Living for Christ
is a Confused and Confusing Age
A Study of the Book of Judges
Sermon # 5
“God’s Transforming Power.”
Judges 6: 11-24
“In May 1835, an
eighteen year old boy went to the deacons of a church in Boston. He had been raised in a
Unitarian church, in almost total ignorance of the gospel, but when he had moved to Boston
to make his fortune, he began to attend a Bible-preaching church. Then, in April of 1855,
his Sunday School teacher had come into the store where he was working and simply and
persuasively shared the gospel and urged the young man to trust in the Lord Jesus. He had,
and now he was applying to join the church.
One fact quickly
became obvious. This young man was almost totally ignorant of biblical truth. One of the
deacons asked him, “Son, what has Jesus Christ done for us all – for you –
which entitles Him to our love?” His response was, “I don’t know, I think
Christ has done a great deal for us; but I don’t think of anything in particular as I
know of.” Hardly an impressive start! Years later his Sunday school teacher said of
him:
I can truly
say that I have seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than his when he came
into my Sunday school class and I think the committee of the church seldom met an
applicant for membership who seemed more unlikely ever to become a Christian of clear and
decided views of Gospel truth, still less to fill any space of public or extended
usefulness.
Nothing happened very
quickly to change their minds. The deacons decided to put him on a year-long instruction
program to teach him basic Christian truths. Perhaps they wanted to work on some of his
other rough spots as well. Not only was he ignorant of spiritual truths, he was barely
literate and his spoken grammar was atrocious. The year long probation did not help very
much. At the end of the second interview, there was only a minimal improvement in the
quality of his answers, but since it was obvious that he was a sincere and committed (if
ignorant) Christian, they accepted him as a church member.”[Gary Inrig. Hearts of Iron, Feet of Clay.
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1979) pp. 83-84]
You would probably be surprised to learn
that the young man that everyone was convinced would never amount to anything was D. L.
Moody and he would be credited in his lifetime with speaking publicly to 100,000,000
persons about spiritual matters. Not a high school graduate himself, in 1879 he
established a school for girls, and in 1881 a school for boys. In 1886 he established an
institution what would later be called the Moody Bible Institute.
As we have looked at Israel as portrayed in the book
of Judges we have seen over and over that Israel was plundered and pillaged by the
powerful nations around them. The Moabites, Canaanities and the Philistines had all taken
their turn. Each time in the depths of their despair they would remember to call out to
God. Each time they would repent of their sins and failure to follow God. In their despair
they would call on Him to rescue them and He did! Yet each time they once again would
forget and return yet again to their sinful ways.
Now for seven long years the Midianites,
fierce and ruthless desert nomads, had raided the land relentlessly. Their invasion was so
massive and so overpowering that Israel had literally gone underground and was living in
caves, dens and mountain strongholds to survive. Israel in all of her history had never
lived at a more humble and humiliated level.
Finally Israel turned to the Lord but
according to verse six it was “because of the Midianites”
not because of a recognition of their sins. They were crying out to the Lord in
pain not in repentance. For the first time, God does not respond with a deliverer, instead He sent them a prophet with a rebuke.
In verse eleven we are introduced to
Gideon, “Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the
terebinth tree which was in Ophrah (means dusty place),
which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon
threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites.”
More space is devoted to the story of Gideon
in the book of Judges (100 verses) than to any other judge. And Gideon is the only judge
whose personal struggles with his faith are recorded. Gideon stands as a testament to all
those individuals who have a hard time believing that God can make something out of them
or do anything with them.
When we are introduced to Gideon he
But in contrast, the threshing floor was
always placed up on a the top of the highest elevation available, in order to catch the
wind which would drive the chaff away. Here we find Gideon, not only down at the bottom of
the hill, but down in the pit itself, threshing. This certainly no place to take your crop
in order to do your threshing; that is unless you are trying to stay hidden.
Can you see the frustration of this man?
Why doesn’t he go to the hilltop? Well, he is afraid of the Midianites. He does not
want them to see that he is threshing wheat. And you can imagine his frustration. There is
no air getting to him down there, certainly no wind. So he pitches the grain up into the
air. And what happens? Does the chaff blow away? No. It comes down around his neck and
gets into his clothes making him very uncomfortable. There he is, trying his best to
thresh in a place like that, and all the time rebuking himself for being a coward, afraid
to go to the hilltop. I think he looked up there rather longingly and thought, “Do I dare go
to the hilltop?” Gideon was having a very frustrating experience, but God was
going to use this man. We will see why God used this kind of a man.
It is at this point
that Gideon has a heavenly visitor. Gideon’s response to the heavenly visitor is
fascinating because in the three questions he raises we see Gideon’s personal
spiritual struggles. Perhaps even more importantly these are three questions that still
trouble us today!
Gideon’s First Question - “Does
God Really Care What Happens To Us?”
“And the Angel of the Lord appeared to
him, and said to him,“The
Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (?13)? Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us,
why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which
our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’
But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”
Gideon did not at
first realize that this visitation of “the Angel of the Lord”
(v. 12) was in fact a direct encounter with God himself. This is what theologians call a Christophany
– when Christ temporarily appeared in human form before his birth in Nazareth.
The heavenly messenger begins by saying,“The Lord is with you, you mighty
man of valor!” (v. 12). In
this statement we see one of the great truths of Scripture, that when God looks at us
he does not see us for what we are, but for what we can become, as He works in
our lives! Other people look at us and see our flaws and failings; God looks at us and
sees our possibilities. He comes to us in our weakness with the promise of his presence
that will transform our inadequacy into His strength.
Gideon’s response to this greeting was
unbelief. Gideon is asking a thoroughly modern question, “Where is the Lord in all of this?”
Gideon has brought up the age old theological complaint about the problem of evil; “If God is all-powerful and all good, why does he
allow bad things to happen, especially to his own people?” Gideon was set up
for a life of frustration, he was bitter with God for not coming through for him!
Notice if you would that the angel of the
Lord did not say that the Lord was with Israel at this time; He said he was with
Gideon. Frankly, He was not with Israel because of their sin. The angel said, “The
Lord is with you”—singular—with you, Gideon. But Gideon cannot
believe that God would be with him. He wants to know where all those miracles are that
their fathers had told them about. He believed that the Lord had forsaken Israel. He was
as wrong as a man could be. The Lord had not really forsaken them; they had forsaken the
Lord.
This man is in a bad state mentally and a
bad state spiritually. Actually, he not only had an inferiority complex, he was skeptical,
he was cynical, he was weak, and he was cowardly. That is this man Gideon. But this was
the man that God called.
Gideon’s first
question questions God’s heart, his second question doubted God’s wisdom.
Gideon’s Second Question - “Does
God Know About My Limitations?” (vv.
14-15)
“Then
the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you
shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?” (15) So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least
in my father’s house.”
Gideon overwhelmed by the commission given to
him did what so many do, he argued! Like most of us when we are given a job to do for the
Lord, he began to dredge up a score of excuses why it could not be done.
While the second
part may be true (he was the least or youngest in his family) the first statement can not
be taken too seriously since we are told in verse 27 that even in this time of
devastation, Gideon himself had ten servants.
At first all Gideon
could see were the odds that were seemingly stated stacked against him. As Charles
Swindoll reminds us, “…our eyes are focused on one of four
places at all time; our circumstances, on others, on ourselves; or on the Lord. If they
focus on any of the first three and not on the Lord, …. We will ultimately fail.” [Charles Swindoll. Living Above the Level
of Mediocrity. The Inspirational Writings
of Charles Swindoll: Living on the Ragged Edge & Living Above the Level of Mediocrity.
(New York: Inspirational Press, 1992) p. 614]
Gideon seemed to think
that God could
But our problem may be the exact opposite
of Gideon’s. J. Vernon McGee states, “Our problem
today, friend, is that most of us are too strong for God to use. Most of us are too
capable for God to use. You notice that God uses only weak men, don’t you? First
Corinthians 1:26–27 tells us that this is so: “For ye see your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are
called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God
hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”
…. Do you know why God does not use most of us? We are too strong. Most of us have
too much talent for God to use us. Most of us today are doing our own will and going our
own way. There are multitudes of people, talented people, people with ability, whom God is
not using. Do you know why? They are too strong for God to use. Paul mentions this: “And
base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things
which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his
presence” (1 Cor. 1:28–29). …. God wants weak vessels, and that is the only
kind He will use. God follows this policy so that no flesh will glory in His presence.
When God gets ready to do anything, He chooses the weakest thing He can get in order to
make it clear that He is doing it, not the weak arm of the flesh. That is God’s
method.” [J. Vernon McGee.
1997, c1981. Thru The Bible Commentary. Commentary on Judges 6 (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson - electronic ed. 1997) Based
on the Thru the Bible radio program.]
If we are tempted to
question God’s wisdom perhaps we should remember the words of A. W. Tozer who wrote, “All of God’s
acts are done in perfect wisdom, first for His own glory and then for the highest good of
the greatest number for the longest time!”
The real question is
not Gideon’s adequacy or inadequacy, but God’s wisdom and power. God once asked
Abraham in Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too hard for
the Lord?” The answer of course is still the same, “No of course not!”
The great missionary
Hudson Taylor once said, “All of God’s great men have been weak men
who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them; they counted on
His faithfulness.”
Gideon’s Third Question – “God How
Can I Know That You Are Really In This?”
“And
the Lord said to him,“Surely I will be with you, and you
shall defeat the Midianites as one man.” (17) Then he said to Him, “If now I have found favor in Your
sight, then show me a sign that it is You who talk with me. (18) Do not depart from here, I pray, until I come to You
and bring out my offering and set it before You.” And He said, “I will
wait until you come back.” (19) So Gideon went in and prepared a
young goat, and unleavened bread from an ephah of flour.”
The question of discerning God’s will is
an on going problem in Gideon’s life. One that we will look at again next Sunday
morning, but here Gideon wanted concrete confirmation that it was indeed God who was
calling him into action, he therefore asked for a “sign”
(v. 17). The angel affirmed that the presence of the Lord and power to defeat the
Midianites (v. 16) But this was not enough for Gideon he wanted a sign, some unmistakable
proof that God would enable Gideon to carry out what he considered an impossible mission.
The proof came when
Gideon presented his offering to the angelic visitor. In verse twenty-one we are
told, “Then the Angel of the Lord put out the end of the
staff that was in His hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire rose out of the rock and
consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. And the Angel of the Lord departed out of his
sight.”
In a dramatic fashion the angel of the Lord
extended his rod and touched the food Gideon had provided, in the blink of an eye fire
sprang from the rock and consumed the offering.
The angel then vanished and left the terror
stricken Gideon with the realization that he had been talking with the Lord, and he
exclaimed in verse twenty-two, “…Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the
Lord face to face.”
Gideon asked for a sign and then after he
had received it he was sure that the God who had granted it was now going to kill him.
But the Lord
reassured him in verse twenty-three, “Then the Lord
said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear,
you shall not die.”
The Lord however reassured Gideon who in turn
built an altar and called it Jehovah-Shalom or “the Lord is peace.”
Conclusion
The truth is that we
still struggle with those three questions
Does
God Care About What Is Happening to Me?
Does
God Know What He Is Asking Me to Do?
God How Can I Know That It is You Directing Me?