prevent boasting. Cut backs were essential. What is it about numbers? Numbers spell prestige and power. There is safety in numbers. We sometimes think they are the key to everything. Smaller churches envy larger ones; low numbers dishearten us. However, God sometimes wants a decrease. He has his chosen few. Many are on the broad road, few on the narrow road to heaven. We must give up worldly thinking and see that (as E F Schumacher put it in another context) 'small is beautiful' or, to use another slogan, 'less is more'. If God is to use us, we must 'think small'.

Even then, there were still too many. Gideon must take them down to the water for further sifting. Perhaps you learned in Sunday School that God chose the final three hundred for their superiority but it does not say that. Rather, if God said this one shall go with you, he went. And if he said this one shall not ..., he stayed. The division, however we understand it, is arbitrary. And, so it seems, is the kingdom. God appears to bless a preacher, a church, an individual. We seek explanations. Sometimes we think we know why. Often we are baffled. It seems capricious, nonsensical. Eloquent preachers with small churches, ordinary preachers with large ones; the godly forgotten, the worldly acclaimed. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Accept the way it is and recognise how God thus subverts boasting and glorifies himself, doing as he chooses. We must learn humility.

Success through weakness

Gideon's experience shows how mysterious success is. We dare not excuse laziness or neglect but we must learn to give God glory. We must somehow learn with Paul not to boast about ourselves except, as it were, of our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12). To know what Gideon and Paul knew we must ponder God's words, my power is made perfect in weakness. We must gladly boast of our weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on us. For his sake, delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties convinced that when I am weak, then I am strong.

Gideon and his fleece – a model for guidance?

In Exodus 20:15 God says You shall not steal. It is a command and few people have ever tried to deny its plain meaning. In Acts 16:3 it says of Paul and Barnabas that after the people had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The 1689 Baptist Confession concludes, therefore, that today elders “should be solemnly set apart by fasting and prayer” (26:9). However, not all churches committed to the confession would vigorously enforce the rule.

Why the distinction? It is because Exodus 20:15 is prescriptive and Acts 16:3 is descriptive and so although the latter may give a good example that ought to be followed, we cannot insist on it in the same way that we can with not stealing.

Gideon

The Book of Judges is chiefly descriptive rather than prescriptive. At the end of Judges 6 we are told how Gideon twice put out a fleece in order to reassure himself that God was with him in the task he had been given of repelling the Midianites. On both occasions he was rewarded with a wonderfully assuring miracle. In light of this passage some Christians in the past, and perhaps still today, will speak of “putting out a fleece” in order to know God's guidance. Other Christians react quite strongly against speaking in such terms.

Some Christians assume that Gideon's example is a good one, while many others would point out not only that there is no command to “put out a fleece” but would even question whether what Gideon did was a good thing anyway. It was a lack of faith rather than example of faith they contend. There are several questions then. Did Gideon do right? If so, has he left us with an example to follow? If not, is there something to avoid here? 

Man of faith

Certainly, we should be very slow to criticise a man who is held up to us in the New Testament as an example of a man of faith. He is not criticised for testing the Lord in the way he did anywhere in Scripture. We need to remember too that Gideon's circumstances were very different to ours today. Unlike us he had no New Testament; he had very little of the Old Testament, either. The Holy Spirit was on him but the Spirit had not been poured out in abundance as he later was. For us today, looking to God for a special sign to confirm our decisions can be a form of laziness rather than a form of godliness.

Gideon does show a certain immaturity perhaps. Even he fears God's anger when he asks for a second miraculous sign of confirmation. Bruce Waltke reminds us too that Gideon was not making a decision about what car to buy or what college to go to. Such decisions are important but “are not on the same scale with determining the course of a nation whom God has selected for a blessing”.

Looking for signs

It is understandable that many writers warn against looking for signs to guide us. The story is told of a woman wanting guidance about whether to go on a trip to Israel. After reading the brochure about the available trip in bed one night, she prayed that the Lord would give her a sign as to whether she should go. She then fell asleep with the brochure next to her. Waking the next morning the first thing she saw was the digital clock reading 7:47. Given that the flight to Israel was to be on a Boeing 747 she had the sign she wanted it seemed and booked that day!

Another story describes someone committed to missionary work but wanting a sign as to where to serve. Entering a shop one day they see Brazil nuts and they are convinced it is a sign that they should serve in Brazil. (What if they had fixed their eyes on the Mars bars, I wonder?) One of the problems with such examples is that they are not really like Gideon's experience anyway. What Gideon sought and found was a double miracle not to guide him about what to do but to reassure him in what he was about to do. This is quite different to these other examples. Such sign seeking is also open to abuse. Spurgeon told a story of a woman who was very much into such signs coming to a minister seeking guidance. The truth was that her mind was already made up and so he told her to listen to the church bells and see what they were saying. It seemed to her that they were saying “Do it! Do it!” So she went and did it. And she later regretted it. Now the bells seemed to say “Never do it! Never do it!”

Warnings

It is true that Jesus warns us that A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! We ought to take care that we are not merely seeking signs for their own sake. However, to look to our Father for reassurance and encouragement along the way is surely not wrong. When a big dog is barking who can object to a child holding her father's hand a little tighter and asking “Will it be okay?”

God has already given us many “fleeces” that encourage us to go in the right direction. Poor, weak creatures as we are, however, we sometimes need further reassurances that God is leading us. To seek such signs is not necessarily laziness or superstition.

For a man who is new to the ministry, for example, to pray for someone to be converted through his preaching in those early days as a sign that God is going to use him is surely not wrong. To ask for some sort of encouraging sign in a new job – a fellow Christian or a sympathetic boss - is surely not to be outlawed. Yes, we must trust the Lord but he is a gentle Father and to ask, in the spirit in which Gideon asked, for a sign of God's favour is surely not a lack of faith but a desire to have our faith strengthened.

Condescension

The lesson to be learned from Gideon's fleece then is really to do with the condescension of God. Charles Simeon called attention to this in a sermon on the passage. He says

It is true, we are not authorised to specify the terms on which we will credit the divine testimony, or to expect any visible signs in confirmation of God’s word: yet are we not a whit less assured of his condescension and grace, than Gideon ... We shall find, in his very covenant which he has made with us, the very same condescension to our weakness, and the very same desire to satisfy our minds … And … in the promises … We see, then, that at this day God is the same as in the days of old; and that still, as formerly, “he will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, till he bring forth judgement unto victory.”

Conclusions

Surely it is correct to say that Gideon did right when he asked for reassurance in the way he did. Matthew Henry notes that

Though he took the boldness to ask another sign, yet he did it with such fear and trembling as showed that the familiarity God had graciously admitted him to did not breed any contempt of God's glory, nor presumption on God's goodness.

The story does not necessarily give us an example to follow in some wooden way but it does reassure us of God's compassion. It also suggests that when a servant of God is going about the Lord's work and becomes aware of his weakness, it is perfectly acceptable for him to seek reassurance from God that he is in the way of duty. We do not expect miracles to reassure us or even strange signs but we can ask that God will bless us in certain ways, ways that will serve to reassure us in our efforts to serve him.

First published in Grace Magazine