Normally it was Midianites and Amalekites who lived a nomadic lifestyle. Nomads are “a group of people who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land.”[1] It was Midianites and Amalekites who lived this way. In contrary, when the Israelites finally came into the Promised Land during Joshua’s period, they were no longer people who wondered through the desert. They were the people of the land, each person belonging to the inherited portion of the inherited land from God.
But in chapter 6 of Judges, we witness something was very wrong. Verse 2-6 says:
Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help.
Why was this happening? This was the land that God promised to Abraham long ago, their forefather. After forty years of wondering in the desert, by God’s grace, they finally made into the land of Promise. How did they get to this point of impoverishment? How did they become a people of the land to a people being chased away from the land? Verse 1 summarizes what they did in the manner typical to the book of Judges: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of Midianites.
I am certain that Israelites during this period did some deep soul searching, wondering what life was all about. Perhaps, you are doing the same soul searching trying to understand why your life is as it is. Is your life impoverished? Do you lack joy, peace, love, purpose? Do you feel like nomads dictated by life circumstances? Do you feel out of control?
Verse 6 says that after 7 years of misery and soul searching, the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help. I want you to listen carefully how God responded to them.
Verse 8-10 says that when they cried out for help to the LORD, he responded by sending a prophet. And, the prophet delivered the message from the LORD:
I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, `I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me.
Why did God allowed the Israelites’ life to become so impoverished, uprooted, anxiety filled, defeated, enslaved? It is so that they might turn to God for help!
1. God wants you to pay attention to the fact that He is the LORD, your God who alone can deliver you, free you, make your steps firm, help you to live the real life. He wants you to grapple again and again with his saving grace in Jesus Christ.
Does your life feel like something is missing big time? Turn to Jesus. Do you feel defeated by sins? Turn to Jesus. Does your heart feel cold? Turn to Jesus. Are you overcome by sadness? Turn to Jesus. Are you depressed? Turn to Jesus. Are you going through the motion of life and feel that life is meaningless? Turn to Jesus. God wants you to know that knowing him through his Son Jesus is the key to truly meaningful, fulfilled, satisfied life.
If we do not know this God, if we are not seeking to know him, if we are not drawing near to his son Jesus, if Jesus is not in the center of our thoughts, emotions, decisions, actions, we can only live substandard, unsatisfying, frustrating, defeated life.
God wants to take you to Calvary, to the cross where your savior, Jesus died for you, where he was killed to take the full blow of God’s curse against you in sin, where he forgives all your sins, so that you can have reconciled life with him and with others.
Is the death of Jesus for you a past act, irrelevant to you? Oh, I pray that the Holy Spirit come upon you to convict you of your need for the living Savior every day.
Now, I am going to speak on the life of Gideon, a judge whom God raised up. We are going to learn from the story of Gideon that God can and will use you mightily for his glory.
2. When God calls you to do his will, he promises you his enabling powerful presence now!
In 6:12, an angel of the LORD told Gideon, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” And from this point on, we meet Gideon not responding with faith and trust, but with whole lot of “buts.”
When God brings us to grapple with the magnitude of his sacrificing love through his Son two thousand years ago, he doesn’t just leave us there. He doesn’t have us grapple with his past act of death on the cross alone. He tells us that he is here with us now! That is exactly what God did with Gideon. God was raising Gideon up for his purpose to rescue and deliver Israel from the oppression. Our God is not God of past, but God who is present now! And, it is his presence of God that made Gideon a mighty warrior.
So, when the LORD said to Gideon through the angel, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior,” he was calling Gideon to place his trust in God’s enabling presence.
To this Gideon replied in verse 13, “But sir… if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt? But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.” When the LORD promised, “The LORD is with you,” to Gideon, God was promising his enabling powerful presence for Gideon to accomplish God’s kingdom works. But, Gideon’s response was not of gratitude, thankfulness. Instead Gideon couldn’t reconcile in his mind God’s promise of his presence and the current oppression. He conveniently forgot that God allowed the oppression because of the Israelites’ unbelief, to turn them to himself.
Verse 14, “The LORD turned to him and said, “God in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” God redirected Gideon’s attention to what God was going to do through Gideon. Now in verse 15, Gideon’s response seems to be of humble nature… “But Lord… how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” This is not true humility. Because true humility would say, in contrary to what I think and what I feel about myself and situation, I will trust in what you say! It was God sending him, with his abiding presence. God was going to deliver Israel out of the misery through Gideon. All that God was calling Gideon to do was trust what God had told him. Again, in verse 16 God affirmed Gideon, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”
And, from verse 17 to 24, we see how a beginning of Gideon’s quest for signs from God. Gideon wasn’t satisfied with God’s word of promise that he was going to be with him and that Gideon was going to strike down all the Midianites together. He wasn’t convinced by God’s word. He needed more proof. So what does he do? He hastily prepared sacrifices to offer to the LORD. And, what did God do? Verse 21 says, “With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared.”
And, we see this attempt to make certain of God’s promise by seeking signs by Gideon from verse 36 to verse 40. First, he asked only on a fleece, a peace of sheep skin, to be wet by the morning dew and not the surrounding ground. And, God did. Then again, Gideon asked for a sign, this time for the fleece to be dry while the ground surround it be covered with dew. And, God did the sign again.
In spite of Gideon’s unbelief, God graciously gave him the signs to turn his unbelief into belief in what God promised. The point is not that we ought to seek signs from God. Because Gideon asking signs was a sign of unbelief. Rather, it shows how much God wanted to use Gideon for his purpose. So, the story speaks of God’s patience and graciousness to convince Gideon that God was really with Gideon.
3. When God call you to do his will, he calls you to hack away any hindrance. (6:25-32)
Going back to verse 25 to verse 32, God called Gideon to destroy the Baal’s alter and to build the altar for God. Verse 27 says that Gideon was afraid of his family and the men of the town. So, he did it at night rather than in the daytime. Now, this isn’t exactly what you might want to put on the hall of fame of courageous acts. The altar to Baal and the Aherah pole were the idols that were dear to Gideon’s family and his clan. It is like going to someone’s house who have a shrine set up in their room to destroy it.
As coward as it might sound, the important thing is the fact that Gideon obeyed. In order to be used by God, you need to deal with any sinful stumbling block that prevents you from doing God’s will.
[1] Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V.
But in chapter 6 of Judges, we witness something was very wrong. Verse 2-6 says:
Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help.
Why was this happening? This was the land that God promised to Abraham long ago, their forefather. After forty years of wondering in the desert, by God’s grace, they finally made into the land of Promise. How did they get to this point of impoverishment? How did they become a people of the land to a people being chased away from the land? Verse 1 summarizes what they did in the manner typical to the book of Judges: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of Midianites.
I am certain that Israelites during this period did some deep soul searching, wondering what life was all about. Perhaps, you are doing the same soul searching trying to understand why your life is as it is. Is your life impoverished? Do you lack joy, peace, love, purpose? Do you feel like nomads dictated by life circumstances? Do you feel out of control?
Verse 6 says that after 7 years of misery and soul searching, the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help. I want you to listen carefully how God responded to them.
Verse 8-10 says that when they cried out for help to the LORD, he responded by sending a prophet. And, the prophet delivered the message from the LORD:
I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, `I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me.
Why did God allowed the Israelites’ life to become so impoverished, uprooted, anxiety filled, defeated, enslaved? It is so that they might turn to God for help!
1. God wants you to pay attention to the fact that He is the LORD, your God who alone can deliver you, free you, make your steps firm, help you to live the real life. He wants you to grapple again and again with his saving grace in Jesus Christ.
Does your life feel like something is missing big time? Turn to Jesus. Do you feel defeated by sins? Turn to Jesus. Does your heart feel cold? Turn to Jesus. Are you overcome by sadness? Turn to Jesus. Are you depressed? Turn to Jesus. Are you going through the motion of life and feel that life is meaningless? Turn to Jesus. God wants you to know that knowing him through his Son Jesus is the key to truly meaningful, fulfilled, satisfied life.
If we do not know this God, if we are not seeking to know him, if we are not drawing near to his son Jesus, if Jesus is not in the center of our thoughts, emotions, decisions, actions, we can only live substandard, unsatisfying, frustrating, defeated life.
God wants to take you to Calvary, to the cross where your savior, Jesus died for you, where he was killed to take the full blow of God’s curse against you in sin, where he forgives all your sins, so that you can have reconciled life with him and with others.
Is the death of Jesus for you a past act, irrelevant to you? Oh, I pray that the Holy Spirit come upon you to convict you of your need for the living Savior every day.
Now, I am going to speak on the life of Gideon, a judge whom God raised up. We are going to learn from the story of Gideon that God can and will use you mightily for his glory.
2. When God calls you to do his will, he promises you his enabling powerful presence now!
In 6:12, an angel of the LORD told Gideon, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” And from this point on, we meet Gideon not responding with faith and trust, but with whole lot of “buts.”
When God brings us to grapple with the magnitude of his sacrificing love through his Son two thousand years ago, he doesn’t just leave us there. He doesn’t have us grapple with his past act of death on the cross alone. He tells us that he is here with us now! That is exactly what God did with Gideon. God was raising Gideon up for his purpose to rescue and deliver Israel from the oppression. Our God is not God of past, but God who is present now! And, it is his presence of God that made Gideon a mighty warrior.
So, when the LORD said to Gideon through the angel, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior,” he was calling Gideon to place his trust in God’s enabling presence.
To this Gideon replied in verse 13, “But sir… if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt? But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.” When the LORD promised, “The LORD is with you,” to Gideon, God was promising his enabling powerful presence for Gideon to accomplish God’s kingdom works. But, Gideon’s response was not of gratitude, thankfulness. Instead Gideon couldn’t reconcile in his mind God’s promise of his presence and the current oppression. He conveniently forgot that God allowed the oppression because of the Israelites’ unbelief, to turn them to himself.
Verse 14, “The LORD turned to him and said, “God in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” God redirected Gideon’s attention to what God was going to do through Gideon. Now in verse 15, Gideon’s response seems to be of humble nature… “But Lord… how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” This is not true humility. Because true humility would say, in contrary to what I think and what I feel about myself and situation, I will trust in what you say! It was God sending him, with his abiding presence. God was going to deliver Israel out of the misery through Gideon. All that God was calling Gideon to do was trust what God had told him. Again, in verse 16 God affirmed Gideon, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”
And, from verse 17 to 24, we see how a beginning of Gideon’s quest for signs from God. Gideon wasn’t satisfied with God’s word of promise that he was going to be with him and that Gideon was going to strike down all the Midianites together. He wasn’t convinced by God’s word. He needed more proof. So what does he do? He hastily prepared sacrifices to offer to the LORD. And, what did God do? Verse 21 says, “With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared.”
And, we see this attempt to make certain of God’s promise by seeking signs by Gideon from verse 36 to verse 40. First, he asked only on a fleece, a peace of sheep skin, to be wet by the morning dew and not the surrounding ground. And, God did. Then again, Gideon asked for a sign, this time for the fleece to be dry while the ground surround it be covered with dew. And, God did the sign again.
In spite of Gideon’s unbelief, God graciously gave him the signs to turn his unbelief into belief in what God promised. The point is not that we ought to seek signs from God. Because Gideon asking signs was a sign of unbelief. Rather, it shows how much God wanted to use Gideon for his purpose. So, the story speaks of God’s patience and graciousness to convince Gideon that God was really with Gideon.
3. When God call you to do his will, he calls you to hack away any hindrance. (6:25-32)
Going back to verse 25 to verse 32, God called Gideon to destroy the Baal’s alter and to build the altar for God. Verse 27 says that Gideon was afraid of his family and the men of the town. So, he did it at night rather than in the daytime. Now, this isn’t exactly what you might want to put on the hall of fame of courageous acts. The altar to Baal and the Aherah pole were the idols that were dear to Gideon’s family and his clan. It is like going to someone’s house who have a shrine set up in their room to destroy it.
As coward as it might sound, the important thing is the fact that Gideon obeyed. In order to be used by God, you need to deal with any sinful stumbling block that prevents you from doing God’s will.
[1] Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V.
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