“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” (Judges 6:12)
I want you to think about this hypothetical question: If you were the leader of a nation that is under attack from an enemy force, and you had to pick one man to lead your troops into battle, would you (a) pick the person that is the weakest, lowliest member of your country? Or (b) would you pick a man that is known for his strength, his courage, his leadership and his supreme warfighting skills?
When we look at this question from a secular perspective, the answer is clear–it would be that we would pick our greatest military commander. But, in God’s economy, things that are one way in the natural realm are not the same as it is in God’s way of thinking. You see, in the supernatural realm God just loves to do things completely opposite of what we would think of in the natural realm. He loves to show us that He can do anything with anyone, and that everyone has the ability to do great and mighty things with God’s anointing on your life.
When God called Gideon “a mighty man of valor,” we need to examine just what the word valor means. According to Webster’s Dictionary it means: strength of mind or spirit that enables a man to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; heroism. Did you catch that? It means to have Strength of Mind or Strength of Spirit. Not strength of body. Not strength of military skills. Not the strength of anything that a military commander would choose to lead men into battle.
In the physical realm, no one in their right mind would ever consider Gideon to be a candidate for being a hero. He was lowly and meek. That’s what Gideon saw when he looked inside himself, and that’s what his outer life really was. To the people of Israel looking at Gideon, they saw a man that had never done a single thing in his life, up to this point, that gave any indication that he was, or ever could be, a man of valor. In the natural realm, Gideon was the last person that the nation of Israel needed, but yet God picked Gideon anyway.
The important lesson here is not that God picked Gideon, but rather in how God saw Gideon when He looked at him. When God looked at Gideon, He didn’t see a weak lowly wheat thresher or a coward. God actually saw Gideon as a mighty man of valor! God didn’t look at the Gideon hiding in the wheat thresher. He saw him for what he could become.
The question that we have to ask ourselves in reading this story is why? Why did God pick him out of every other man in Israel? What did God see that others didn’t?
- Gideon was obviously a Thinker and a Tactician. Why? Verse eleven tells us that Gideon devised a way to secretly grow and hide food for his people that the enemy didn’t know about.
- Gideon was obviously a humble man. Verse fifteen tells us that he didn’t himself to be anything special. As a matter of fact, Gideon actually said that he was the “least in his father’s house.”
- Gideon was obviously a cautious man. Verse seventeen tells us that Gideon used caution in making sure that who he was talking to, and who he was hearing these instructions from, was really God. He asked God for a sign to prove that it really was God’s Word being given to him.
- Gideon was obviously a spiritual man. Verses 18-19 tells us that after he had received the Word of God, that he begged him not to go until he had made an offering to Him. Then, after the encounter was over, Gideon made yet another offering unto God, and “Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovahshalom.” Wow! God had just called him to be a warrior leader, and what does Gideon do? He calls the place of his warrior anointing, “Jehovah-shalom.” I bet there aren’t many people that would associate warfare with peace, but yet that is exactly what “shalom” means–peace.
All of this combined together gives us a formula as to why God saw Gideon, not as a lowly wheat thresher, not as a coward hiding from the enemy, but rather as a mighty man of valor. It isn’t the big boisterous things that get God’s attention. It is the faithful inner life of a Godly man that God notices most when looking at us. And it was because of that faithful inner life that propelled Gideon into the limelight as the man who led the nation of Israel into battle against a huge enemy force with only 300 warriors and who won!
But, then again, I guess that’s what you get when you pick a man who has just been called to war by God and the first thing he does is call God, Jehovah the God of peace (Jehovah Shalom). It takes a real man of God to be so confident in his God that he associates peace in war. That’s a man who knew Who his God was!