Do you get it? How many see? The hand is able to hold the trumpet of command now. This is command! This is authority! This is command! And he held a trumpet, and he blew a trumpet—that’s all command; that’s authority, that’s power now that has been built up so that he can swing the whole host and in obedience to God, do it by a miracle—do it by a miracle because he is in the way of God. So this is the thing I am after.
How do you make a trumpet? (drawing on board again). I think it has an end something like that. This must be the mouth piece. It isn’t very straight, it’s been in the war!
But how many of you get your lesson? Will you see it?
A FLAIL!
THE AX!
THE TRUMPET!
But don’t try to blow a trumpet if you haven’t handled an ax and laid down your flail. Lay down your flail—that’s your lack of faith—the flail—to know that God will take care of you. All the time Gideon is handling the ax and handling the trumpet, how many of you know he is not flailing anything because God has all that provision for him. But he can’t move into this until—it’s like a regular order, like a law that has to be followed step by step:
“Lay down your flail."
That takes faith.
“Pick up your ax."
That’s obedience.
“Now sound your trumpet."
That’s your power to command.
In our story of Jesus the other night did you notice when the enemy came to Him with those three horrible onslaughts, it wasn’t until the last one that Jesus had power to command him? He commanded the enemy. He didn’t command him in the first temptation. He didn’t command him in the second, but by the third, how many see the vigor, the strength, the power, and the authority had grown until He could say,
“Get thee hence!”
You don’t do that in the beginning any more than this man blowing a trumpet. It’s all progressive. It’s all an intricate sort of a system that goes on in the heart and life. If some of you want to blow a trumpet dear, let me tell you, be sure you know the feel of an ax in your hand first, and don’t keep holding on to that flail. Lay it down! That’s the first thing you find Gideon holding onto—that flail! Lay it down! Get the feel of an ax. And when He wants to put a trumpet in your hand, that has a different feel—that’s different.