Gideon Judges 6-8 May 6, 2012 Travis Collins

Transcription

1 Gideon Judges 6-8 May 6, 2012 Travis Collins As with many extraordinary stories, this one begins with a crisis. Midianite people and others desert-dwelling raiders, nomadic parasites would wait until the Israelite farmers were ready to harvest their crops. Then men on horses, on camels and on foot would swarm like locusts over the fields, filling their bellies and the bellies of their beasts, then destroying the crops that remained. Life was hard for the people of Israel. Helpless to defend themselves, they were forced to hide in the rocks and in caves. Food was in short supply and morale was low. The people cried to the Lord for mercy. The book of Judges, Chapter Six, tells us that the sad state of Israel was embodied in a man named Gideon, whom we first meet threshing wheat in a winepress. And everybody knows you don t thresh wheat in a wine press. Wheat was meant to be threshed out in the open on a big, flat platform where workers could throw the wheat up with a pitchfork or similar instrument and let the wind blow away the chaff the useless parts of the plant. This poor guy, Gideon, was down in a winepress a rather small and confined area hewn out of stone, probably just below the surface of the ground, for the purpose of squeezing juice out of the grapes from which they made wine. Had we walked up on him we wouldn t have known whether to pity him more for his working conditions or his cowardice, for the reason he was in that concealed winepress is that he was afraid of the desert-dwelling raiders I mentioned earlier. If we d waited long enough we would have seen a second figure one who looked at first glance like a regular guy walk up and take a seat where Gideon was working. But this was no regular guy. It was an angel, a messenger from God. And the angel spoke to Gideon: The Lord is with you, mighty warrior. Mighty warrior?! Is he kidding? This Gideon, as we ll see, was a wishy-washy wimp with an inferiority complex. And the angel called him a mighty warrior! (We ll get back to that.) I love Gideon s response. It s in 6:13, If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Many of us have asked that same question. It s said that during WWII General George Patton s forces were being hampered by several consecutive days of terrible weather. The army chaplains had been preaching that the U. S. Army was on God's side in this war against the Nazis. If that was so, Patton wondered, why wasn't God doing more to help them? He prayed a now famous prayer: God, I'm beginning to wonder what's going on in Your headquarters. Whose side are you on anyway?" Gideon wondered the same thing. 1

2 Then there is an odd turn to the story. Verse 14 begins, The Lord turned to him and said First it was an angel of the Lord. Now it s the Lord. This isn t the only time in Scripture we see an appearance by a figure who first appears to be an angel but ends up being referred to as God or The Lord. It happened eight or ten times in the Old Testament. These appearances are called theophanies, or appearances of God. Is this visit to Gideon a pre-jesus appearance of God in the flesh? I believe so, but no one can say for sure. Back to the story. The Lord said to Gideon, Go save Israel from Midian. How can I save Israel? Gideon answered. My branch of the family tree does not produce great men. And I am the least in my whole family. The least of the least. The smallest of the small. The littlest of the little. (There s his inferiority complex.) I m going with you, said the Lord. You can do this. Well, I d like a sign, said Gideon. So Gideon went and made some lamb stew and brought it back and the angel...or the Lord touched it with the staff in his hand and it went up in smoke. Gideon was duly impressed. Sign me up, he said. Good, said God. We ll start with your home. (Which is often where changing the world begins.) God said, The first thing I want you to do is to tear down those statues to false gods that your daddy built. Gideon did just like he was told. Except he was still kinda nervous so he did it at night. That proved to be just a little warm up. Soon Gideon was facing a far greater challenge. The Midianites, Amalekites and other enemies of Israel had joined forces and camped out in the Valley of Jezreel, Gideon s back yard. Then comes maybe the most exciting verse in the whole story, 6:34, Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. If you have a NIV Study Bible and you look at the bottom of the page it says, Literally, clothed himself with. In the Hebrew it reads, The Spirit of God clothed Himself with Gideon. The Spirit of God put on Gideon like I put on this shirt this morning. My shirt doesn t do anything on it s own, you ll notice. It moves only when I move. Gideon was that completely controlled by God s Spirit. Gideon put out the word and people gathered from all over Israel to fight alongside Gideon. The people had confidence in Gideon. But Gideon, well, he still wasn t convinced he could pull this off. So he asked for another sign. 2

3 Have you ever heard of putting out, or throwing out the fleece? It comes from the story of Gideon. A fleece is the woolen coat freshly sheared off a sheep. So here is what Gideon said, Lord, I m going to lay this wool out overnight. When I get up in the morning if there is dew only on the fleece and the ground around it is dry, then I ll know you will save Israel by my hand, as you said. If not, then you ll have to get yourself another guy. And the next morning the fleece was so wet with dew Gideon wrung a bowlful of water out of it. And the ground around it was dry as my sermons. You d think that would be enough. But no. Gideon then said, Don t be angry with me, Lord, but I have one more test. I m going to leave the fleece out overnight one more time and this time I want you to keep the fleece dry and let the ground around it be wet. And the next morning that is what he found. Then even Gideon was convinced. Is that a good idea the throwing out the fleece thing? Not so much. Now, I ve heard some people claim they put out the proverbial fleece and God gave them a sign. Wonderful, but that doesn t mean it s recommended. Or best. Remember, Hebrews 11:1 says, Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is probably overly simplistic, but it seems to me there are three levels of faith: 1) I don t trust God. 2) I need God to show me. 3) I trust God. Gideon s request was a sign of #2. It is not a sign of strong faith, but of tentative faith as much un-faith as faith. So why did God play that game? Remember; this is an unusual situation. The nation of Israel was a small and weak people group. God s mission to the world depended on their survival. Much like the period of the early Church, when miracles were more prominent than at least they seem to be now. I believe God is not nearly as likely today as He was then to play the fleece game. Now we ve come to a cool part of the story, to me. Gideon got his confirmation from God that he was supposed to fight the Midianites and company. So he and all his men, 32,000 of them, got organized for the battle. But God said something that commanders-in-chief rarely say: You have too many men. God explained, If you whip the Midianites with that many folks, your army will take the credit. So here s what I want you to do. Make a big announcement and send it through the camp: Anyone who is afraid may go home. Sounds like Colonel William B. Travis drawing that line in the sand at the Alamo. Witnesses, at least according to legend, said that Travis announced, You may leave. No shame. No questions. No one left. Not the case with Gideon. More than two-thirds, twenty-two thousand, went home. Ten thousand remained. 3

4 Still too many, said God. We need to whittle it down some more. So go down to the water. Tell the guys to get a drink. Those who cup the water and drink out of their hand they stay. The others go. So they went to the water and 9,700 got down on their knees and elbows and drank. Gideon must have been terribly discouraged! But he gave them their dismissal papers. He was left with 300 whose only real qualification was they drank out of their hands. So the three hundred of them spread out in a horseshoe formation around the enemy camp. On Gideon s signal they all began to shout, to blow their trumpets, and break the big pots they had. The racket made the enemy think they were surrounded by hosts of enemy soldiers so they retreated. Gideon and company took off after them. Now, I wish I could skip this part of the story. But I can t. The Bible doesn t hide the humanity of its heroes, and I shouldn t either. As they chased the enemy Gideon and his soldiers came upon two different towns, Succoth and Peniel, and asked for food for his tired and hungry soldiers. Both towns refused. I see how you are, said Gideon. I ll be back, and you ll pay for that. And he continued after the enemy. When Gideon caught the enemy he sneaked up and captured the two kings. When the kings were captured, their armies fled. So Gideon asked the two kings about people they had killed during their predatory raids of the people of Israel. Some of the folks we killed looked like you, they said. They were my brothers, answered Gideon. So Gideon said to his son, Kill them, my son, to avenge the deaths of our family members. But his son was afraid. So Gideon killed them himself. After killing the Midianite kings, Gideon and his soldiers came back through Succoth and Peniel. Remember they had refused to feed his soldiers. So Gideon killed the leaders and all the men of the towns. Massacred them to make them pay for their unwillingness to help his men. Those stories are among the reasons that the Old Testament is so hard to understand. Which reminds me that we have to view the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. Unless we interpret the Old Testament in light of Jesus, we end up with the depiction of a God Who is rather ruthless. When we read the Bible in light of what we see in Jesus, however, we understand that God took the people of the Old Testament where they were. They were people of a rather barbaric time in human history. Gideon was a product of his times, and believed in his heart that he was carrying out the intentions of God. So God nudged those products of a somewhat primitive culture toward life as it should be lived, but they still were products of their time. In Jesus God reveals Himself more clearly and more fully. In fact, there is a story in the Gospels that shows us God s heart. In Luke 9, Jesus was preparing for a trip to Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead. James and John went to a particular Samaritan village and said, The Master, Jesus, needs to rest here tonight. But the Samaritan village refused. Verses 54 & 55 read, When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, 4

5 Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Jesus didn t do what Gideon had done. In Jesus God reveals Himself more clearly and more fully. Well, Gideon had whipped their enemies and the Israelites were so happy with Gideon they wanted to make him king. But he refused. God is your king, he said. However, he told them, I do have one request. Everybody bring me some jewelry. So folks contributed and they ended up with a bunch of gold which Gideon melted and made into an ephod. This ephod has caused great consternation for serious students of the Hebrew text, for an ephod can mean a lot of things. What we know is that Judges 8:27 says the ephod became a snare to Gideon and his family. We aren t quite sure what that means, except that Gideon and his family limped toward the finish line. Which might explain why Judges 8:33 reads, No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. Remember what the angel called Gideon? Mighty warrior. At the time Gideon was a wishywashy wimp with an inferiority complex. He didn t look like a warrior then. But the potential lay within him. He had the God-given capacity for far more than he was. God sees your potential, you know. If God were to send an angel to visit you, he would say, Morning to you, Mighty Warrior! God sees your potential. When others don t. When you don t. And the failure to reach that God-given potential is not just a tragedy. It s a sin. A writer named Gregory Popcak said it this way: Sin is not just doing evil things. At its root, he says, sin is accepting less that God wants to give you. Think about the prodigal son. The heartbreaking part of the story is that the young man was created for so much more than to be a money-grabbing, father-dishonoring, eat-drink-and-bemerrying, pigpen dwelling shell of a man. He was created for so much more. At the heart of his sin was his stubborn and short-sighted unwillingness to be who God had created him to be. The movie, The Avengers, opened this weekend with a huge opening. I haven t seen it, but everybody is talking about the opening line of Loki, whoever that is. His first line is, I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose. Well, I don t know Loki and I don t know what his purpose is, or even if it s glorious. But this I know, you were created for glorious purpose. You were created to live an extraordinary story. To be stubbornly and short-sightedly unwilling to be all God created you to be is not just a shame; it s a sin. So go live extraordinarily, you mighty warriors! 5