Judges 7:2 says, “And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.”
Curly was an old, ragged farm dog—partly poodle and average size. He loved to ride in the weapons carrier, an army-type jeep, and be around the farming equipment. One morning while warming up the Caterpillar tractor, a badger came out from under the tractor. Curly immediately attacked it, not realizing he was no match for it. The badger backed up against the Cat track and took its stand. My grandpa, Old Pop, eased the tractor ahead over half of the badger. Curly was then able to finish it off. For the rest of the day he was hard to live with, strutting around thinking he had killed a badger.
God made the human hand with amazing ability. He intends for us to use it. Ecclesiastes 9:10 states, “Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might;…” As great as it is, our hand pales next to the hand of God. In our text we see that God wanted to give the Midianites into the hands of the Israelites. This would be salvation for them from their enemy. Today our nation has some powerful enemies. We may someday fall to them. Of course I want to believe our nation is the greatest nation on the planet. We have a great president who is doing all he can to protect us. If we humble ourselves before God, and He does save us, would we give Him the glory? I fear we might take the credit. That is what God feared about the Israelites. To avoid that, God reduced their number down from 32,000 to 300 (Judges 7:3&7). That is less than 1%.
I want us to think for a moment how this all worked out for Gideon. When the angel first appeared unto him, by the oak that was in Ophrah, he called him “thou mighty man of valour” (Judges 6:12). He then told him that by his might he would save Israel. Gideon’s response was that he was the least of a poor family. The angel said to him, “Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man” (Judges 6:16). This is like saying, you will do it single-handedly. Gideon’s first task was to throw down his father’s altar of Baal, and build an altar to the Lord, which he got in trouble for.
As the enemy approached, Gideon put out a fleece twice to be sure that God really did want to save Israel by his hand (Judges 6:36-40). When he was told to go down to the enemy camp in the night, he took his servant with him for comfort. Still in the night, the 300 soldiers divided into groups of 100, looked on Gideon, a pitcher with a lamp in one hand, a trumpet in the other, and shouted, “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”
Gideon followed close to the Lord through it all. God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt by his mighty hand. Isaiah 41:10 states, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Jesus holds out His nail-scarred hand and says, take MY HAND!
