THE LORD CALLS GIDION TO SAVE ISRAEL
Judges 6: 11 – 24
Sermon by:
Rev. E. Moerdyk
Published by:
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
OF THE
FREE REFORMED CHURCHES OF NORTH AMERICA
(October 2004)
LITURGY:
Votum
Psalter 306
Law of God
Psalter 64
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 31: 14 – 21
Text: Judges 6: 11 – 24
Congregational Prayer
Offering
Psalter 60: 1, 2, 5
Sermon
Psalter 170
Thanksgiving Prayer
Psalter 53
Benediction
Doxology: Psalter 13: 7
Beloved congregation of the Lord, most of us have experienced a call that changes our lives. I am thinking of those phone calls that you sometimes can get unexpectedly. As a teenager I remember being home when the phone call came from the Netherlands that my grandfather had passed away while he was on the mission field. Those few simple words changed the whole course of life for months. Decisions had to be made, plane tickets purchased for the funeral, and so on. Perhaps you also remember such a phone call – from your doctor with a diagnosis that something is wrong.
But there are also those calls that you get which bring tremendous positive changes with them. Think of being called for the first time by the person who is now your spouse, asking to speak with you or asking to take you somewhere. Your life begins to change its focus, priorities, and direction. Or think of the call from the company you did a job interview with, offering you work. And we could go on and on about the powerful life impacting and life changing calls that come to us.
The text that asks for our attention this morning also speaks of a call – a life changing call. This time it was a call from God. The Lord comes to find a man named Gideon, and to call him not only to a true knowledge of the living God, but also to the service of this same living God. It was a call that turned the world of Gideon upside down. It was a call that meant deliverance for Israel from the deadly scourge of Midian.
God continues to call today. Every believer knows to some degree the power of God’s call in his or her life. It may not come with the same dramatic flair as in this text. It might be a slow process in which the Lord opens your eyes to rightly know Him, and to bow to His Word. But when God calls, it is a call that changes your life and priorities and that places Him at the center of your life. This is not always easy, because the call of the Lord throws your world upside down. It is no small thing to be called from the service of idols, ancient, or modern, to the service of the living God. But it is a blessed call.
Every office bearer also knows to some degree the call to serve the Lord that Gideon received in this text. The two are woven together in this text so that you can not separate them – as sometimes happened when prophets or judges were called in the OT. As sometimes still happens today. Let us listen to the text to discover how the Lord calls, how Gideon wrestles with this double call, and how the Lord brings Gideon to respond to His call.
Theme: The Lord calls Gideon to save Israel
I. With a promise that equips him
II. With a sign that convinces him
III. With grace that reassures him
Congregation, last time we saw how the Lord responded to Israel’s sin by humbling them. When Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, the Lord delivered them into the hands of Midian. But he also sent a prophet with a confronting message. Finally, we saw how God came to Israel through His angel. We ended by considering how remarkable that was – that a holy God who has all the reason in the world to judge does not pronounce judgement through His prophet but comes in the person of His son to save. In this sermon we will be considering the coming of the Lord through His angel in more detail.
The text begins with words that are simple and yet profound. “and an (or as it should be translated) the angel of the Lord came….” The word angel literally means messenger. As you continue to read the chapter, you realize that this is a very special messenger. For He speaks not simply as a messenger of behalf of the Lord, but as the Lord Himself. We have then in this text what is called in the OT a Theophany – which means, God Himself appears in a form visible to men. Now of course even the children know that the Lord is everywhere present – that you can not go anywhere and discover that the Lord is not there. You don’t see God, but He is always there. However in a Theophany the Lord makes Himself visible in order to bring a special message of salvation to His people. Think of Abraham who saw three men walking to his tent, one of whom was the Lord. Think of Moses who saw a burning bush that somehow did not burn up, went to look at it, and discovered that it was God.
And yet these theophanies were not ordinary every day events either in the OT. God at times called people this way, but usually he did it simply with his voice like he called little Samuel in the tabernacle – Samuel, Samuel! In fact, there were only 2 theophanies in the entire book of Judges, a time of several hundred years. So you might expect that the person to whom God reveals himself in this extraordinary way must be someone very special or spiritual. Let us listen to the words our text uses – “there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezerite. And his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor!”
The longer you think about these words, the more amazing the call of the Lord in this chapter becomes. The Lord calls this man Gideon a mighty man of valor. But look at what we know about him in the text. First of all, he comes from a small unimportant village in Israel, as he himself says. Then we find him threshing wheat in a winepress. Now you need to understand how things were done in those days to realize what this meant. They did not have airconditioned combines like we do now. Instead they would cut down the wheat by hand, and then find a hill where the breeze was blowing. There the wheat would be spread out, and oxen pulling heavy rollers would walk across the threshing floor. The weight of their hooves and the rollers they pulled would break open the wheat. Then you would take a pitchfork and throw big forkfuls into the air. The breeze would blow away the straw and chaff, and the wheat would fall back onto the ground. But Gideon is in a winepress, according to the original. That means, he was in a valley somewhere, in a hollow rock that was carved out to hold grapes. There he ducks beneath the rim, and uses a stick to pound at a few wheat stalks. It is a dusty, thirsty, throat-choking task, without a breath of air. Gideon crouches there hot, sweaty, covered with chaff, and scared. But this way maybe the Midianites won’t see him and steal his wheat. Maybe at least this way he will be able to save some mouthfuls of food. So much for the mighty man of valor!
But there is something else we need to notice. We will spend more time on this next time, but we do need to mention it now. Gideon’s family worships Baal. At the end of the chapter we read that Gideon’s father owns the village altar to Baal – he may even have been a priest of Baal, but at least he was the one who donated the property for the local Baal chapel, we would say. I saw an email address recently of a pastors kid or a PK as they are sometimes called. It was son of a preacher man. They did not have email in those days, but Gideon’s email address could have been something like – son of a baal man.
We see here the marvelous grace of God. It is amazing enough that God steps in at all to save idol worshiping people who do evil in His sight, but it is doubly amazing when you think of the man whom God calls. Even the household of the man God calls to deliver Israel worships Baal. To such a man God appears in a theophany. To such a man God says – the Lord is with you.
Do you wonder how in the world this can be? How can God speak this way to someone like Gideon? Does this not encourage the idea that we can simply sin as we please? No. In the call of sinful Gideon we see the marvelous grace of God towards sinners. For according to the word of God none of those whom God calls deserve it. Scripture tells us that there is none that does good, no not one. All have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore when God calls someone to salvation, he must call sinful people who do not seek him. Otherwise no one would be saved. Not Gideon, not you, and not me. Here we see the same marvelous grace that God displays in the salvation of each of His people – grace that speaks to us not as we are in ourselves as sinners, but grace that speaks to us as God wants to make us. God calls Gideon a mighty man of valor not because of who he is in himself, but because of who God graciously wants to make him. God will not leave Gideon as he finds him. We see the response God requires of Gideon next week. But this is how God finds Gideon, and how He finds each of His people – as unworthy sinners.
Gideon must have jumped out of his skin when he suddenly saw what looked like a man sitting under the oak tree next to the winepress, and when he heard the unexpected voice. After all, when you are trying to quietly thresh your wheat so that the Midianites don’t notice you, every sound makes you fear the worst. But after his heart stops thumping, Gideon has a few questions for this person. He does not know who he is, so he addresses this stranger respectfully as my lord, or sir. If God is really with us, why are we suffering under the oppression of Midian? If God is really with Israel, where are the wonderful works of the Lord who delivered us from Egypt? He has forsaken us! Does this sound familiar? How often doesn’t the unbeliever come with language like this – if there is a God, why did this happen in my life? Why is there suffering in the world? Where is His help then? God worked long ago, but He no longer cares today. Biblical faith has lost its relevance to today!
We see in the answer of Gideon ignorance about who God really is, and about what is happening in Israel. First of all, Gideon ignores the sins of Israel. Gideon seems to be ignorant of the problem that every man is doing what is right in his own eyes, and that this is evil in the sight of the Lord. Gideon blames God, instead of blaming Israel and himself for their sins. Gideon thinks God has forsaken Israel without any reason! But God in His holiness promised that if Israel forsook him to serve other gods, he would give them over to the enemy. If Gideon would know the word of the Lord, he would know this basic teaching. The problem is not that God has forsaken Israel, but that Israel has forsaken God!
Second, Gideon shows only a selective and distorted knowledge of the past. He should know about the recent deliverers in Israel – Ehud, Barak, Deborah. That happened only a generation ago! But Gideon does not seem to know. Congregation, we see in these words how important it is to remember God’s words and works, also of the recent past. Our tendency is to forget them, which is all the more reason to put effort into remembering them. Because what you know of God colors your whole perception of what is happening. When you do not know the words and works of the Lord, you end up not knowing why things go as they do, and you end up being unable to understand what God is doing. Is it any wonder then that you no longer know the Lord?
The angel of the Lord has an answer for Gideon. He does not immediately confront Gideon with his sin – that comes later in the text, and in next time’s sermon. But first, the angel of the Lord looks at Gideon. If you are reading in the NKJV, you will notice this is translated as turning towards Gideon. If you combine the two, you will have the right idea. The angel of the Lord, the Son of God, simply turns and looks Gideon right in the eye. There is a whole message in that look. You know what one look can do. One of you told me last week that if you as kids were misbehaving at the table, you would simply get the look. Not a word had to be said. A teacher once said to my wife while she was interning – you can do a lot with your eyes – use that! I am sure the children know what this means too – does your mom or dad ever say to you – look at me, when they want to say something important, or when they want to discipline you? Sometimes the Lord does this in the life of His people too. Those of us who are a little older will think of Peter denying the Lord – all Jesus did was look at him. That was all Jesus needed to do. The Lord still does this today – not with His physical eyes, but by making you aware that He sees you. He wakes up your conscience, and makes you aware that God sees you, that your complaints against Him are not true.
Then the angel of the Lord speaks – “Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the Midianites. Have not I sent thee?” In effect the Lord says – don’t you realize Gideon, that I am working right now to save Israel in calling you? You wonder where God is? Here I am! Go save Israel – Go in this your might – I am sending you. My sending you is your strength.
Gideon is still not satisfied, but he no longer dares to come with the same complaint about God. The look and the answer have swept this option off the table. So in the same respectful tone, Gideon brings up an excuse. Instead of pleading God’s inadequacy, Gideon pleads his own inadequacy. At least this is a step in the right direction. “O my Lord, how shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Mannaseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” Gideon is responding to God’s call to office with the same reasoning that you still sometimes hear when the Lord calls someone to the office of minister, elder, or deacon. I don’t have any gifts, qualifications, or strength. How can I do anything for the cause of God?