Christians, we want the Bible to be about overnight change. Bad guys become good guys. And that's mainstream American evangelicalism, but that's not what's in your Bible. The Bible shows us that normal Christianity is that bad guys are God's favorite. We're all both actually bad guys and good guys. There's only one truly good guy. There's no white switch moment. This is the language of the Reformation in the sixteenth century: Simul justus et peccator. That's Latin for "you're both a sinner and a saint." If you're a Christian, you're justified and sinner at the same time—bad guys and good guys.

And this is incredibly encouraging to fellow Gideons this morning because this is really the story of where we live, isn't it?

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You may have a seat, Judges. Today, I want to remind you of one of the reasons we study Old Testament books. We don't just want you to walk away from a message like this and say, "Hey, that was really great. I love my Old Testament or I love my Bible." What we really want is for you to see Jesus as he's reflected in every page in the Bible. And so with that view, we're looking at these Old Testament passages from the book of Judges.

I invite you—you get the easy part today. It's a long passage, and so I'm going to read and you can just follow along on the screen or in your bulletin as we look at Judges chapters 7 and 8 in various selections. Let's turn to the Lord.

Then Jerubbabel, who's Gideon, and all the people that were with him rose up early and pitched beside the Well of Harod, so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them by the Hill of Moreh in the valley. And the Lord said unto Gideon, "The people that are there with thee are too many for me to give them to the Midianites."

I'm going to go back to my version. You all can hang along. I don't want to do the "thees" and "thous," so I was trying to hang in with that one, but we'll do my version so you can try to follow along.

The Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many troops for me to hand the Midianites over to you, or else Israel might elevate themselves over me and say, 'I saved myself.' Now announce to the troops, 'Whoever is fearful and trembling may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.'" So 22,000 of the troops turned back, but 10,000 remained.

Then the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many troops. Take them down to the water and I will test them for you there. If I say to you, 'This one can go with you,' he can go. But if I say about anyone, 'This one cannot go with you,' he cannot go." So he brought the troops down to the water and the Lord said to Gideon, "Separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue like a dog. Do the same with everyone who kneels to drink."

The number of those who lapped with their hands to their mouths was 300 men, and all the rest of the troops knelt to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, "I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and hand the Midianites over to you, but everyone else is to go home."

And later in the same chapter:

Then he divided the 300 men into three companies and gave each of the men a ram's horn in one hand and an empty pitcher with a torch inside it in the other hand. "Watch me," he said to them, "and do what I do. When I come to the outpost of the camp, do as I do. When I and everyone with me blow our ram's horns, you are to also blow your ram's horns all around the camp. Then you will say, 'For the Lord and for Gideon.'"

Gideon and the 100 men who were with him went out to the outpost of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch after the sentries had been stationed. They blew their ram's horns and broke the pitchers that were in their hands. The three companies blew their ram's horns and shattered their pitchers. They held their torches in their left hands and the ram's horns to blow in their right hands and they shouted, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!"

Each Israelite took his position around the camp and the entire Midianite army began to run and they cried out as they fled. When Gideon's men blew their 300 ram's horns, the Lord caused the men and the whole army to turn on each other with their swords. They fled to Acacia House in the direction of Zera as far as the border of Abel Meholah near Tabath.

The men of Israel were called from Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh and they pursued the Midianites.

Then chapter 8:

Gideon and the 300 men came to the Jordan and crossed it. They were exhausted but still in pursuit. He said to the men of Succoth, "Please give loaves of bread to the troops under my command because they are exhausted, for I am pursuing Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian." — Judges 7-8

But the princes of Succoth asked, "Are Zeba and Zalmunna now in your hands that we should give bread to your army?" Gideon replied, "Very well. When the Lord has handed Zeba and Zalmunna over to me, I will tear your flesh with thorns and briars from the wilderness." He went from there to Pinuel and asked the same thing. The men of Pinuel answered just as the men of Succoth had answered. He also told the men of Pinuel, "When I return safely, I will tear down this tower."

So he took the elders of the city and took some thorns and briars from the wilderness and he disciplined the men of Succoth with them. He also tore down the Tower of Pinuel and killed the men of the city. He asked Zeba and Zalmunna, "What kind of men did you kill at Tabor?" They said, "Each one resembled the son of a king." So he said, "As they were my brothers, the sons of my mother, as the Lord lives, if you had let them live, I would not kill you." Then he said to Jethro, his firstborn, "Get up and kill him." The youth did not draw his sword for he was afraid because he was still a youth. Zeba and Zalmunna said, "Get up and strike us down yourself, for a man is judged by his strength." So Gideon got up, killed Zeba and Zalmunna, and took the crescent ornaments that were on the necks of their camels.

Then the Israelites said to Gideon, "Rule over us, you as well as your sons and your grandsons, for you have delivered us from the power of Midian." But Gideon said to them, "I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you." Then he said to them, "Let me make a request of you. Everyone give me an earring from his plunder." Now the enemy had gold earrings because they were Ishmaelites. They said, "We agree to give you them." So they spread out a cloak and everyone threw an earring from his plunder in it. The weight of the gold earrings he requested was 43 pounds of gold in addition to crescent ornaments and ear pendants and the purple garments on the kings of Midian and the chains on the necks of their camels.

Gideon made an ephod from this and put it in Ophrah, his hometown. Then all Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household. So Midian was subdued before the Israelites, and they were no longer a threat. The land had peace for forty years during the days of Gideon. Jerubbabel, that is Gideon, son of Joash, went back to live at his house. Gideon had 70 sons, his own offspring since he had many wives. His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son and he named him Abimelech. Then Gideon, son of Joash, died at a good old age and was buried in the tomb of his father Joash in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Thanks for bearing with that long passage. You know, as we open up passages like this, we always have a tendency to ask the question: Is this a good guy or is this a bad guy?

My favorite version of Robin Hood in the movies is from the 1973 Disney cartoon. This has foxes and bears and owls and rabbits in it. And Little John and Robin Hood are walking along, and they're talking about the work that they do of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. And Little John asks Robin Hood basically the same question: "Robin, you know, I've been thinking, are we good guys or are we bad guys?"

You know, we approach the Bible. We always want to put people in boxes, in camps. And with Gideon, we see that people are much more complex than that. And actually, rather than the categories of good guys and bad guys, what this passage pushes us toward is to think about when strength is actually a weakness, when weakness is actually a strength. Those categories. And that's my outline for this morning: When weakness is strength, when strength is weakness, and then our application is going to be four ways to look at four things.

Last week, we covered the call of Gideon. We were introduced to Gideon in chapter six, and the angel of the Lord finds this man and he's out threshing wheat, and he's doing it in the very opposite place where you could effectively thresh wheat. He's in a hole, kind of a low place in the ground instead of out in the open for fear of the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord comes to him and says, "You're the valiant warrior, and you're going to lead the people of God into victory." And the whole story is about how God calls this man in his weakness, in his weakness to come and lead, not out of his strength. That's really the theme of so much of the Bible, that God seems to regularly prefer the poor and the barren and the foreigner and the second born and the injured and the outcast and the weak and the sick and the broken.

It's very different from how, honestly, the American church functions. The American church functions and looks, we parrot much of the world.

When we favor the strong and the charismatic and the well spoken and the gifted and the organized and the put together and the worker bees and the beautiful and the dynamic. Of course, I don't mean that we should choose as our leaders in our churches, people who are the opposite of gifted or who are foolish, have no skills, no abilities, but rather, what this whole passage points us to is that God cares about what's on the inside of us. What's in our heart and what's in our character?

So let's look at this together. Chapter seven, we're gonna see this. When weakness is strength. There's three episodes here. First one, scene one, is the wacky water drinkers. Right? Gideon has amassed an army of 32,000 people, and they're encamped very, very close to the Midianite army, a 135,000 people. That's a huge disparity in strength. And you think, like, everybody's needed for this fight, and yet God comes to Gideon and says, your army is too big. I need to shrink this down a little bit. So he goes to the army and says, you know, anybody who's afraid can go home. And immediately, 10,000 people leave. Again, making the odds worse. God comes to Gideon again and says, this is still too many. I want you to go and I want this to be a much smaller number and gets it down to 300, about the number of people in this room against a 135,000.

He does it this way. It's based on how they drink. A lot of people have tried to read into this. They think God seems to separate by those who kneel down at the stream and do this with the water versus those who lay down on their bellies and lick the water up like an animal. And so people are like, oh, this must have some kind of deeper meaning. Like, these are the really elite soldiers. They know you don't put down their weapons. But I know that's not true. We can note very clearly that's not true. These people are not the green berets. They're not the special forces, and here's how we know. They never use a weapon in all of what comes next. And the whole point is that God is putting Israel in a place to say, only you, God. Only you could have done this. This isn't about any strength, anything that we brought to the table.

Here's the point of this episode. That feeling, desperation, your back's up against the wall, ridiculously outnumbered. I want you to think about those things. This is God's definition of the good life. That's what God is inviting you into, me into, a life of need, a life of desperation. You know, in the gospels, we read about the disciples were arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest. Jesus brings a child among them and says, whoever wants to be the greatest? Right here. Child. Weak. Needy, aware of it. That's who's the one who's great.

Judges 7:2

God intentionally weakens Gideon's army. Isn't this true of your lives as well? Doesn't it seem like in many cases, God likes to allow things in your life, hardships, troubles, the things that we would never write as a script of our lives. And yet God allows those things into your life, and it seems like the entire point is just to drive you to a place of, God, I need you. I need you. Dependence. If that's the objective, then weakness is an advantage. How can weakness ever be an advantage? Well, if it drives you to trust Jesus more, it's an advantage. If it drives you to say, my God is mighty, that's an advantage. If it drives you to a place of saying, I have nothing but you, that is the upside down world of the kingdom of God, where that is the advantage.

This is what we read over and over in the Bible, particularly in Second Corinthians 12. Paul writes:

I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may be in me. For when I am weak, then I am strong. — 2 Corinthians 12

Scene Two: The Pot, the Torch, the Jar, and the Trumpet Band

God reinforces this weak is strong motif again. The way that the victory is achieved in this is 100% about negating the power of strength. You notice this? The plan negated the difference in size. They came in the middle of the night. They surrounded the army, and what appeared to be was a much more giant force surrounding the Midian army. The plan negated all the difference in strength.

So in the middle of the night, the third watch is what we read. The middle watch, that's a time when a third of the army, the Midian army is asleep, a third is waking up to go on guard duty, a third is coming back from guard duty. It's a moment where there's a lot of confusion. And Gideon has his men take the torch inside the pot and the trumpet and go surround the camp. And at the right moment, they blow the trumpet, the ram's horn. They break the pot, which sounds like thousands of people drawing their swords, and they raise the torches. Each torch, a symbol of a troop of soldiers.

So the Midian army is thrown into confusion. It's pitch dark, and they kill one another. And the point again is, God doesn't work in spite of our weakness. God works because of our weakness. What keeps us from the riches of God and the power of God so many times is that we feel we have our own riches. We have our own power. We have our own strength. We're good. We don't need God.

Your strengths, in many cases, are much more of a barrier and a danger to you than your weaknesses because they keep you from hoping in God's mercy. So that's chapter seven. All this about when weakness is strength. And then we open chapter eight, it seems like everything turns. Everything is turned upside down because chapter eight is about when strength is a weakness.

What I want you to notice is that there is no break in the action. There's no, "and months went by." In the same day, what happens when we go from chapter seven to chapter eight? These events take place. And Gideon seems to be operating out of a very different paradigm.

Gideon's Cruelty to the Towns

First scene: the episode with the two small towns, Succoth and Pinuel. Gideon's still chasing after all the leftovers of the Midianite army, and he comes upon these two towns, and he says, give us some resupply for our troops. Both of them refuse. Very likely because they're like, how in the world is this a victory? You don't have the kings right now captured. We're not so sure.

And it's funny—their weakness, their uncertainty, their hesitation sounds just like somebody I know from chapter six. Sounds just like Gideon in chapter six. And now the tables have turned. And Gideon instead says, you know what? I'm gonna teach you a lesson. You don't respect me and my strength? When I come back, he threatens one town: I'm gonna bring briars in and whip all your people. The other: I'm gonna come down and tear down the tower. And he does both of those things.

Gideon going from one moment—this place of weakness and uncertainty—to cruelty, to pride, to self-assurance. There's a danger in getting what you want in life. There's an old adage: you learn more from your failures than you ever do from your successes. We can take that and up that one in this passage. We love success. We hate failure, but spiritually, success is often poison and failure is often fertilizer. One makes you grow, the other can kill you.

What you're seeing is something happening inside of Gideon. And just like there's an inside to Gideon, there's an inside to us. Gideon so quickly forgets who won the victory and suddenly he's like, you don't respect me? How dare you not respect me? It's like in one moment in chapters six and seven, he's like, God, don't you know who I am? I'm so weak. And in chapter eight, he's like, don't you know who I am, folks? It's a complete reversal.

Gideon's Kingly Behavior

Scene two: the people want to make Gideon their king. Rule over us. Be our king. You've delivered us. And Gideon says the right answer, doesn't he? Hey, I'm not gonna rule over you. I'm not gonna be your king. And yet—and yet, it's not that simple because if you keep going down that passage, he starts doing all the king things. Starts doing all the kingly things.

Gideon had 70 wives. His concubine bore him one son named Abimelech. — Judges 8:30

Now think about that. 70 sons, and we only get to know the name of one of them. Dear reader, do you understand what the Hebrew text is telling you? Pay attention to this name because the boy's name is Abimelech. Abimelech means "my daddy's the king." Not very subtle, Gideon. Not very subtle.

Then what we see is him begin to levy taxes. Also a kingly thing. Y'all come and give me some of your earrings, some of your gold. Again, a kingly thing. And then he takes all those things and takes a page out of a book in the Bible before that. If this was a hip hop artist, it'd be like a sample from Exodus 32. He takes all those gold pieces and he forges them into an ephod.

Now an ephod is something that's used only in the temple for the worship of God. The Levites wear it. It's got these symbols on it. It's got the Urim and Thummim, these rocks that were determined and used in some way to determine the future. He takes this gold and he makes it into an idol. And here's the man who's supposed to be the deliverer, and he becomes the one who creates something gold for him to wear—kinda kingly—and ends up using it to distract all the people from the worship of God.

What's happened to Gideon? What's happened again?

Four Applications: Look Out, Look Past, Look Up, and Look In

I've got four applications for you this morning, and they all begin with the word look. So we're gonna look out, look past, look up, and look in.

Look Out

Look out. Caution, warning, right? There's a Gideon danger zone that we see in chapter eight. Here's how you know if the insides of you are in the Gideon danger zone. We see several things here.

You don't pray much. It's interesting. Did you notice that God is not mentioned really in chapter eight? Gideon never says time out, prayer time. Gotta ask God what he thinks of all this. God is not mentioned at all. And you can tell this in your own life. When you're in a place of personal danger zone, you stop praying. Dependence causes us to ask God, to cry out to him. Strength causes us to retreat from God.

Second way you know you're in danger: you're harsh with people who are just like you. Here's the people of Penuel and Sukkoth, and all they're saying is we're uncertain and fearful, just like Gideon was a chapter before. And here Gideon goes from weakness to strength so fast it'll make your head spin. And when you and I are short, when we're frustrated by people, so many times it's the same things that are true about us.

You're alone. Not only does Gideon not consult God, he doesn't really consult with anybody. Have you noticed? Gideon has no friends in this whole passage, and I see this over and over in leadership—a lot of times in the church, but all over our culture. People, when they get in a place of strength, tend to isolate, tend to be alone. Who knows you? Who's with you? Who's praying for you and asking you questions?

Finally, you're worried about your reputation and your name and how you look, how you come off more than you are about your character. You can't handle criticism. You crave praise. You need constant attention. This is Gideon all over the place. Is this you? Look out.

Look Past

Look past. Gideon shows us again like lots of these judges. He's not the savior we're looking for. He's not the one we're looking for. Again, Gideon functions in so many ways like a signpost rather than a billboard. A signpost is a sign that you look past. It directs you where to look. Not a billboard. You look at, you glance at, you read, you take in the information from a billboard. And over and over, these judges for us are like signposts. They're not like billboards. Every time we see one, we're like, not that. Yet we know over and over, these are meant to us to be a type, a prefiguring of part of what we need in the true deliverer, in Jesus Christ, the greater Gideon.

Jesus, the one who came in weakness, but never had a transition from chapter seven, dependence, to chapter eight, strength. Jesus, even at the cross, who never opened his mouth, never protested, even when the guards were beating him, didn't send the angels to take him down from the cross. Jesus' entire journey was a Judges seven journey—dependence, weakness. And like Gideon's unbelievable victory using a torch and a pot and a trumpet, Jesus' victory also came without weapons. See, he's meant to be for us. Like, look past him. This is not the savior you're looking for yet, but there's one coming. Hope in him. Look to him, the real savior.

Look Up

Third look. Look up. You know, I've heard people describe Gideon as the Walter White of the book of Judges. If you're familiar with the TV show Breaking Bad, it's a story about a man who starts off in weakness. He's got cancer. He's got a disabled son. He's an underpaid high school chemistry teacher. And the show, over several seasons, catalogs his decline into strength, and he's at the end—this characterless, evil man. But a lot of people look at the story of Gideon and say, surely this is the same thing, and yet, and yet, this man Gideon is listed in your New Testament. There's a chapter in Hebrews that we call the Hall of Faith, Fame of Faith, or the Hall of Faith. And it describes all these people who lived by faith, who served God and did great things by faith. What does that mean? How can we say Gideon? How is this man commended? This is what I want to show you this morning. Look up. I think this is an incredibly encouraging story. I think God is showing us something very particular here.

What if? What if what we see in Gideon is not Walter White, but actually the normal Christian life? Remember little John asking Robin Hood, are we good guys or bad guys? And the answer is kind of yeah. Every time we read the Bible, the answer is kinda yeah. Christians, we want the Bible to be about overnight change. Bad guys become good guys. And that's mainstream American evangelicalism, but that's not what's in your Bible. The Bible—what we see is that normal Christianity is that bad guys are God's favorite. That we're all both actually bad guys and good guys. There's only one truly good guy. There's no white switch moment.

This is the language of the reformation in the sixteenth century. Simul justus et peccator. That's Latin for you're both a sinner and a saint. If you're a Christian, justified and sinner at the same time—bad guys and good guys. And this is incredibly encouraging to fellow Gideons this morning because this is really the story of where we live, isn't it?

I find that the normal Christian life is Christians like me and Christians like you bouncing back and forth between dependence, chapter seven, and independence, strength, chapter eight. We seem to go back and forth, and we never quite learn to stay in chapter seven. God has to continue to allow hard things to come into our lives so we'll go back to him.

There's a way to live a miserable Christian life. We do it all the time. We forget and we go to chapter eight—Gideon in his strength—and God has to keep reminding us to come back to chapter seven.

Look Inside

This leads me to my last application. Today's passage is an invitation to you. It's an invitation to me to take a step toward dependence on God, toward weakness, away from self-trust and strength.

The story of Gideon is a story arc of every believer that I know. We all come to Christ like chapter six: "Lord, I need you. I'm a sinner." And then chapter seven. You come into chapter seven, you stay there for a little bit, but then you mature on and you go on to chapter eight. Why is that? Because I think, like me, you're probably allergic to weakness. I love strength. I love being confident and certain and sure and independent—"I got this." And God keeps inviting me, and I know God keeps inviting you back into a place of dependence, weakness, and trust. And everything in us is like, "No, thank you. I don't want anything to do with that." And yet God is inviting us over and over to take the step.

By way of application of this sermon today, I want you to consider that you may need to do one of three things. There may be something that you've got to say no to—because like this job, this promotion, this opportunity—"I'm not ready for that. That's not gonna be good for me. I can't be in a place of dependence and step into that."

For others of us, it may mean actually stepping into something. Something has been opened up to you—a job, an opportunity, ministry, something that's really hard that's gonna call for a lot of dependent faith from you. And you may need to step forward.

And others of you may need to just say, "Wait. I'm not ready yet."

The Truck and the Boat

By way of conclusion, let me tell you this. I love those TV commercials for big pickup trucks. I'm one of those people they're marketing to. The guy with the chiseled chin has got the giant truck, and he's pulling something ridiculous behind it up a hill. Let's say a giant sailboat. He's pulling this up, and the truck doesn't even—I mean, it's nothing. It's got it all day long.

These commercials come on during football games and other sports activities because they're marketing to dummies like me who are like, "Yes. I need that truck. I need that power."

But the commercials you never see are the boat pulling the truck, right? Nobody ever shows the picture of the boat pulling the truck up the hill because it would be ridiculous. It's ridiculous to think of a boat doing something like that. We know that the power of that truck is under the hood of the truck. That's its strength. The boat has no strength. It's just being pulled along.

Brothers and sisters, we are constantly forgetting that we're boats. We're constantly forgetting that we're made for the water. And what's more, we're not motorboats. We're not speedboats. Even in the place where we're most comfortable in water, we're not even made for independence there either. We're sailboats. Don't forget your sailboatness.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word. We confess that this is everything we don't wanna hear. We wanna hear about how you will make us great and wise and powerful and strong, and how you will make our lives easy and you'll give us what we want. Father, we thank you that you know us better than we know ourselves. Lord, we pray that you would give us eyes to see and eyes to be encouraged this morning. Lord, we are like Gideon and how much you love Gideons. Lord, we pray that we would move toward dependent weakness and we would find you at the other end of that. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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