They were very dark days in Israel. The land was suffering sorely because of the evil of God’s people. They sowed their corn, but reaped no harvest. The Midianites came up at harvest-time with their cattle and tents as grasshoppers for multitude, and destroyed the increase of the earth.
At this juncture God raised up a deliverer in the person of Gideon. Gideon’s family being poor in Manasseh, himself the least in his father’s house, and his father a worshipper of Baal, he felt backward in responding to God’s choice, and desired a sign by which he might be fully assured of God’s purpose. So we read:
“And Gideon said to God, If Thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, behold 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. And 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.
“And Gideon said to 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. And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.” (Jud. 6:36-40)
The thoughtful reader will inquire what is the meaning of these signs. As oft-times in unexpected places in the Old Testament Christ is prefigured—His person, His atoning death, His triumphant resurrection—so here these signs prefigure Him.
Gideon asked for a sign that would prove God to be ready to save His people from their oppressors. On a far larger scale, and in regard to spiritual oppression, God has proved His willingness to save. How?
Gideon’s signs illustrate how. His first sign was that of a fleece of wool saturated with dew, while all around was dry. Is this not a picture of the Lord Jesus in this world? All in this world (apart from God’s acting by His Spirit) was dry and sapless as far as God was concerned. There was not a drop of refreshing moisture for God in the world. All was dry and moistureless.
A wondrous significance must be attached to the life of the Lord Jesus. It could be said of Him prophetically seven centuries before He appeared:
“I will heal their [Israel’s] back-sliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him. I WILL BE AS THE DEW UNTO ISRAEL: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.” (Hos. 14:4-5)
This will yet be true of God’s ancient people. Look at them today. Scattered, peeled, despised among the nations: their very name a byword for tortuousness and dishonesty, as is instanced by the common saying, to ‘jew’ a person. But when Christ gets His rights, when a nation is born in a day, how different will everything be. He will, indeed, be as the dew to Israel, and Israel shall flourish.
But personally He was ever that in Himself. Incomparably beautiful under the eye of God, every thought, word, action was fully and absolutely delightful to His Father. He was, indeed, as the fleece wet with the dew of heaven amid the barren sterility, the moral Desert of Sahara, that reigned on every hand.
Was not the Lord of glory, the eternal Word, the full expression of God, and Himself God living in this world, a wonderful sign of which Gideon’s saturated fleece was but a faint foreshadowing—a sign that God would bring salvation? Indeed He was, and the contemplation of Him thus fills the heart with adoring wonder.
Yet we must go further. The life of the Lord, incomparably beautiful as it was, could not have brought salvation. That life was a means to an end, and that end was a sacrificial death. For the distinct purpose of dying did He become man.
“The Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28)
And this brings us to Gideon’s second sign. This time the fleece of wool was dry, whilst all around was dew. How touchingly does this remind one of the cross of Christ. In order that the dew of God’s grace might rest upon the dry and arid waste of humanity, God forsook Him, who was as the dew of the morning. More than a thousand years before, the Holy Spirit, with His mind full of what was to happen upon the cross, indited a psalm, which could not apply to David, the writer, which could only apply to one Person, and that Person in one set of circumstances. It could only apply to the Lord Jesus and His sacrificial death upon the cross. Hear His lament:
“My strength is dried up like a potsherd.” (Ps. 22:15)
How truly can the language referring to Ephraim be applied to the Lord, not in connection with Him personally, but substitutionally:
“Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up.” (Hosea 13:15)
Wonder of wonders! We see Jesus forsaken on the cross. The only One who fully delighted the Father’s heart, the One to whom He was indebted for the display of Himself, was abandoned to the fierce judgment of God. The east wind of God’s fierce wrath, the blazing indignation of His absolute holiness, like the scorching wind of the Lord from the wilderness, was concentrated upon Him, who was the delight of His heart. Mystery of mysteries!
“He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:21)
God forsook His Son that His attitude towards this world might be one of grace and blessing, that the dew of His goodness might rest upon it.
It is not a little significant that Gideon chose the fleece of wool for his signs, for the lamb slain was ever the chosen sign of redemption, and the glorious Person, whom we have been considering, bears as one of His most wonderful titles, “The Lamb of God.”
The reader will do well to ponder these things until his heart is filled with a sense of who the Lord Jesus was and what He did, till overflowing worship is the result, reaching Him as He is and where He is—in the glory, and of this HE IS WORTHY.