In Judges 7, Gideon is being used by God to free the people of Israel from Midianite oppressors. God had cut down his force from 32,000 to 10,000 to 300, but God is getting ready to do something amazing.

v7 – The Lord said to Gideon, ‘I will deliver you with three hundred men…’

v9 – The Lord said, ‘Get up and attack the camp, for I have handed it over to you.’

I love that God knows us, and when he has already made provision he still gives instruction. He told him to go, but knew what Gideon was feeling, so without a pause immediately says,

v10 – But if you are afraid to attack the camp, go down…(to the camp) 11 Listen to what they say, and you will be encouraged to attack the camp

Encouragement to Go and DO as God says, is my whole point today.

So, Gideon goes down, not to attack, but to Listen… You have to see the picture. It’s night, and an army is like a swarm of locusts and their camels innumerable as the sand

He goes down the edge of camp with his servant and v13 says, there was a man telling his friend about a dream… ‘I had a dream: a LOAF OF BARLEY BREAD came tumbling into the Midianite camp, struck a tent and it fell. The LOAF turned the tent upside down so it collapsed.‘ v14 His friend says, ‘this is… the sword of Gideon, son of Joash… God has handed the entire camp to him.’

We need to know that God can do ANYTHING, use ANYONE, if we will go and do as he says.

I chased this rabbit a little and Josephus is credited as saying that a loaf of barley bread, “men can hardly eat for its coarseness. Barley was “the poor man’s food and less desirable.”

Now, the Midianites had been watching all year as they planted and raised good wheat, and then would come in with their mass of men, and steal all they had like locusts. So Israel was left only with what the locusts wouldn’t eat or couldn’t carry off. They were left with the hard grain barely, poor people’s food. Josephus even says that Israelites were negatively referred to as “barley eaters”.

Yet a Barley Loaf, was dreamt rolling into the camp and wiping them all out.

My mind then jumped to John 6 when a massive crowd of thousands is following Jesus, and they were hungry. Jesus asks the question of his disciples, v5 “where will we BUY bread so that these people can eat?”. We are immediately told in v6 that he was testing them with this question.

Philip said, two hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn’t be enough for each to have a little. That’s eight months wages… not enough.

Now you put that with Gideon’s 300 men against a swarm of attackers, and they are just like a poor man’s loaf of barley bread – yet they take down the enemies.

So, Jesus, 1150 years later on the shores of Galilee, wanting to feed thousands in John 6, and good old Andrew, such a practical, “let’s see what we can do” guy, in v9 says ‘there’s a boy here who has Five Barley Loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’

Lord, we have Five Barley Loaves…

Then if you have a “red-letter” bible, Jesus is recorded as saying two things, ‘have the people sit down’… ‘collect the leftovers so that nothing is wasted.’

In between those two sentences, he took the Barley Loaves and little bait fish, blessed them, and distributed them – as much as they wanted… when they were full

Wow – as an old gospel song used to say, “Little is Much when God is In It”

The simplest, poorest thing we have is powerful when God has it in HIS hands and we give it freely and use as he instructs.

Then I must connect the next day – they all came again looking for Jesus and he says, ‘you come because you ate the loaves… but don’t work for food that perishes but for food that lasts for eternal life.

They were filled with poor boys food, touched by Jesus, but now v35 I am the bread of life… comes to men never hungry

He goes on a long explanation, I am the living bread… the one who eats lives forever… and yet that day many turned back and never followed him again. God in Christ IS the Bread We Seek.

We may not think we are much, and we are right. We may be Barley Loaves, but God does Transformative things with “poor man’s bread” if we will believe and come