Judges 6:36-7:736And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, 37Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. 38And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. 39And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. 40And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground. 1Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. 2And 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. 3Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. 4And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. 5So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. 6And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. 7And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. (Judges 6:36‑7:7)
We can see, in this incident about the fleece of wool, a beautiful and touching picture of the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, for this is the ground of all true service.
The dew, in the first instance, falling in such abundance upon the fleece only, would tell us of the Lord Jesus, the true Lamb of God, in His pathway through this world. The “dew of heaven” rested upon Him in every step of His blessed pathway here, for He was the only man who ever walked on earth, in whom heaven could find its fullest delight. All the rest of the ground was dry, for the world had no heart for Him—only enmity against Him and the Father who sent Him. “The first man” must be set aside entirely as dry and fruitless.
The next night, however, the fleece alone was dry, while the dew fell upon the ground instead. This pictures to us the cross. There we see the blessed spotless Lamb of God forsaken for us. God must turn His face away, and that awful cry came out of the darkness at Calvary, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The “dew of heaven” was withdrawn, as it were, that we might be blessed, and so now, because of what He accomplished there, blessing comes to us. He was forsaken for our sins, that all who believe in Him might never be forsaken, and now the favor of heaven rests upon us, like the dew upon the ground, for we have been brought to God in Christ— “holy and without blame before Him in love.” Ephesians 1:44According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: (Ephesians 1:4). What grace! Surely it overwhelms our hearts as we think of it, and it is true of the youngest believer! It is not by attainment, but through simple faith in Christ.
The next morning, without further hesitation, Gideon went out and pitched his camp, with thirty-two thousand men, by the well Harod, over against the armies of the Midianites. Now the Lord was about to test Gideon again. He had asked further assurance that the Lord was with him, but now there was a danger of trusting to numbers. If the children of Israel had won the battle with thirty-two thousand men, they might have boasted of what they had done, and that would never do. The Lord told Gideon, therefore, to send back all those who were faint-hearted, and twenty-two thousand men returned. The Lord then told Gideon that there were still too many, and that he was to bring the ten thousand men who remained with him down to the water’s edge to drink. There the Lord said He would show him which ones He had chosen.
Gideon therefore brought them down, and set all those who went down on their knees to drink on one side, and those who put their hands into the water and took it up to their mouths to drink on the other side. There were nine thousand seven hundred who went down on their knees, and only three hundred who took the water up in their hands to drink. The Lord told Gideon to send the nine thousand seven hundred home, and to keep the three hundred men only. This was surely a real test for Gideon to see his army reduced from thirty-two thousand to three hundred. What a very real sense of the Lord’s presence was necessary to sustain him now! If he had not been very sure the Lord had sent him, he would have turned back now. And so, dear Christian reader, unless you and I have a very real sense of the Lord being with us, we will never be able to meet the storms of life and continue faithfully.
ML 09/27/1953