Judges 7:2 “The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’” This episode talks about how important it is to rely on the Holy Spirit and to trust that He will always show up when we call upon Him. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
What If He Doesn’t Show Up?
Judges 7:2 “The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’”
At the conference this weekend one of the talks was all about Gideon. It covered Judges 6 and 7, however, this morning I am going to talk about the verse above. I will give you a quick summary of Judges 6 and 7 in case you are not familiar with Gideon as when they mentioned His name, I didn’t know who they were talking about. An angel of God went to Gideon and called him a mighty warrior. Gideon was confused as his family was among the weakest clan of Manasseh and Gideon himself was the least in His family. Never the less, the angel of God was calling him to save Israel. I have talked about Gideon before because what he did next is something most of us would do. He asked God to show him a sign if he was really God and if God really wanted him to do this thing. God gave him a sign, but Gideon was still scared because God was asking Gideon to lead His people into battle against their enemies. Gideon asked God for two more signs and when God gave them to him, he couldn’t refuse Him anymore.
Gideon called upon God’s people to come and fight their enemy with him and 32,000 people showed up to fight. Gideon and his army were still outnumbered by a lot. This is where the verse above picks up. God looked at the 32,000 men and told Gideon that he had too many troops. God told Gideon that if he went into battle with that many men, the Israelites would believe they saved themselves from Midian, instead of God saving them. God told Gideon to send home any man that was afraid to fight in this war. Gideon probably expected a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand to go home. However, twenty two thousand men left. Now Gideon was left with 10,000 men up against the whole Midianite army. I can imagine Gideon was probably a lot more anxious about the battle now. He started with 32,000 which was already a small amount compared to the enemy and now they are down to 10,000. You would think that would be good now.
God had other plans, He told Gideon there were still too many men. He said he needed to narrow it down even more and God told Gideon how to do it. After this next cut, Gideon was down to 300 men against all of the enemies armies. Can you take a minute and put yourself in Gideon’s shoes? Can you imagine what it would be like to show up to a war against an army that far out numbers you and then to let most of that army go home? I wonder what Gideon was thinking? I know he asked God to give him signs that God was going to do what He said He would do. However, in the moment, I wonder if he doubted, I wonder if he was scared? I don’t really know how one wouldn’t be scared in that situation. Gideon and his army was successful in defeating the Midianites. Even though He may have been scared Gideon trusted in the Lord and it paid off, it always does.
Now that you know the basics of Gideon’s story, let's get back to this verse. ““The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’” The part of this verse that stands out to me the most is when it says, “Israel would only take the credit away from me.” This is something that I think we tend to do often. It is not just for those that lived back in Gideon’s time, we are still doing this today. I wonder how many times I have had something miraculous happen and have given credit to everything except for God. I wonder how many times I have gotten exactly what I had been praying for and then given thanks to everyone around me, except for God. Have you ever done this? You were praying for a new job and you got it and you called up and thanked those that helped you prepare for the interview, and those that looked over your resume or helped you practice interviews but you didn’t thank God. Or maybe you did thank Him, but you attribute your success in getting the job to your own efforts.
One of the speakers asked a question at the conference last weekend that really hit me and really stuck with me. His question was, “Do you ever put yourself in situations where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up?” If most of us are being honest we would probably say no. Why not? Because doing that would make us vulnerable. What if He didn’t show up, what would we do then? We would look like fools. We would be so embarrassed. The thing I have learned from reading various books is that the Holy Spirit always shows up when we call upon Him. If we create a situation where everyone would notice if He didn’t show up then God would not let us down. If we step out in that kind of radical faith, God rewards it. There is a great example of this in 1 Kings 18:22-24, "Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only one of the Lord’s prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let Baal’s prophets choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire—he is God.” Elijah was putting God’s reputation on the line by saying God would light the fire. What if He didn’t show up? Everyone would have noticed. God showed up, as He always does. Because Elijah did this demonstration of God’s power, the people turned back to God. Elijah’s willingness and trust to put himself and God into this situation helped others deepen their trust and faith.
One of the speakers last weekend told us a story of how he put himself in a situation where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit didn’t show up. He was on a mission trip with two other guys in Belize. They felt called to hold a healing service. They had never done this before, but they felt the Holy Spirit calling them to do it, so they said yes. They weren’t really that nervous as they figured there wouldn’t be that many people that showed up anyway. When they arrived to the church they noticed that all the doors were open and when they got closer they could see that there were over 200 men in that church waiting for the healing service to begin. They prayed for the Holy Spirit to show up that night and He did. They had an amazing healing service. Not because these men were particularly gifted with healing, but because they stepped out in faith and said yes when the Holy Spirit asked them to do something that they didn’t know how to do. They said yes, and potentially put their reputation on the line, to answer the call. When you have this type of radical faith, or obedience, God will not let you down. If you are stepping out in faith for His sake, He will always be there to back you up. He will never abandon you or leave you on your own.
Have you ever said no to the Holy Spirit because you didn’t want to be embarrassed. I know I have. Sometimes the Holy Spirit asks you to do some hard things, some things that are out of your comfort zone. I will actually give a witness tomorrow about how the Holy Spirit asked me to step way outside of my comfort zone to do something and how I struggled with it. Over this next week, give some thought to the question, “Do you ever put yourself in situations where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up?” Then think about how you could do this, or pray that if God does ask you to put yourself in this type of situation that you have the strength and the boldness to say yes. He won’t abandon you and He won’t leave you alone. God will always show up and you may just deepen other’s faith by demonstrating your ability to step out in faith.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to step out in faith, please help us. We want to be in situations where we have to rely on the Holy Spirit to show up. Well, if we are being honest, we may not want to yet, but we want to want to. We want to have the faith that Elijah had, we want to have the faith that these three missionaries had. Lord, fill us with the faith of these men and then more. Fill us with a radical trust that we can step out in faith and know that we know you will always be there to catch us. We love you so much Lord and we are so grateful that you are always there for us and that you never abandon us. We are so grateful you trust us and use us to help bring others into your kingdom. You are so amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be the speaker tomorrow and I will talk about a time when the Holy Spirit asked me to step way outside my comfort zone and what that looked like for me. Also, I will talk about a special experience I had with the Holy Spirit that shows He shows up when asked. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!