"The choices of Gideon - Who will work with me?"
Knox, April 3, 2011 © Scott McAndless Judges
7:1-8, Psalm 3, Luke 12:32-40, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
So far, as we have joined Gideon on his particular journey down God’s path for him, we have learned a few things. We have learned that God does indeed call us to take action in this world – to work and struggle for great goals. We have learned that God often calls us to act in areas where we are already concerned or have a passion for an issue. And we have learned that God sends us signs to confirm to us that we are on the right track.
This morning’s reading from the saga of Gideon brings out another important point. When God calls you to act in this world, he rarely calls you to act alone. At various times, people are called to be leaders – to set the course, to organize the efforts and to encourage others – but God doesn’t ask the leaders to act without others. Abraham had a dedicated group of servants who supported him, David had his mighty men, Elijah had Elisha and a large group of disciples and Paul had Silas, Timothy, Luke, Titus and a number of others. God doesn’t want you to do it all alone. You weren’t built for that.
But that is an assumption that lies behind our reading this morning from the Book of Judges. The real issue for Gideon as he prepares to face the Midianite threat head on is to figure out how many people he needs to help him and who exactly. And that is why I think that this part of Gideon’s story is so helpful to us as we consider how we can follow through on the things that God calls us to do in our lives. We need to consider the people that we will work with, who we can depend on and why and what we can think of accomplishing together.
I see some basic principles in this story of Gideon that we can keep in mind as we work together with other for the sake of the kingdom of God. The first principle is obviously the one that stands at the centre of the whole story. Gideon has put out the call for the militia from all of the tribes of Israel to turn out and do something about this Midianite problem and the response has been fantastic. 32,000 men have turned out. Clearly Gideon is not the only one who thinks that something should be done. Presumably Gideon does not see this excellent response as a problem, but somebody does.
“The Lord said to Gideon, ‘You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands.’” The first principle, therefore, is one that seems to go against all reason. Although it is God’s desire that you not work alone in this world, God does not want you to rely on numbers. This is a principle that is so easy to forget, of course, because we don’t much like it. When we set out to accomplish something, we’d rather have a whole lot of people on our team. That is what makes us feel confident and sure of success. In fact, we often use the excuse that we don’t have enough people as a reason not to even try to do anything.
I hardly need to tell you that we see this tendency in the life of the church all the time. We talk about the good old days – the days when everybody went to one church or another and practically everyone in society identified themselves as Christians and we figure that those were the days when the church could do something in this world – when we could mount grand missions among the heathens, when we could influence presidents and prime ministers when we could build a better world. But today we look around and see that the church is small, that numbers are dwindling in much of the Western world and we say, “Well, what can we do, we are too small to influence anything.” And so we give up on having much of an impact on the world.
But God clearly doesn’t think that way at all. In fact, if there are too many people supporting the cause, that is a problem for God. And the reason is clear: when we are trusting in numbers and in the support we have among others, we are not trusting in God and God knows that we always accomplish more when we trust in him above all.
But clearly, in this passage, God is not merely interested in how many Gideon has to support him but also that they be the right people. And so the numbers have to be reduced in very particular ways. The first way to sort the troops is fairly straightforward. God says, “announce now to the people, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’”
This, then, is the second principle to remember. When you go out into the world to accomplish something God is calling you to do, work with the people who want to be there with you. I know, I know, you’ll say to me, “But, Scott, isn’t that obvious? I mean, who else are you going to work with?” Well, yes, you might think that, but apparently it is not so obvious as that. We see that again in the nostalgia for the good old days of the Christian church. We remember those days when it seemed that everyone in our society was a part of the church and we think that those were the days when we could really accomplish things.
But why were they there? Many, it seems, were there in the church out of a sense of obligation. They had to be there. They couldn’t do business in town if they didn’t go to a church. They would have lost all respect and, besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything else to do on a Sunday anyways. Like I say, we look back on times like that with a lot of nostalgia but I can’t help but wonder if all that time God was just thinking, “Announce now to the people, ‘Anyone who doesn’t really want to be in church may just turn around and go home.’” Because, as he makes quite clear to Gideon, God wants to work with those who want to work with him. That is why I sometimes think that the church is better situated today to faithfully follow Christ than it has been in a long time.
So, by sending home all those who don’t want to be there, Gideon is able to cut his force down from 32,000 to merely 10,000. But, God says, that is still too many and so another method of reducing numbers must be found. And I will admit that this second selection method definitely leaves me scratching my head a bit. Everyone is led down to a stream (after, I assume, a rather gruelling morning training session that would have left them all dying of thirst) and given a break. They immediately run to the water of course, and then they are sorted according to how they drink. Those who get right down and put their heads in the water to drink (the vast majority) are sent home while those who cup the water in their hands and lap from their hands like dogs are allowed to stay.
You’ve got to admit it is a pretty odd way to pick an army. Why would it matter how they drink, after all? I have developed a few different theories as to why this method of choosing warriors would have been employed. I thought for a while that maybe it was about what we might call etiquette. You know, like we have polite and classy ways of eating our food or drinking our tea. Those who cut their meat with a knife and a fork and who drink their tea while extending their pinky fingers are considered high class while those who grab the meat and eat it with their hands while slurping their tea are considered crude and vulgar. Well, maybe they had similar etiquette rules for drinking from a stream and those who stuck their heads in the water were just considered too low class to serve in Gideon’s army.
But then I thought about what the people drinking from the stream might have looked like. Those who knelt down and put their faces in the water would have looked like they were drinking with total abandon – their only focus on the water and getting the water into them. But those who raised the water to their mouths with their hands would have at least continued to be aware of what was going on around them – would have seen, for example, if the Midianite army was staging a surprise attack. So maybe that is why they are chosen over the others – they demonstrate an awareness and a watchfulness that might very well come in useful in the fight.
But there is one more thing about the 300 who are finally chosen that we need to take into account. It says that they, when they raised their hands to their mouths, lapped the water with their tongues like dogs. And in that society at that time, it hardly would have been considered flattering to say that somebody was “like a dog” in any way. Dogs were unclean animals, a lower form of life. I don’t mean to offend the dog lovers among us by saying this, but that is just how they things were in that culture. So I don’t think that the comparison of the chosen 300 to dogs is an accident and it may be a way of saying that Gideon went out of his way to choose the ones where were looked down upon by everyone else – the despised, the outcasts, the lowly, the dogs.
This idea would certainly fit what Paul wrote to the people in the church in Corinth. He told them, without a word of apology, how other people looked at them and where they came from: “not many of you were wise by human standards,” he said, “not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” But, Paul insisted, this hadn’t just happened by chance. It was actually part of God’s plan: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” God chose, he might well have gone on to say, those who are like dogs. And God chose them for one reason “so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
So how do you apply all this as you go out into the world and try to accomplish something good in God’s name? Don’t count on numbers. Just because you have a whole lot of people on your side doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right side or that you are bound to win. God makes his biggest impact with the smaller groups. So don’t look for too many to join you and, like Gideon choose those who want to be there. A few willing coworkers are worth so much more than many coerced into helping you.
But third and perhaps most surprisingly, don’t look for the high and mighty – the rich, the pampered or the powerful to help you. They’ll probably be too caught up in their own affairs anyway. God prefers to work with the powerless, the forgotten, the downtrodden. So don’t write anybody off because they don’t seem to have much going for them. God can do amazing things through them.
In particular, God can do amazing things through those who keep their heads up and look to the horizon. Not those who have their heads down looking only at the water that they drink. What are these people really watching for – for an approaching Midianite army? Not really. I think they are watching for God – preparing themselves to take advantage of God’s timing and God’s opportunities. Those are the 300 who are chosen. They may not be much in the world’s estimation, but they have their heads up and they are waiting on God. Those are the people that we need as we move on to battle the forces of evil in this world as we shall see next week.