Title: Gideon and the Battle of Midian Text: Judges 6:1-16, 7:1-22

Transcription

1 Title: Gideon and the Battle of Midian Text: Judges 6:1-16, 7:1-22 Turn with me again to the book of Judges for our second reading today. -In our earlier reading we read from Judges 6 about how the Angel of the LORD first came to Gideon and called him to lead Israel in Battle against the Midianites. -Now turn with me to Judges 7, and we will read about that Battle, and what happened with Gideon. Now to give you a little background: -The period of the Judges in Israel is that time between -when Moses and Joshua led the people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land, -and when the Kingship was established in Israel first under King Saul and then under King David. -So we are in that period of time when there was no real central governing authority in Israel. -Every tribe and clan did their own thing. -God was supposed to be their governing authority, -but most of the time the Israelites went astray from God and acted in all kinds of sinful ways. -They were constantly getting themselves into messes, and constantly being attacked or invaded by neighboring Kings and countries. When things would get really bad, they would cry out to God for help, and He would come and bail them out. -He would raise up a Judge like he does with Gideon here, -and for a period of time that judge would lead the people. Now these weren t judges with black robes who sat on benches trying legal cases. -These were more king-like leaders, who would unify the Israelites and lead them in battle against their enemies. -As leaders, they would also hear people s disputes and make judgments, -but they were primarily savior figures who would lead in battle and save the Israelites from invading enemies. -Let s see how this looks in Gideon s life

2 So in this series on Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament, -we have talked about the three primary ways in which Jesus shows up in the Old Testament: -sometimes by Appearance, -sometimes by Archetype, -and sometimes by Analogy. Well, in the Book of Judges and in this story of Gideon, we hit the Trifecta. -We discover Jesus here in all three ways. 1. First by appearance in the Angel of the LORD. Now we have met the Angel of the LORD multiple times in this study of the Old Testament. -In fact, the Angel of the LORD makes an appearance about 70 times in the Old Testament. And when the Angel of the LORD shows up, it is not just an angel. -The Angel of the LORD is in fact, God Himself showing up, and usually showing up in physical form. -It is not just the voice of God speaking from heaven. -This is the physical presence of God literally right there with the person He is speaking to. -He looks like a person, -but by the end of the conversation, the person knows that it was God Himself who had spoken with him. That is what we see here with Gideon in the passage we read from chapter 6 earlier in the service. -The Angel of the LORD comes to Gideon in the form of a human being, and sits down under an oak tree near where Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress. -And at the beginning of their conversation, Gideon thinks this is just some stranger who has come along, -and is resting in the shade for a bit. -But by the end of their conversation Gideon says, Oh, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.

3 And the Angel of the LORD has to reassure Gideon that he won t die as a result of seeing God face to face. -He says, Peace! Do not be afraid, Gideon. You are not going to die. -But Gideon goes ahead and builds an altar there to worship God. You see, this really is God coming to earth in physical form as a human, -and Gideon is convinced by the end of their conversation that it is God He has been dealing with. -And the Angel of the LORD doesn t deny it. -The Angel just assures Him that he won t die as a result. And my friends, many biblical scholars believe that these appearances of the Angel of the LORD are what they call: -Pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus. -They believe that of the three members of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, -it is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who is the One who incarnates himself on earth in human form. -This what Jesus ultimately does when He is born of Mary and is truly God-with-us in Jesus Christ. -But it may well be that Gideon was met by Jesus Christ under that oak tree in Ophrah that day, too. So that s the first way that we discover Jesus in this passage: -in the Angel of the LORD. 2. But Gideon himself is called by the Angel of the LORD to be a savior figure for the people of God in his day. And so Gideon is what we call an archetype of the Christ. -He exemplifies what God s salvation for his people looks like, -and he exemplifies some aspect of the way in which God s salvation is accomplished. -That is, there are aspects of Gideon s life and calling that point us to Jesus. -He is a kind of prototype of Jesus, and in his life we can say, O, so that is what the Christ will be like.

4 3. Now in Gideon s case, much like we saw last week with Joshua, -the way in which he points us to Jesus is also wrapped up in an analogy, that third way in which we discover Jesus in the Old Testament. The archetype and the analogy overlap. -And both point us toward that same theme from last week of how God s strength is made perfect in our weakness. -It s the upside down nature of the Kingdom of God. We see this first in Gideon himself, the archetype of the Christ, -and then we see it also in the Battle of Midian as an analogy of the way God will win the ultimate battle against sin and death in Jesus Christ. Now in Gideon himself, we see how God always seems to pick the most unlikely people to accomplish his salvation plans. -When the Angel of the LORD shows up under that oak tree, -Gideon is actually hiding out in a cistern. -It says he is threshing wheat in a winepress. My friends, the winepress in those days was a big cistern in which grapes would be thrown, -and then people would stomp on them with their bare feet to squish the juice out of the grapes. -This was not a place where people would thresh wheat. Why is Gideon in this cistern threshing wheat? -Because he is hiding from the Midianites. -The Midianites have invaded Israel, and they are going around marauding the farms, and stealing the livestock and burning the crops. -And so the Israelites have mostly headed to the hills and are hiding out in caves and in shelters in the woods. But Gideon is trying to save a little of his crop of wheat and thresh a little grain to make some bread, -and he s doing it in a grape cistern because he can t be seen in there. -He s hiding what he is doing from the enemy.

5 And the Angel of the LORD comes along and says, The LORD is with you, Mighty Warrior! And that s initially a joke, my friends! -Gideon is not a mighty warrior. He is not even a soldier. -He is a farmer who is hiding in a grape cistern threshing wheat! And Gideon doesn t think of himself as a Mighty Warrior. -He says to the Angel of the LORD, Who me? I am just a guy from the smallest clan in my tribe of Manasseh, -and I am the youngest son in my family. I am a nobody, Gideon is saying. But the Angel of the LORD says, But I am sending you to be a savior of My people. -I will be with you, and you will strike down all of the Midianites. And here s the second part of the joke: God was serious when he called Gideon a Mighty Warrior! -It wasn t at all who Gideon was in himself. -But it was indeed what God was calling him to be for God and for His people. But God doesn t change Gideon s personality to make him a Mighty Warrior. -No, Gideon remains a cautious and rather insecure person throughout the whole story. -He is constantly asking God for a sign that will prove that what God says is true. -And when God gives him one sign, Gideon says, Well, that was pretty good, but can you just give me one more? Just to be sure? And God does! God encourages Gideon every step of the way. -And amazingly enough, God and Gideon together overcome the mighty Midianites in a miraculous way. But Gideon exemplifies that aspect of the coming Savior Jesus, that God s strength is made perfect in weakness.

6 Jesus did not look like a mighty warrior either. -He was not born in a palace or born to be a conqueror. -He was born in a barn to a peasant couple from Nazareth. -He grew up as a carpenter and never wielded a sword. -When he went into ministry he surrounded himself with fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes and people who were formerly demon possessed, but had been healed. When Pontius Pilate finally met Jesus, he said, Are you a King? -He wasn t asking because he was curious, but because he was incredulous! -Pilate was the representative of Imperial Rome and of the Caesars. -He knew what Kings looked like, and Jesus didn t look like one at all. But you see, God has always chosen to do his most powerful work through people you would not expect. -Gideon was one of those people, and as such, he points us to the Christ. And God also constantly chooses to do His most powerful work in ways that we do not expect. -Which brings us to the analogy of the Battle of Midian. -Just like we saw last week with Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, -God s battle plan for defeating the Midianites is upside down and backwards. Gideon, in spite of his doubts and insecurities, manages by the grace of God to gather around himself 32,000 soldiers from the various tribes of Israel. -And for Gideon, I am sure that felt like an enormous success. -Wow, he now has a real army with real soldiers and weapons. -He is just starting to feel like maybe they really could defeat the hated Midianites and rid them from the Promised Land. -But just before the battle, the Angel of the LORD shows up again, and says the craziest thing.

7 He says, Gideon, I can t win this battle with that many soldiers. You ve got too many men in your army. -Send anyone home who is trembling in fear. -And you know what, 22,000 soldiers leave and go home! That s 2/3rds of the army! -Only 10,000 are left but God says that is still too many. -So He has Gideon pare down the numbers again until only 300 of them are left. -Gideon s army that he had gone to great lengths to assemble is pared down from 32,000 to 300. And you know how many the enemy Midianites had? -They swarmed the countryside like locusts, the Bible says. -They were too numerous to count. -But the Angel of the LORD says, Ah, 300 of us. That s a good number. I can work with that. -And God tells Gideon to have the 300 men go at night and station themselves at intervals all around the enemy camp. -And they each have oil lamps with the flame temporarily covered, and they each have rams horn trumpets. -And in the middle of the night, at the signal from Gideon, -every soldier flashed the light of their lamp, and blew their trumpets and shouted a war cry at the top of their lungs. And the enemy soldiers were startled out of their sleep, -and they thought they were being attacked by a massive amount of Israelites. -But they couldn t see in the dark, and they didn t know who was an enemy and who was a friend, -and they began killing each other in the dark. -And then they began to flee to escape the carnage. The Israelites watched God win an incredible battle, and all they had to do was chase the Midianites off their land as the Midianites were running away. Here, too, you see, God s strength made perfect in human weakness. -God doesn t need 32,000 warriors. -And he doesn t need a general who is himself a mighty warrior.

8 He can accomplish his greatest victories in the most upside down sorts of ways. -He raises up the lowly and brings down the high and mighty. -It s the way God works. And when God sends his only begotten Son into the world to be the Savior of the world, -it should come as no surprise that he isn t born in a palace to a King. -It should come as no surprise that his battle plan is to die on a cross in weakness. You see, God s salvation does not come in ways that we expect. And God s ways often leave us mystified. Just like those two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. -They were mystified how the Messiah could come and then suffer and die on a cross. -But Jesus comes alongside them on the road and says, Isn t that always the way God works? Just look at the whole Old Testament, Jesus says. It s all right there. God s ways are always like this. He raises up the lowly, and brings down the mighty. He even raises up the dead! It all points to why the Christ had to suffer and die before he entered into glory. God s strength is always made perfect in human weakness. -It s the way of the cross. -And we see it displayed in Gideon and the Battle of Midian. May it be an encouragement to you as you discover it is probably exactly the way in which God is also working in your life. Let us pray.