Gideon and the Men Down By the River

from Doug Perry – June 1, 2007

I’ve heard a bunch of sermons on this one little element of the Gideon story and I’ve never been satisfied with any of them. The Lord has been talking to me about Gideon for almost three solid years now, so I’ve spent a lot of time dissecting the whole story. For whatever it’s worth, I thought I’d give you my take on this story and you can decide if it makes more sense to you than some of the other interpretations you heard. I guess when we get to heaven we can just ask Gideon about  it. I’m sure he was the first one in line to ask God what He was thinking with this crazy scheme!

Anyway, the passage is found in Judges 6:2-8.  (Amplified)

2 The Lord said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel boast about themselves against Me, saying, My own hand has delivered me. 3 So now proclaim in the ears of the men, saying, Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him turn back and depart from Mount Gilead. And 22,000 of the men returned, but 10,000 remained.  4 And the Lord said to Gideon, The men are still too many; bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. And he of whom I say to you, This man shall go with you, shall go with you; and he of whom I say to you, This man shall not go with you, shall not go.  5 So he brought the men down to the water, and the Lord said to Gideon, Everyone who laps up the water with his tongue as a dog laps it, you shall set by himself, likewise everyone who bows down on his knees to drink.  6 And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.  7 And the Lord said to Gideon, With the 300 men who lapped I will deliver you, and give the Midianites into your hand. Let all the others return every man to his home.  8 So the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands, and he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his home and retained those 300 men. And the host of Midian was below him in the valley.

Now, I’ve heard two different sermons on this. The most common one goes like this; “The Lord sorted the men out based on their watchfulness. That is, that the ones that knelt and stuck their faces in the water were not ready for an attack. They were prone and defenseless. This was proof that they were not good warriors.  But the ones that drank from their hand kept one hand on their sword and their eyes on the horizon scanning for threats. They were watchful and ready. These were the best warriors and so should you be.”

The only other variant I’ve ever heard was this rare one. (I’ll let you judge the quality of scholarship and logic here.) It goes like this;  “The Lord tested them based on their pride. The ones that knelt over the water liked looking at their own reflection. This was evidence of their pride and unsuitability for God’s purposes. God wanted the ones that were humble and willing to drink from their hand, not the ones that like to look in the mirror.”

OK, personally I think that second one is just goofy. For one thing, you can’t have calm enough water to see yourself in when 10,000 people are trying to get a drink at the same time.  And I think both of them make God out to be kind of weak. In both cases, it seems that God doesn’t know who the best warriors are until He can see their behavior. And it can’t be a duplicatable test that is designed to teach Gideon something, because the Lord never explains the point of the test or what it’s designed to measure!  So it’s simply a sorting method and it has to be an opportunity for self-selection, not a chance to show God how good a warrior or how humble you are – He already knows that. And to imply that God needed the best, most watchful swordsmen there, is to imply that God needed ANY of them there to win this victory!

I think this was something else entirely. By way of illustration, I need to tell you a story. This is the event that happened to me that helped me to finally “get” what God did with Gideon and his posse.

In the Fall of 2006 I was at a pretty large conference in Kansas City where Roland and Heidi Baker from Mozambique were speaking. I wouldn’t normally go there, but the Lord had made it clear I was to go (and it was free).  During the second evening of the conference, there was a young lady singing. There were about 500-800 people there, I guess. (I’m not sure how many were in the balcony.)  At a particular point in her song, she said something like “who will stand up for Jesus?”.   Well, everyone in the place is seated and she is alone singing up front.  But the Lord said to me, “Will you stand  up?” “Now, Lord?” “Yes, right now.” “But nobody else is standing and the people behind me won’t be able to see.” “Are you more afraid of Me – or of what they will think?”  So I popped up!  The whole dialogue took about 15 seconds.

So I stand up and I’m the lone person in the audience standing. Then, pop, pop, pop – other people start standing. It wasn’t like I started a wave or anything. I looked around and the second person up was a dear brother and freak warrior that I’d spent a lot of time with and I KNOW hears God. I didn’t recognize any of the others, but they looked fierce (in the spirit).  All together, I think there were about eight or so out of 500-800 that stood up (not counting the balcony). We all stood there for a couple of minutes, then fairly spontaneously all sat down. I heard the Lord tell me that was enough, thank me, and tell me to sit down. I assume they did to. They certainly weren’t standing in support of ME or anything!  We were all pretty absorbed in worship and not paying much attention. I doubt if any of them noticed at all. They just stood because something in them said to stand – or they hear God really good and knew to obey. Whether it was a gentle nudge or a conversation voice, I don’t know.

When I sat down, I asked the Lord, “What that was all about?”  He said, “It was a hearing and obedience test.”  I said, “So you told all those people to stand up?” “No,” He said, “I told EVERYONE here to stand up – those were the only ones that heard Me well enough or were willing to obey.”

OUCH!!   So ONE PERCENT may be the best we can expect.  That may be all we’ve got that hear God really well and are really crazy enough to do something embarrassing in public. (And that wasn’t really much of a personal risk. Certainly not like the Chinese Christians sneaking across the border to go preach the Gospel in Iran!)

Anyway, I know that God uses the foolish things to confound the wise. I know that God didn’t want Israel to claim that they had won this battle in their own power. I don’t think that God was interested in selecting the best, most watchful, most attentive warriors who always kept their hands on their swords. If I know anything about the people God uses, the 300 that made the cut were probably geeks and weirdos and rebels and people that would generally be dismissed by society. THAT is who God uses so that HE can get the most glory.

Here’s what I think happened, and I think the facts that follow will bear me out. Everybody that was scared went home. That left 10,000 that weren’t scared, but may not have been fully prepared for this kind of battle. So God sent them all down to the water and whispered quietly to ALL of them, “Drink out of your hand.”

Those that heard Him and obeyed, He kept. Those that couldn’t hear Him for whatever reason or wouldn’t obey, He sent home.  One percent that hear the voice of God and obey all the time is about right (300 of 32,000). Sadly, that’s pretty typical of my experience with the “church”.  How about you?

You need to understand that, at that point, even Gideon doesn’t know the plan. The Lord isn’t telling ANYBODY the plan until the very last minute. And when God does tell Gideon the plan, he has to go back and tell his army, “OK, guys. Here’s the plan. We’re all going to take a trumpet in one hand and a torch with a jar over it in the other hand – never mind your swords. We’re going to split up into three groups of a hundred and surround 135,000 soldiers. When I give you the signal, break the jar, wave the torch, blow the trumpet and shout, ‘Victory for God and for Gideon!’ as loud as you can. Then they’re all going to kill each other. Oh, and we’re going to do this RIGHT NOW.”

Evidently there were only 300 Israelites that heard God well enough to go along with something so completely nutty!  But none of them defected. None of them panicked and ran from the battle. Why? Because these were the ones that were close enough to God to say, “OH, C’MON!! Lord, please tell me this is You! That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!!”  And their ears were cleaned out enough to hear, “Yep. It’s Me. It’s all good. Go get ’em.”

Now they may not have heard God’s voice conversationally. It might have just been a peace in their heart, but these HAD to be people that trusted God all the way and He knew they would obey. So I think that, down there by the river, He gave the whole 10,000 a chance to hear and obey and share in the reward, but only a remnant were either willing to obey or had done the necessary work of personal repentance beforehand to be in a place where they could hear Him.  When the Bridegroom came, some didn’t have their lamps full. In fact, 99% didn’t!

If this was going to give God the most glory, these were probably the strangest bunch of misfits you’ll ever want to see.  And they lived the rest of their lives enjoying the physical rewards of the booty from that battle, the social rewards of being one of Gideon’s mighty men and the spiritual rewards of being obedient and used by God in a crazy way.  The nation lived at peace with God for forty years – it’s likely that these 300 lived at peace the most.

God didn’t sort out the army to find the warriors that could help Him out the most! God could have killed the enemy without any help at all (like He did in II Kings 7 and elsewhere).  I believe God was looking for those obedient ones that were willing to risk it all so He could let them share in the spoils of His victory.  These were the ones that got to see up close and personal how really mighty our God is.

In Judges 6:8-10, God had sent a prophet to Israel to preach repentance. If I believe that these 300 were the remnant that had heard and repented. Their ears were clear to hear the voice of the Lord, because they had put away the Baals and the Asherahs from their hearts. These were a shadow of the remnant in Ezekiel 9 that escapes the death angel. 

These 300 were indestructible. NONE were lost. (8:4) Not a single one. They fought and destroyed 135,000 – and didn’t lose a man. Why? Because God takes extra special care of freaks like these!  Besides, they weren’t there to help God win the war, they were there to be blessed by watching God do His thing!  They were there to share in the booty.

They were there because they had their lamps full when the Bridegroom came, so they got to go in and party with Him!

At least that’s what I think.

Doug Perry
FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com