Sunday Sermon: Judges 6, The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.

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.

Sunday Sermon: Judges 3:31-5, Life lessons from the Judges!

This morning we are going to hear from Judges 3:31 to chapter 5. Through the characters and their stories in today’s passage, I want us to hear what God wants us to learn.

After the account on Ehud as a judge in Israel, we are given a brief description on Shamgar son of Anath. He was known to have struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad. Oxgoad was a long stick with a pointed end used for herding animals as an agricultural instrument. Philistines with the swords and shields were soundly defeated by Shamgar, a judge of minor status. Not much else is written about him.

This unconventional weapon highlights the fact that fighting the kingdom war is not won by human hands and weapons, but by God’s help alone. This reminds me of Psalm 44:4-8:

You are my King and my God, who decrees victories for Jacob. Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes. I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame. In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever.

His weapon of choice reveals he was a man of deep faith. He wasn’t fazed by the fact that he didn’t have a shiny, razor sharp, ultra-tough sword forged by an expert sword smith. The fact that he had no shield to guard himself from the enemies’ weapons didn’t faze him. Facing six hundred well-equipped Philistines with an oxgoad in his hand, Shamgar didn’t run away. Shamgar’s story is like the story of David who faced giant and fearsome Goliath with a huge sword and shield with few smooth rocks and a sling. He said to the Philistine in 1 Samuel 17:45-46:

You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down…

Just like David was, Shamgar was a man of courage not because he was well equipped with the latest technologies, fads, educations, money, or whatever resource that makes a person great, but because he trusted in God who gives victory to his people.
We saw earlier in chapter 3 how Othniel was an ideal judge because he went for the best of God’s blessing; we also considered his faithful wife Acsah and his father-in-law Caleb. Like Othniel, Shamgar too was an ideal judge because he trusted God and what he can do through him rather than the choice of weapons.

1. With God a mere oxgoad is enough to win the battles; what count is knowing that God is able to give us his victory.

What follows is the story of a remarkable woman, Deborah, a general of Israel, Barak, and a foreign woman Jael. The story about them is told in Judges 4. And, chapter 5 records the song of praise to God by Deborah and Barak.

Chapter 4:1 tells us that the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the LORD. I like how David Howard comments about the state of Israelites. He said, “Israel failed because it did what was right in its own eyes, rather than what was right in God’s eyes.[1] Verse 3 indicates this pattern went on for twenty years.

Twenty years is long time. If you are fifteen years old, twenty years would make you thirty five. If you are in your twenty, twenty years would make you forty. If you are in your thirty some like me, twenty years would make you fifty some. During their prime twenty years, instead of going for the best God had for them like Othniel did, instead of trusting in God for victories like Shamgar did, the Israelites wasted their prime time. Instead of enjoying the best God desired to give them, they trusted themselves. The result was disaster. 4:2 says that the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, by his commander Sisera.

How did they allow twenty years to pass under the oppression by Jabin and his commander Sisera? They spent their each passing day doing their own things believing that they were doing the right thing, believing that they were going after the best thing! They didn’t take Psalm 39:4 in their hearts. It says, “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.” Little compromise here and there, today and tomorrow without stopping to think and evaluate their lives according to God’s word, they got themselves into a really rotten place under the rule of the cruel king and the commander.

2. If we keep on doing what we think is right in our own eyes instead of in God’s eyes, we place ourselves in the hands of Satan instead in the hands of God; instead of God’s blessing, we placed ourselves under oppression by the enemy.

Verse 3 says, “they cried to the LORD for help.” Should God turn to the Israelites after having forsaken him for twenty years when they cried for his help? Twenty years of abandoning God… it is long time! Justice would be to let them rot under the oppression, right? Why should God turn to help them after twenty years of abandonment?

What we see in the rest of chapter 4 and 5 is that even though they had forsaken God, God didn’t forsake them. God remains faithful to his promise that he will come to aid of those who seek him for his help! Our God never turns us away when we turn to him. We see this character of God in the New Testament, in the book of Luke chapter 15. There is the story of lost son, who abandoned his father. When he returned after squandering away the family’s inheritance, the father didn’t reject the son. When the Son said to his father in Luke 15:21, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son,” the father said this to his servants. “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

3. When you turn to God, he doesn’t reject you no matter how long you’ve been away from God, how big your sins might be. When you turn and come to the heavenly Father’s house, your Father welcomes you in Jesus.

Now, turning back to Judges, how did God respond to people’s cries for help?

He used a remarkable woman, Deborah to help the Israelites. No where in the Bible was anything bad said about her. Only commendations are given about this woman of faith. Verse 4 says she was a prophetess, leading Israel at that time, meaning when the Israelites cried out for help. As a prophetess, she was like a spokesperson for God. In modern day, a prophetess or prophet would be like a white house press secretary who delivers the president’s words to people. She spoke with authority because God spoke through her. Verse 5 says that the Israelites came to Deborah where she lived to have their disputes settled and decided. They weren’t just coming to Deborah to settle their cases for them. Because she was a prophetess, the verdict she rendered was the verdict from God.

God spoke to Deborah his plan to deliver the Israelites. It involved the general of Israel’s army, Barak. She sent for Barak and told him in verse 6-7, “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor. I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.”

I want you to notice carefully what God was saying to Barak. His command was for Barak to take ten thousand men and lead the way to Mount Tabor to battle the army of Jabin. And, now notice what God promised to Barak. He promised to him that it would be him who lures Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army with all the chariots and the troops to the Kishon River. And, it would be him to give Sisera into Barak’s hands. Now, at this point God didn’t reveal to Barak through Deborah how he was going to give Sisera into Barak’s hands.

God’s call to Barak through Deborah was to trust in God for his plan.

How did Barak respond to God’s call through Deborah? Barak responded to Deborah in verse 8, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” Now, was Barak a wimp general to ask Deborah, a woman, to go to the battle with him?

Well, he wasn’t just asking an ordinary woman to go with him. She was after all a prophetess through whom God spoke. Barak was called to fight the army of Jabin with nine hundred iron chariots and large fighting force. At that time the iron chariots were like the modern day tanks. Israel had no chariots. To face Jabin’s army led by Sisera was like fighting an army of 900 tanks with foot soldiers with guns and rifles. To Barak, Deborah represented God. To have Deborah was like having God’s visible representation. She would be a sure sign that God was with him.

Barak was driven by fear of facing a formidable Jabin’s army led by Sisera. He had the spiritual sense to know that the key to winning the battle was for God to be with him. In this sense, he was a man of faith. But, his faith was weak in that he didn’t simply trust God’s word at face value. God called him to step up to the challenge. God was very clear on what Barak was to do. He was to summon ten thousand men and lead the way to Mount Tabor. And, there they were to wait for God to lure Sisera and Jabin’s army to Kishon River and to see how God would deal with Jabin’s army and hand Sisera into Barak’s hands.

Barak hesitated to step up to God’s challenge without a visible assurance, a sign. Barak’s faith was shaky and weak facing the formidable army. He needed spiritual encouragement.

How Deborah respond to Barak?
Deborah responded to him, “Very well… I will go with you.” She knew Barak was responding out of fear and lack of full trust in God. She wasn’t about to discourage him by saying no to him.

But she also knew there would be a consequence for his lack of full trust in God. She said, “But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will hand Sisera over to a woman.”

4. God doesn’t like when we put conditions on how he should do things. What makes God God is it is he who tells us what we need to do, not the other way around.

Going forward, Barak now accompanied by Deborah summoned the Israel’s tribes Zebulun and Naphtali; their thousand men followed him.

Sisera was informed that Barak led the army of Israel up to Mount Tabor. Verse 13 says, “Sisera gathered together his nine hundred iron chariots and all the men with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River. From what God said through Deborah, we know that Sisera wasn’t acting purely on his own accord, his initiation. God said, “I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River.” We don’t know exactly how God did it, but he lured Sisera and all the chariots and the troops to the Kishon River.

When Sisera came with the chariots and the troops to the Kishon River, Barak didn’t command his ten thousand men to advance for the battle. Deborah had to give him the cue. Again, Barak needed a little push, encouragement from Deborah to do what was right in God’s eyes. She said in verse 11, “Go! This is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the LORD gone ahead of you?” Indeed, the Lord lured Sisera, the whole nine hundred chariots and the troops to the Kishon River. The LORD had gone ahead of Barak and already did this.

And, here is the crucial verse, verse 15. It says, “At Barak’s advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot.”

How did God rout Sisera, all his chariots and army by the sword? Whose sword was that?

Do you remember the scene when Frodo was being pursued by the evil Black Riders and when approached the Ford of the Bruinen River beyond which is Rivendell? Frodo wounded rode on a horse across the river just in time, but there were the Black Riders on their horses beginning to cross the river. Do you remember how the horses seemed reluctant to cross the river? Do you remember how a rush of whitewater filled the river and rose up to sweep away the Black Riders?

Judges 5:20-22 says, “From the heavens the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera. The river Kishon swept them away, the age-old river, the river Kishon. March on, my soul; be strong?! Then thundered the horses’s hoofts- galloping, galloping go his mighty steeds.” Just like God did it with Egyptians’ chariots that pursued the Israelites into the Red Sea, God swelled the Kishon River and swept away the chariots.

5. God is trustworthy and powerful for he fulfills his promises to us.

Now turning back to chapter 4, Sisera escaped the battle scene and sought safety at the house of a woman named Jael. Her husband Heber’s clan was in friendly term with Jabin king of Hazor. Thinking that Jael would protect him at her house, he entered into her house at Jael’s invitation. She put a covering over him. Sisera thought it was to hide him. Just been in a major loosing battle, he was thirsty and asked for water. Jael gave him instead milk, more like a kind of yogurt, a room temperature sour yogurt. Taking this act as Jael’s kindness, he ordered her to stay in the doorway of the tent and if anyone would ask, “Is anyone here?” to say, “no.” Well, the rest is history. She got a tent peg and a hammer. She pegged him to the ground by his temple.

Now, Judges 4:22 says, “Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera.”
Do you remember what Deborah told Barak because of his hesitation to trust and obey God fully? She told him that Sisera would no longer be handed over to him, but to a woman. When Sisera escaped the battle scene, Barak went after Sisera. His labored hard in pursuit to capture Sisera. But, it was all in vain. As God told him it would be a woman who would get the honor of taking down the cruel Sisera.

6. When God speaks to you to step up to his challenge, don’t go around looking for excuses to turn down his challenge.



[1] David M. Howard Jr., An Introduction to The Old Testament Historical Books, Moody Press, 1993, p. 102.