Blinded By Fear Series

Read text. Pray.

We’ve been talking about blind spots for a few weeks now. What immediately comes to mind when you hear the term blind spots? Driving, right? One of the first things you’re taught is to scan the horizon and check your mirrors so you know what’s around you. Even with that, before changing lanes, you still need to turn your head and check your blind spot- that area where a car may have been hiding just out of sight.

We also seem to have some emotional blind spots in our lives, areas that we overlook, try to hide, or maybe have buried so deep we’re not even aware of them. We need to look over our shoulder, check what we may have missed, and work on those emotional blind spots. Today, we’re going to talk about fear.

I consulted my very own sermon illustration experts (at least that’s how the guys at McDonald’s like to think of themselves) about this topic. I asked them what fears they might have. Their list included things like fear of God, death, and being left out at the second coming. They expressed concerns about the political climate of our nation- what will be left for their children and grandchildren. They’re bothered by the constant barrage of bad news in the media. Others have expressed a fear of financial struggles, marital conflict, medical diagnosis, keeping up with expectations and the hustle and bustle of life, or even failure. Someone was even telling me about the fear they have of receiving a phone call that their child has been involved in a car accident.

If we’re not careful, these fears can overwhelm us and control our life choices. They become the first thing on our mind when we wake up, our last thought as we go to sleep. That’s actually where we find Israel in our text. They had abandoned God for false idols and God gave them over to the Midianites for 7 years.

This is when the Angel of the Lord took a seat under a terebinth tree on the land that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite- who just happened to be Gideon’s father. Nearby, Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press, a very odd place to be doing this work. You see, back then, people would gather the wheat stalks on a blanket and toss them up in the air. The wind would catch the lighter chaff and blow it away as the grain would fall to the ground. A wine press is typically in a pit. There would be little to no wind to blow the chaff away. I’ve always preferred to work smarter, not harder, so choosing a wine press doesn’t make much sense.

Gideon, however, was operating out of fear. They’d been oppressed for seven years and, being harvest time, Midian would soon be coming through to reap the benefits of Israel’s hard work. Gideon was hoping to thresh his wheat without being spotted, preserving some food for his family. Now, not many of us have lived through oppression and it may be hard for us to imagine what it would be like to have to fear someone taking away even our basic needs.

There’s an animated movie called A Bug’s Life that might draw the picture for us. In the beginning, the ants are gathering seeds to store for winter. However, the grasshoppers were oppressing the ants and required they prepare an offering of food before gathering their own food. The queen ant told a well-meaning Flick, “It’s the same year after year, they come, they eat, they leave. That’s our lot in life. It’s not a lot, but it’s our life.” Moments later, the ants sound the siren that the grasshoppers are on their way and scramble to hide in the anthill as the grasshoppers collect their food. In the scramble to hide, Flick knocks the entire collection of food into the river and it’s washed away.

Hopper, the leader of the grasshoppers, was irate as he confronted the ants in their home. Most of the ants didn’t realize the food was gone and the princess tries to assure Hopper they had done their part and now needed to collect the needed food for their colony. Hopper informed the princess, “It’s a bug eat bug world, now let me tell you how things are supposed to work. The sun grows the food, the ants get the food, the grasshoppers eat the food.” He then “graciously” gives the ants one more chance to gather food for the grasshoppers before the rainy season begins. Because the ants didn’t realize the strength they had in their numbers, they were living in fear.

That was how Gideon and all of Israel had been living for seven years! They had turned to false idols, had forgotten that God was their source of strength, and had lived in fear of the Midianite oppression. It’s in that circumstance that the Angel of the Lord reveals Himself to Gideon. (read Judges 6:12)