1/6/2010 8:07 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Does God keep His promises?
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Judges 6:33-40
Message of the verses: “33 ¶
Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the sons of the east
assembled themselves; and they crossed over and camped in the valley of Jezreel.
34 So the Spirit of the LORD came upon
Gideon; and he blew a trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called together to
follow him. 35 He sent messengers
throughout Manasseh, and they also were called together to follow him; and he
sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet them.
36 Then Gideon said to God, "If You
will deliver Israel
through me, as You have spoken, 37
behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is
dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that
You will deliver Israel
through me, as You have spoken." 38
And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the
fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. 39 Then Gideon said to God, "Do not let
Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a
test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let
there be dew on all the ground." 40
God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on
all the ground.”
This
section of Judges Chapter six is a rather famous portion of the Word of God in
that a phrase comes out of this section that has probably been used for a long
time, especially in the Church age. The
phrase “putting out a fleece” has been used to ask God for something to happen
in order for a person to do something, something that the precede as either in
or out of the will of God for their lives.
I have read
the commentary by Dr. Wiersbe in “Be Available,” his commentary on Judges, and
he seems to come down pretty hard on Gideon for asking God to do these two
miracles in order to verify what He had already told Gideon to do, and that is
lead an attack against the Canaanite people.
Dr. Wiersbe also quotes Joseph Parker who states that “men cannot be
courageous all at once.”
Now I will
give my take on the “putting out a fleece” issue. I believe that there was enough in the
written Word of God to show Gideon what he needed to know when it came to
believing the Lord without asking God for these miracles, and this is different
from the time when the Lord showed Moses a number of miracles on Mt. Sinai before he and Aaron went to lead Israel out
of Egypt. However the Word of God was
not available like it is today and so I have to cut a little slack for Gideon
on that issue. I believe that God
answers prayers of a new believer in a bit different way than a person who has
been a believer for a long time, simply because the new believer has not had
his faith strengthened through the Word of God as much as a believer who has
been saved for a longer period of time.
I don’t know if Gideon was a new believer, but it is safe to say that he
was new at having the Spirit of God come on him in the way it did in this
chapter of Judges.
There is
one more point that I want to make concerning this and that is that I truly
believe that it was God’s will to use Gideon to conquer these enemies of Israel
and because of God’s grace He answered Gideon’s requests.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I can’t say that I have never “put out a
fleece” in my walk with the Lord, but that kind of thing does not truly cause
me to grow in the Lord as much as when a problem comes for me to dig into the
Word of God and trust the Lord to show me the answer through that digging into
His Word. “Faith comes by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God.”
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
- I want to trust the Lord for the problems that are going on at GBC, trust that He will work out His will for our church, and that our church would be conformed to His Word about how a church is to operate.
1/6/2010 9:04 AM
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