John Fischer The Catch

(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

It happens frequently when someone is used of God in a mighty way that it can go to their head and make them start to think they are special and somehow above the law. They are particularly vulnerable to the sins of pride and self-righteousness. It was why God reduced the Israelite army to 300 lest they boast “that they saved themselves by their own strength” (Judges 7:2). 

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(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

Imagine you are a Midianite guard assigned to midnight watch. The camp of 135,000 fierce warriors is quiet, campfires are burning low — some are down to the embers. You have to slap yourself awake every so often, and you are wishing you hadn’t stayed up for that marathon card game the night before, even though you won a good deal of money. 

There are hills all around this camp making any approaching army visible especially since they would need torches to see on this dark, overcast, moonless night. You keep checking the hills, and nothing. 

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Today our Catch is a video. There have been videos along with most of these Catches on Gideon, but for this one we are going to let the video stand on its own.

It’s called “Strange Weapons,” and if you know anything about the story of Gideon, you know God sent Gideon’s 300 off with a weird collection of items with which to defeat the Midianites. And in God’s ingenious plan these items turned out to be responsible for the death of 120,000 warriors before Gideon and his 300 even got there. God often leads us in unorthodox ways that don’t make sense without a living God in the center of the story.

So enjoy the video. We’ll discuss it more in our next Catch.

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(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

“There are still too many!” Judges 7:4 

Still too many? Ten thousand against 135,000 is still too many? I think we can see what the Lord is doing here. He wants ridiculous odds against us. So God whittled Gideon’s army down one more time. He had Gideon take them down to the water and observe how they drank from the stream. Did they get down on all fours and plant their face in the water, or did they go down on one knee and cup the water with their hands? This little exercise netted Gideon 300 men. Perfect. Now we can go get those Midianites!

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(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many warriors with you. If I let all of you fight the Midianites, the Israelites will boast to me that they saved themselves by their own strength.”

How much is too much?

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(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

This is one of the more well-known parts of the story of Gideon. If you went to Sunday school as a kid, or even if you didn’t, you probably have heard of the story of the fleece. We even have a popular idiom about what to do if you’re not sure about a particular decision you have to make, you should “put out a fleece.” 

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(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

In some ways, what Gideon had to do before he ever went after the enemy from without was the hardest thing of all. He had to defeat the enemy from within. The enemy from within consisted of the local pagan idols the children of Israel had adopted as their own — the stone Baal and the wooden Asherah pole that his clan had erected atop their designated hill of worship. This was obviously an abomination to God and had to be removed before God would give them any success against their enemies less they think the power to win a victory had come from the false gods. So God gave Gideon specific instructions to smash the Baal, build an altar to the Lord out of the stones, cut up the Asherah pole and use it for wood, and sacrifice a bull on the reconstructed altar to the God of Israel. Gideon did all that under cover of darkness, not because he feared Baal, but he feared his family’s reaction — proof of the fact that idols have no power but the power that we give them.

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