Judges 6: The LORD turned to him and said, Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian s hand. Am I not sending you?

Transcription

1 Judges 6: The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, The LORD is with you, mighty warrior. 13 Pardon me, my lord, Gideon replied, but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt? But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian. 14 The LORD turned to him and said, Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian s hand. Am I not sending you? 15 Pardon me, my lord, Gideon replied, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family. 16 The LORD answered, I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive. 1

2 November 20, 2016 WILL THE MORNING FIND YOU? Rev. Monny Weru I am grateful to God this morning for the chance that he has given me to worship with you, and Rev. John Schneider who has graciously given me the chance to share his pulpit. In the Presbyterian church of East Africa (P.C.E.A), we say that the pulpit belongs to one minister. On a different note, although it is almost, it is not yet goodbye, and therefore, no farewell speech yet. Meanwhile, I wish to appreciate that all of you have become family to me. May God always bless you. I thank the Lord God for allowing me to share the word of God with you today, as the Lord has guided me from the scripture, in the book of Judges chapter 6: Judges is the seventh book of both Hebrew and the Christian Bible [SLIDE]. Although it is not clear about the person who wrote it, Jewish tradition ascribes its authorship to Samuel who was the last of the judges. It talks of events that took place after the death of Joshua and before Israel became a monarchy, from its former theocratic form of government where God alone was the King. It is thought to have been written in the year 1050 B.C. The time of the judges was a time of great apostasy which can be seen in the way the first sentence of chapter 6 of Judges starts: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They were doing it again and again. The nation of Israel was undergoing turmoil as they tried to possess the parts of the land that had not yet been conquered. It was a transition time. Now we all know that times of transition are not very easy. There are a lot of new things, new ways of life to adapt to, new weather, new activities geared towards adaptation and all the excitement that goes along with that kind of life and feeling of success and hope. Although they were supposed to be a light to the Eastern people as they are called in chapter 6: 3 of Judges, they started to go after the Canaanite gods and worshipped them, instead of being a witness to the God who had brought them from Egypt to the Land of Canaan. At the period of the text that we have read, the Midianites and the Amalekites and other children of the East were causing havoc. This was the consequence of 2

3 the worshipping of idols by the Israelites. What these Eastern people didn t take as spoil, they destroyed, leaving no means of sustaining life (6: 4). Under those circumstances, many Israelites sought refuge in the mountain dens, caves and strongholds (6: 1-2). Others found refuge in Baal, a storm god associated with the stormy rains necessary for a good harvest (6: 10). In chapter 6: 11, Gideon is in the winepress, threshing out wheat that would sustain him and his family. Now you don t thresh wheat in a wine press in normal life. Threshing was an ancient process used to separate grain from the straw and the process was usually performed on a threshing floor out in the open, and usually on a hill [SLIDE]. This was important so that the wind could assist in the separation by blowing away the straw [SLIDE]. The winepress was usually just a pit hewn out of a rock or lined with plaster [SLIDE]. Grapes would be thrown in and then trampled upon to get the grape juice used to make wine. Usually this was done with great joy and singing. It was a symbol of bounty. However, when the harvest was not good, or there was captivity, then there would be no joyful singing at the winepress and the winepresses would be deserted. Winepresses were, therefore, a sign of hope and joy, and at the same time a sign of despair and sorrow. Sorrow and despair because for the Israelites, famine and war were a sign of judgment, while bounty was a symbol of God s blessings upon his people. That Gideon was threshing the wheat there shows not only the fear, desperation and sorrow that he felt, but also the feeling that the whole community was going through. These were very dark days for the people of Israel, the new owners of the land filled with milk and honey. However, the question is [SLIDE], Would the morning find them, when God s face would again shine on them in his tender mercies? As Gideon was threshing the wheat in a winepress, the angel of the Lord (who is taken to be the Lord himself), appeared to Gideon and said [SLIDE], The Lord is with you, mighty warrior (v. 12). That was quite amazing and surprising! We do not have a history of Gideon having led an army, or even having fought a battle. In fact, it is the Lord who is training him about what to look for in a good soldier as can be seen in the next chapter. Surely this was a far greater mistake, than of a person referring to an employee as the owner (a case of our past G.A Moderator). It is worse than calling a person with no musical ear a musician. A mighty warrior doesn t hide. A mighty warrior calls and commands a group of other 3

4 warriors and leads them to attack the invading enemy! But Gideon, referred to as a mighty warrior by the angel, was hiding himself and the wheat from the Midianites (v. 11). But it wasn t a mistake. This is what God does; he sees a somebody in what the world may calls a nobody. Like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a Catholic nun and a missionary who once said, I see Christ in everyone, even in the filthiest person lying in the gutter in Calcutta. God sees himself in everyone (he created us in his own image), and he knows that he has put in us potential beyond what we can imagine, though at times it is distorted by fear and sin. God called Gideon a mighty warrior and that became the beginning of his transformation. No wonder Rick Warren, an American Evangelical pastor and author said, God is asking you to believe he is who he says he is, believe you are who he says you are, and then live like you believe those things. Gideon doesn t believe yet. Pardon me, my Lord, Gideon replied. But if the Lord is with us, why? Doesn t that sound like you sometimes? When things don t go the way that you want them to go? When no one seems to understand your plight? When your world seems to be coming to an end? If it doesn t sound like you, doesn t it sound like a neighbor, a friend, or a relative? If God still loves me, then why me? Why? Two things Gideon doesn t believe yet; that he is what the angel of the Lord is calling him, and that God is still with him, and by extension his community. In his doubt, he had thought that God had forsaken them and cared for them no more. But always remember, God is with you; mighty warrior. The other point to remember is that [SLIDE] you have what God says you have. In verse 14, the Lord turned to Gideon and said, Go in the strength that you have and save Israel out of Midian s hand. Am I not sending you? Now we can see that Gideon is in for a bigger surprise! All the time as he threshes the wheat, he s probably thinking of himself as only strong enough to thresh the wheat, and never to lead an army of warriors to war. Sometimes we are like him, daily shrinking our area of operation and our might with it. Daily forgetting to say like Paul in Philippians 4: 13, that even if not on our own, we can in Christ who strengthens us. 4

5 Gideon goes on to say in Judges 6: 15 [SLIDE], But Lord, Gideon asked, how can I save Israel? My tribe is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family. Now, doesn t that sound like Moses in Exodus 3: 11? But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Jeremiah, also said that he was only a youth and therefore did not know how to speak (Jeremiah 1: 6). Now, I am not trying to downplay Gideon s reasons, that his clan was the weakest and that he was the least in his family. In his Jewish culture, wealth was exalted and interpreted as God s blessings. The poor, even when they had wisdom, were despised (Ecclesiastes 9: 16b). However, Gideon s low self-esteem at the time of meeting with God s angel was too much. He showed no faith in himself and he was not even letting God believe in him. What did I just say? Yes, he wasn t letting God. God is saying, I believe you can do it because I created you, and I know the stuff that you are made of. It is I who put it in you and therefore I know where it lies. I know how to increase it, even when you make it small by lack of faith. Just believe! It is good, my sister, my brother in Christ, to let go, and let God. He promises to be with us in the assignments that he gives to us. God, in his loving kindness only wants us to have faith in him and obey him. The third point is that [SLIDE] you can do what God says you can do. In verse 16, The Lord answered, I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites together. (NIV) King James Version says, as one man, for together, meaning that the Midianites would be defeated as if Gideon was fighting one man only. No wonder, later in Judges chapter 7, Gideon would be told to reduce the number of soldiers going to the war from 32,000 to 10,000, and they were expected to fight an army of 120,000 soldiers from the enemy s side. This was because it would be God fighting their battle, and not themselves. They only needed to turn to, trust and obey God. To turn from their idols and turn to God. As we see from this text, Gideon had to be broken in order to be used by God. We, like Gideon, experience some kind of brokenness. Sometimes, as a result of sheer pride. Other times it is because of idol worship (Gideon was asked to destroy his father s idols before he went to war- 16:25-26). Other times we do not even know why. The brokenness just happens. We become 5

6 alienated and suffer as communities, families or individuals in loneliness. Like the Israelites who hid in the mountain clefts, caves and strongholds, we withdraw to our shaky strongholds. With our pain, fear, doubts, despair and sorrow, we regress to our unbelief. We turn to our own winepresses, like Gideon had, and there we ask ourselves whether God really cares. For us, we are driven to ask ourselves whether we will ever make it, with job scarcity and lack of job security, especially for young people. In the year 2015 statistics from the national statistics office showed that almost half a million young Koreans were unemployed. But we should not be dismayed. We should not allow the boundaries of our churches, our clans and our positions in the family to define us like Gideon did. We need to come to life, and appreciate the fact that God has good plans for us, and he knew us, even before we were conceived in our mothers wombs. For that reason, do not worry, only have faith and obey God. Others worry because of loss of jobs, relationships, loneliness, despair you name it. Because of lack of faith and their excessive worry, they forget to pray and find the easy way out suicide. In the World Health ranking of the year 2014 concerning suicide, statistics has it that South Korea ranked third in the world with 29.34, only better than Guyana with and North Korea which had Kenya is also coming up fast in number 29 with These are people s lives that we are talking about and not mere figures. I guess that a good number of those people could be Christians. Why is that? Because we are forgetting and refusing to believe who God says that he is, and who he says that we are in relation to him. We are letting situations and people to define who we are. We are worrying about tomorrow even when today has nothing to worry about. It means that we are simply not living. We are forgetting that the irony of the cross is that there is power in powerlessness. Power that brings the dead back to life. It is always good to remember that [SLIDE]: (A) We are who God says we are. (B) We have what God says we have. (C) We can do what God says we can do. 6

7 When we suffer, we need to find out what God is telling us in that suffering, for there is no victory without a battle. Never give up until morning finds you! My grandfather was a funny person and he used to tell me a lot of stories concerning himself. One day, he was sent by a missionary pastor during the colonial days, to go and paint his house. The pastor had kept some church wine and bread for holy communion. My grandfather thought to himself that although he was used to taking the traditional brew, he should try the church wine only to taste. For an alcoholic, there s no tasting. He took the whole bottle and some communion bread. Then he thought to himself, Since I have taken holy things and I am not a church member, I will die. It was late in the evening and he thought to himself, I will go home and lie down awaiting my death, for I know that the morning will not find me. He never died, and he believed that God saved him. Look up to God s love even when you have been pushed to the winepress of your life with your wheat. For nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8: 38-39) [SLIDE], For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV) He is our all in all, and in the morning he will replace our weeping with rejoicing. For weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning (Psalms 30: 5). It happened for Gideon. It will happen for you. Treat your kind of darkness as a bad nightmare, for the morning makes it irrelevant. The only question is, when the morning breaks and the shadows free, will the morning find you? Be found in the morning, in this life and in the Kingdom to come [SLIDE]. Let us together sing the third verse of the song Morning Has Broken: Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning Born of the one light, Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise every morning God s recreation, of the new day. In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; AMEN. 7