As this story from the Book of Judges begins, the enemy Midianites are encamped about 7 km north of Gideon and the people with him, who are in camp beside the spring of Harod. In Hebrew, the spring of Harod means the spring of trembling, which fits the story line, and which also fits the inner meaning, in this story line on our own lives.

This is Part 2 of a three-part study on the story of Gideon that Coleman Glenn and I have been doing. The sub-title we've given this series is “Weakness and Strength.” Throughout the story you see these themes coming through. In part 1, Gideon was called to lead his people against the massive Midianite enemy army. But he's not feeling strong; he’s hiding in a winepress when the Angel of Jehovah says to him, “Jehovah is with you, you mighty man of valour!”

Gideon asks for a sign - some proof - and the angel makes fire come out of a rock and consume Gideon’s offering. In the strength of that Gideon tears down the altar of Baal in the town, blows a trumpet, and gathers the people together for battle.

But then, he feels weakness. Gideon needs another sign that the Lord will really be with him. There’s similar weakness and strength in our early efforts at spiritual growth. The call of Gideon in us is some sense of a desire for something deeper, something spiritual, something more than the pursuit of pleasure that the Midianites represent.

The tearing down the altar of Baal is a commitment to do something for more than just our own pleasure and enjoyment. When we embark on trying to become a better, more spiritual, person don’t we also experience doubts - doubts about what it is that we’re going to do as spiritual people? Or doubts about our ability to actually follow through with our intentions?

That brings us to this story, in Judges 7. Gideon and the people are gathered together for battle but are at a place of trembling. What we’re going to explore today is how the Lord takes what we have, refines, mobilises and equips it with the power of His truth to go and rout the Midianites.

Finding the Right People for the Fight:

The first task, at this point in the story, is to find the right people for the fight. There they are, outnumbered 5 to 1, and Jehovah says something to Gideon that probably sounded crazy to him:

“The people who are with you are too many…”

Gideon may well have thought, “We were doing pretty well to get 32,000 people to come when the odds are this bad, and You want less?”

The Lord knew that if that many people went to battle and they won they would then think that it was because of them that the battle had been won. When we find ourselves with some motivation to change and become a better person we can have a lot of our self involved: “I’m deciding to do the right thing!".

That's admirable in one sense and misguided in another. We need to realise that it’s only through the Lord’s strength and the people He picks that we will have victory.

Round 1: “Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn back…”

In the story, there are two rounds of removing people from the army. First, Gideon is told to say,

“Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn back and depart at once from Mount Gilead” (Judges 7:3). “And twenty-two thousand of the people turned back, and ten thousand remained” (Judges 7:3). These are the people who get behind a cause - sort of. There are the people in the front of the group, leading the charge saying, “Yeah!!” And then there are the people who are just as happy to be somewhere towards the back saying, “Yeah…”. If you ask them, “Do you want to be here?”, their response might be, “Yeah… sure.” And if you ask further, “Actually, would you rather go home?”, their response is, “Yes! See ya!”

If we look within ourselves when we’re trying to change we’ll probably find that there are a fair number of ideas and thoughts that aren’t quite on board. If you imagine a natural example of someone deciding that they’re going to be a better student, they might say, “Yeah, I’m going to develop my study skills and be proactive and optimise my time management.” And you ask them, “What does that mean? What will that look like?”

They’d say, “Uhh…. I dunno. But that’s the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do, right?”

The number of people that turned back, 22,000, is significant. In the Word, 12 means fullness, completeness, all, like the 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, and 12 gates into the Holy City New Jerusalem.

The number 11 is almost but not quite 12, not fully there, not completely integrated into a whole. The 22,000 is a multiple of 11, and has a similar meaning. Those religious ideas that we don’t fully get or buy into are not going to be effective against the Midianites, so it’s better if they just go home.

Round 2: “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps…”

So what in us IS fit to fight against the Midianites? Jehovah says that the 10,000 soldiers still with Gideon are still too many. This is the sort of description that just screams that there must be some sort of deeper, symbolic meaning in the story. Otherwise all these weird-seeming details would be just the whims of a bizarre god.

The people are commanded to go down to the water and, though it’s not exactly clear from the text what it looked like, those that drank like dogs were the ones who were selected. The teachings of the New Church provide this explanation of the significance of this difference.

In Apocalypse Explained 455:9, it says, “Midian” here means those who do not care for truth, because they are merely natural and external; therefore Midian was beaten by those who “lapped the waters in the hand with the tongue like a dog,” who symbolize people who have an appetite for truths. From a natural affection, they seek to know truths, a “dog” meaning appetite and eagerness, “waters” truths, and “lapping them with the tongue” to have an appetite for and to eagerly seek.

This lapping represents the part of us that really wants to know the truth, the part of us that is so eager that we’re bouncing up and down as our Master brings the water dish. You might think, “I’m not sure that there’s much of me that is that eager to learn the truth.” There were only 300 men out of an original 32,000. That’s not much, and it's probably just a small part of our minds, but it’s enough. It's what the Lord selects in us.

To identify the part of you that is represented by these 300 men, I find it’s helpful to think of people who just love a certain subject area and lap up any new information they can get on it. Think of a kid who memorises tons of facts about rugby or cricket and can tell you what the final score was from a game from the 1970s. Or a teenage girl who knows everything about her favourite band. There are times when we just love learning more about a certain subject.

Do you know any people who have that sort of passion about truths from the Word? It can be helpful to try to pick up their infectious enthusiasm and eagerness. I had a professor in university who taught ancient history - not the most exciting of courses to the average college student. She had such genuine, infectious enthusiasm about her subject area that it would rub off on her students. People would say, “I never knew that someone could care so much about an old broken pot.”

Think of those people in your life who have that sort of passion for learning from the Word and look for that in yourself - even if it’s just 0.9% of yourself (which is what you get if you divide 300 by 32,000). That part of you that’s eager to learn the truth - that’s what the Lord will use to rout the Midianites.

Seeing the Camp and Overhearing the Dream:

After the second round of winnowing, Gideon has the group that Jehovah has approved for him to take into battle, but there’s one final thing that Jehovah has him do before the battle to give him the courage to attack. He says, “afterward your hands shall be made firm to go down against the camp” (7:11).

At nighttime He tells Gideon to take his servant, Purah, and sneak down to the camp of the Midianites. One thing that happens in this part of the story is that he sees the enemy as a whole for the first time and it’s overwhelming. “Now the Midianites and Amalekites and all the sons of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the lip of the sea in multitude” (7:12).

This is what the life of external pleasure can look like. It’s everywhere - like the sand of the beach - consumerism and self-absorption and this pandering to people’s lowest desires - it’s just saturated throughout the world we live in. And we can feel like, “Who am I to think that I won’t get caught up in all that stuff?”

But then, they go down to the camp and they overhear one man telling another about a dream he had about a baked loaf of barley bread overturning and collapsing a tent. A dream at nighttime means a dim perception of something - not a clear sight but some sense of something. This tent being knocked over and collapsing means the camp of Midian, which seemed to have such a solid hold over the children of Israel, no longer having any dwelling place there. This means us getting to have some sense that the focus on just having as much pleasure and fun as possible just doesn’t have to have as much of a hold on us as before. With the Lord’s help, we can look down on it from above and see it for what it is and say, “I don’t actually want that.” Gideon hears the interpretation that the other man gives that this dream means that God has given Midian into Gideon’s hand. Then he worships the Lord, returns to the camp and musters his men for battle.

Torches and Trumpets:

Gideon divides the men into 3 groups, gives each of them a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch to go inside the pitcher. They surround the camp, blow the trumpets, break the pitchers so the torches can be seen, and yell, “The sword for Jehovah and for Gideon!”

Eagerness for the truth leads us to learn the truths that we can use to combat the enemy—trumpets and torches. The Word can seem to us like an empty pitcher sometimes—like it’s meant to hold water but it’s dry and there’s nothing there. But when we’re eager for the truth we can sometimes see that it’s actually got a torch inside it, burning and shining.

The trumpet can blast and announce the arrival of the power of Jehovah in the situation. Think about the desires for a life of pleasure and then think of these words of the Lord from the Sermon on the Mount blasting through the air like a trumpet and shining down onto where those ideas are camped:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:31-33).

“Every man’s sword against his companion….”

After they smash their pitchers and blow their trumpets they don’t attack: they just stand there and the Midianites destroy each other. This reveals something about Midian: it seems to be this cohesive group that is working together, like all the ideas out there about pursuing having a good time above all other things seem to be all one message. But Midian’s name in Hebrew means strife or contention.

We might think of people who pursue pleasure as being happy and fulfilled but a life that’s focused on pleasure actually is not peaceful at its heart. It’s competitive. It’s a craving, desperate want for more - for better experiences or better stories than everyone else... a cooler car, a nicer house, better clothes - more better clothes - never satisfied with what it has, always anxious that someone else has something better. It doesn’t want to commit to doing one thing because what if something better comes along? And then, even while doing something fun, there’s FOMO, fear of missing out on what other people are doing. And there’s bingeing - bingeing on TV, food, alcohol, whatever - underneath all of that is not peace and contentment but stress and unhappiness.

With the Lord’s help we can see that we don’t have to worry about that stuff. We worry about earthly treasures getting stolen or damaged but heavenly treasures can’t be stolen or broken. And we don’t need to worry about who has the best clothes and house and stuff. All those conflicting external ideas about what we should do and say and wear and go to etc. they can keep on fighting it out. We can focus on seeking first the kingdom of God and his justice.

Getting Reinforcements to Pursue the Enemy:

Then the enemy flees and Gideon and his men pursue them. Gideon calls in reinforcements. It seems that it’s fine to have extra people involved at this point. Given that some of the men he called were from the same places he’d called them from before, it seems likely that some or even many of the original 32,000 may have been involved.

The principle seems to be that as long as eagerness for the Lord’s Word leads the way, then other, less motivated or integrated ideas can fall in behind and help out. It’s important that they pursue the Midianites, to kill as many of them as possible and drive the rest all the way out of the land. When we notice that selfish desires for just having a good time are losing hold in our lives, it’s important to really drive them all the way out, to really examine ourselves and where we still have Midianite tendencies lurking.

Because Gideon's army pursues the Midianites, and calls in the help of the men from the mountains of Ephraim, they manage to even capture the two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. These princes symbolize the ruling falsities that have been in charge of our pleasure-seeking. Oreb means raven, which is a black bird with a harsh cry that in the Word is a symbol of falsity that has no interest whatsoever in what the truth is. Zeeb means wolf. A wolf in sheep’s clothing looks innocent but is actually destructive of innocence, just like certain kinds of pleasure seeking can seem like harmless fun but actually lead to destroying things that matter. It’s good that the men caught these princes and killed them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when we look out at the world we see a lot of secularism and consumerism and people who just seem so shallow and obsessed with pointless stuff. When we compare that to the few religious people we know, the odds seem to be against us. We can think, “How is our small group ever going to have an impact against the overwhelming cultural trend?” How are my children ever going to get to adulthood without being totally corrupted and having everything good and religious stolen away by pleasure-seeking Midian?

Probably for most of us, if we’re honest, we can look inside ourselves and see that there’s part of us that buys into it - part of our minds and hearts that wants it too. We want to have the most fun, see the coolest things, have the coolest stuff. That’s when it can be so powerful to remember this story of how 300 Israelites routed 145,000 Midianites. Even the smallest bit of eagerness for the truth has the power from the Lord to win against worldliness every single time - in our lives and in other people’s lives. The Lords truths, when eagerly taken in, can allow us to see pleasure-seeking for what it is - an infighting, anxious turmoil - that we can rise above, shine the light on and drive out of our lives with the Lord’s help.

(References: Gideon: Weakness and Strength, Part 3 of 3)