The Lord’s Day Morning

September 28, 2008

Judges 6:11-27

“Hard Times for Israel”

The Reverend Mr. Jeremy H. Smith

Let me invite you to take your Bibles in hand and turn to Judges 6. We’ll pick our reading up this morning in the eleventh verse. This is a hard time in the history of God’s people. They’ve been in the Promised Land for several generations but do not own it completely, and right now the people of God are being oppressed by foreign invading armies. There is a national security issue at work in Judges 6. The Midianites and the Amalakites and others from the east, we’re told, come by at least annually and cross the Jordan River and move westward toward the Mediterranean; and as they do so they ransack, they take what is Israel’s. They destroy her crops and they allow their herds to graze in what would be the pastureland of Israel’s herds. And so we have a national security issue.

      We have the interruption of life issues. This has been going on now for seven years, and every year at least once, as the Amalakites and the Midianites come through, Israel would take to fleeing and they would find refuge in the caves and in other cut-outs in the mountains in places that were hard to get to, taking with them only that which they could tote…and perhaps even watching down on their fields as their enemies ate the crops that they had planted. That may be fun for a five-year-old, but not fun for a family to year after year to have to flee your home and watch as the invading armies take over your land.

      And of course there would have been economic implications from all of this. There’d be no reason to build barns or silos for the excess; any excess that you would have would be taken by your enemies. You could hardly support much of a herd because there’s not much pastureland to go around when you’re sharing it with other nations. These are hard times in the life of Israel, and it is there that we pick up our reading in the sixth chapter and the eleventh verse, and before we do, let’s pray.

      Our heavenly Father, we thank You for this Your word. It is separated from us by many, many centuries, by much in the way of experience and the way life is; and yet, O Lord, we would ask that this morning these words would become fresh to us, that by Your Spirit You would speak once more to us, for we need to hear from You. We ask these things in Christ’s name. Amen.

“Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.’ And Gideon said to him, ‘Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?” But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Median.’ And the Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?’ And he said to him, ‘Please Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’ And he said to him, ‘If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.’ And he said, ‘I will stay till you return.’

            “So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them. And the angel of God said to him, ‘Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.’ And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. And Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.’ Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it, The Lord Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.

            “That night the Lord said to him, ‘Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah that you shall cut down. So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.”

      Amen. Thus far the very words of our God.

      These are hard times, and it is during these hard times that the Lord issues this call…this call to Gideon. This call to Gideon will be the instrument of deliverance…that he will bring deliverance to God’s people from their oppressors. I want to think about this call, and in so doing draw your attention to two or three things from this passage.

The first is this: that hard times often lead to hard questions…that hard times frequently lead to hard questions. Now these are hard times for Gideon, and you can almost see him there hiding out from the Midianites. He is threshing the wheat. He is taking a stick and he is beating the grain, separating the grain from the chaff. And he’s not doing it out in the open, which is where you’d normally do that. You’d normally do that out in the open so that the wind could help you, but here he’s forced to hide. He’s at the winepress, hiding out from the chance that an invading army might see him…might capture him, might take this grain from him. And he’s beating it out by himself. Maybe his mind is thinking back to just a few years ago – maybe eight years ago when they used to do this out in the open, and the harvest was such that it would require other instruments, perhaps even oxen, to help in this effort. And now he is here alone with just this stick when this messenger arrives.

      This messenger arrives and finds Gideon hiding out, and he says, “The Lord is with you.” You can see Gideon looking up with a quizzical expression on his face: ‘What do you mean, the Lord is with me?’ Gideon asks two very hard but two very important questions. The first goes something like this: ‘How can you say that God is with us if these things happen? How can you say that God is with us? Where have you been for the last seven years? Haven’t you seen how we’ve been oppressed? It simply cannot be that God is with us and that God is for us if these terrible things have fallen upon us. It can’t be that God is good and that He is sovereign, and that these terrible things have fallen on us. Those things just don’t go together.’

      And here Gideon is echoing something that we find throughout Scripture. You remember Job. You remember Job sitting in an ash pile, scraping his sores with broken pottery. His children have died, and everything that he had has been taken from him except for a wife who is anything but helpful. His friends come to see him, and they look at him in this poor pitiful condition and they say, ‘Job, we are here as your friends. The Lord does not deal with people in this way unless He is angry with them. God doesn’t deal with those whom He favors in this way. Tell us, Job, what have you done? What has been your sin?’ Job considered, and said, ‘Friends, I’ve heard what you’ve said. I’ve thought about it, and in the integrity of my heart I don’t believe that this is caused by my sin.’ Job’s friends said, ‘Okay, Job, it’s not caused by your sin. But, seriously, what have you done to bring this upon yourself? God doesn’t deal with people like this.’ That’s what Gideon’s saying here.

      But he’s saying a second thing. He’s saying to the angel, ‘You know, I grew up hearing my father speak about the events of the Exodus, as God visited His people with wonders and signs and delivered them from the mighty Egyptians, and He decimated them. And He brought them out, and brought them across this Jordan River and into this land that we now occupy with great signs and wonders. And that seems so far removed. It seems like a million miles from my everyday experience. What do the stories I’ve heard since my childhood have to do with my life?’ Exodus seems so far removed.

      What does the Bible, what does Your word, what does God’s word have to say to me? It doesn’t seem to say anything, I seem so far removed from it.

      They are two extraordinarily hard questions, but two extraordinarily important questions. I think we can resonate with those questions, can’t we? We can resonate with questions like that. Surely we’ve known days, periods of time, which have been punctuated by sadness or by frustration, by agony or pain; and one of the reflective attitudes, one of the reflective things that is common to fallen creatures is to go through hard times and ask, “What, O Lord, have I done? Why me? Why have these things fallen on me? Why do You seem so far from me, and why do You seem like You’re against me?” I think we can resonate with that kind of question. Or, “What does Your word have to say to me? It was so long ago.”

      They’re terribly important questions. How do we answer them? How do we answer Gideon’s question? How do we answer our own questions that look like this? Doesn’t God say that He cares for His people? Doesn’t God say that He’s in control, and He’s good? That He’s got a special place in His heart for His people? That He’s watching out for them? That we sit in the palm of His hand, and there’s no better place to be? Aren’t those things true? Doesn’t the Lord discriminate in this life, that He loves those who are His and He treats them accordingly? How do we answer that?

      I think we answer it by saying, “Does the Lord discriminate in this life? No and yes.” I think the answer is both no and yes. I know of no medical study that says Christians get cancer less frequently than the general population. I don’t think such a study exists. I know of no military survey which demonstrates that Christian soldiers are wounded less frequently and sustain fewer casualties than their unbelieving comrades. I don’t know of any study that says that. And so if we mean by the question does God discriminate in this life…if we mean by that question that there are certain circumstances or experiences in this life which we will never know because we’re Christians, I think the answer is no. I don’t think that God promises those things. I think we experience many, if not most, of the same things which unbelievers experience in this life.

      Does that mean that God does not discriminate? Well, yes, He does. If not by the circumstances that we go through, God shows His special care. By the same event, He intends different purposes; and in every event He goes through it with us. I think in that sense the answer is yes to the question does God discriminate.

      First, God can by the same exact activity, by from every external way of seeing these things, look to be the same event. And God can visit the same event and mean for it different purposes for those who know Him and those who do not; that it is to us is given the promise that things work together for good, but these things are not expressions of His absence of love, but are in fact expressions of His love itself. We may not always see how that works out, but to us is given that promise.

      But look what the angel says to him. He says twice, “The Lord is with you.” He hasn’t spared you from these experiences, but as you have passed through these experiences the Lord is with you. Now it may seem there’s not a lot of comfort in that, and if you view God as means to an end in this world, if you view God as a way we go about getting the things we want in this life and nothing else, the promise of His presence in times of trial may not seem like all that good news. For the believer, for the one who views God not as the one who gets him the stuff that he wants, but as that relationship, that presence with God as our ultimate desire, indeed these are gracious words the angel speaks: “The Lord is with you.” Christianity is not a religion that says draw near to God and He will keep you from all unpleasant things. The Bible doesn’t say that. Our experiences don’t confirm that. Instead, what it says is that when God draws near to you that you can know, regardless of the circumstance, He is with You and He intends good by it.

      There is something here of hard questions and hard circumstances.

      But here’s the second thing: We see something of God’s patience in light of human frailty. This messenger, this angel, has said to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, and you will be raised up as the deliverer of God’s people.” To which Gideon responds with two more objections. It’s kind of funny. He’s described by the angel as “a mighty man of valor.” Upon that designation, his knees start knocking! He starts saying, ‘Listen, angel, I am an insignificant person from an insignificant tribe. I think you’ve got the wrong guy. You need somebody with some clout, a mover and shaker. I’m not the one. And besides, how do I know that you’re from the Lord? How do I know that what you’re saying is from the Lord?’ And in raising these doubts he is placing himself firmly in the line of God’s leaders. Doesn’t it remind you of Moses? [‘Lord, I’m a man of stammering tongue, and how do I know it’s You?’] Gideon is here expressing doubts and he’s wrestling. He wants to believe. He’s heard this promise and he’s holding on to it, but at the same time he’s wrestling with these questions: How do I know it’s You, and how do I know that Your word is true?

      Here is a man struggling with doubt, and so he asks this angel, ‘Will you stay, and will you give me a sign?  Will you give me a confirming sign?’ And so he goes away. He goes and he gets a goat and he slaughters it and he prepares it, and he makes these cakes. I have no idea how long it takes to prepare a goat; I’ve never done it. But this is not something that’s taking place in a matter of minutes. No microwave ovens, no convection ovens. He’s got to build a fire and prepare a goat in whatever way you prepare a goat, and he’s got to bake these cakes. He has gone off and left this messenger standing under this tree…you would think for hours.

      And who was this messenger? You know the Bible tells us in verse 11 it’s the angel of the Lord, but then in verse 14 as this angel, this messenger, and Gideon are talking, the Bible says this: “And the Lord turned and said….” And again at verse 16: “And the Lord turned and said….” You understand, this is no ordinary messenger. This is no ordinary angel – if we could use that phrase. This is the Lord himself. This is God himself now speaking with Gideon. This is the pre-incarnate Son of God waiting under a tree as Gideon wrestles with doubt, and it reminds us of the great patience of God in light of our human frailty. The Son of God waits under a tree while Gideon goes into his house and prepares this meal – this meal that will be a sign of confirmation to him.

      Friends, we often have fears and maybe even sometimes have doubts. It’s not an un-Christian, not a sub-Christian response to take those doubts to the Lord; to ask the hard questions of God. God doesn’t have to be protected from those things. God doesn’t need to be treated like a child. We’ll shield those doubts from God: ‘I wouldn’t want Him hearing that from me. Instead of taking these doubts to the Lord, I’ll wrestle through them on my own…I’ll work them out on my own.’ And when we do that, when we listen to that voice that would say ‘You’re going to have to fix this yourself before you go to the Lord,’ we’re doing nothing more than listening to the temptations of Satan speak to our pride: Do it yourself. But our doubts, the Lord is big enough to handle. One of the hymns we don’t often sing…we don’t sing it because it’s got a hard Welsh tune attached to it…one of those hymns goes like this:

“Come, ye weary, heavy laden;

Bruised and broken by the fall.

If you tarry ‘til you’re better,

You will never come at all.

Not the righteous…

Sinners Jesus came to call.

“Let not conscience make you linger

Nor of fitness fondly dream;

All the fitness He requires

Is to feel your need of Him.

This He gives you…

‘tis the Spirit’s rising beam.”

And what is true at the beginning of our walk with Christ is true throughout: If you tarry ‘til you’re better, you will never come at all.

      You have Gideon wrestling through his doubts, and in so doing teaching us something of the patience of God. Take it to Him. Take it to Him.

      But there’s a third thing. If there’s something here about a patient God in light of human frailty, if there’s something here about hard questions and hard times, there’s also something here about what that deliverance will look like and what it will mean.

      There is something not right in Gideon’s house. The Lord, after leaving his presence, after giving him His confirming sign and leaving his presence, immediately that evening calls Gideon to work. And he says something like this: ‘Gideon, I have told you you’re going to be a deliverer for My people, but you have a problem. Your house is an idol-worshiping house. When you go home tonight, you will find that there is an altar to Baal and this Asherah pole.’

      Gideon and his family have been serving the Lord and hedging their bets. They’ve been serving the Lord, but also Baal, and also these Asherah. The Lord says to Gideon, ‘Before you can be My deliverer, before you can be an instrument of mine in being delivered, you’re going to have to deal with the question of first loyalty: Will you serve God, or will you serve something else?’ Because if deliverance is going to come, it will come by God and by God alone: it will not come from God and something else.

      And don’t you see the graciousness of God in that? But He is, by telling Gideon to pull down this altar and this pole, He is removing from Gideon something that cannot save and which can get in the way. Gideon here is wrestling through the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” And when God says don’t have any gods before Me, He’s not telling you to rightly number your gods. He’s not telling you to make sure I’m No. 1, and then 2, 3, 4, and 5, I don’t care that much about as long as I’m No. 1. He’s saying “You shall have no other gods in My presence.” That’s the sense of the form. It’s not chronological, it’s temporal. It hasn’t to do with ordering, it has to do with reality. It has to do with no other gods at all.

      So that’s the question. That’s the issue here for Gideon, that deliverance will come from God alone or it will not come at all.

      You might have come here this morning with doubts and fears and questions. Surely in the last several weeks, and especially in this last week we’ve heard a lot about sub-prime lending and mortgage-backed investments and global economies, and a recession, and bear and bull markets and all the rest. I’m not a prophet, and I’m not the son of one, either. I have no idea what the economic future of this country holds, but I do know this: that should hard times be coming …and we can pray and work against that…but should hard times be coming, those hard times will be for us an opportunity – an opportunity to test faith. What is it that we cling to? Are we with Luther, and “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; [and] the body they may kill; His truth abideth still”?

      It will also be an opportunity for witness, for the watching world to see indeed this is what we believe, not only in good times but in bad, that no matter the circumstance, the Lord is with us, and for us that’s enough.

      Let’s pray.

      Our heavenly Father, we give You thanks for Your word. We thank You that in Your word You have told us what a good and gracious God You are. We ask now this morning that You would cling tightly to us; that You would wrap Your arms around us with the love that will not let us go, and that we’d be encouraged by it. Do this for Christ’s sake, we ask. Amen.

      Take your hymnals in hand and sing with me the response, not as printed in your bulletin, but hymn No. 699, Like a River Glorious.

                                                            [Congregation sings.]

      Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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