Jehovah Shalom: The God Of Peace In The Dangers Series

If you go on Youtube or other streaming services, you can find livestreams from nature centers. Something I like to do is watch live streams of eagles. The nature preserve will set up cameras pointed at the nest, and you can just watch the birds hanging out. And last night I put on the livestream from the BirdLife Australia Discovery Centre, Sydney Olympic Park. Sure enough, there was a beautiful eagle sitting in her nest, caring for her young.

The tree was blowing back and forth in the strong winds. And I settled in to watch thinking ah, wonderful, perfect to reflect on our message for dinner church today, the name of God Jehovah Shalom, which means God our peace.

But then I noticed there was an unwelcome visitor to the nest area. This big black and white bird began swooping back and forth, from one branch to another, swooping over the eagle. It kept cawing and swooping over, hoping to draw the eagle off of her young so it could get at them, I assume. So instead of a peaceful scene, instead, there was conflict. This bird did not give up, it kept swooping over and over and over. And the eagle had no rest, it kept striking with it’s beak toward the bird as it flew over again and again and again. It would turn it’s head and watch the bird, careful not to move from the protective position over it’s young.

We see a similar situation in the context of the name of God Jehovah shalom. It had been 200 years since God had revealed himself to Israel as Jehovah jireh and Jehovah rophe and Jehovah m’kaddesh. Moses was gone. Joshua had long since died. Israel was in the promised land. They had made it. But all was not well.

You see the generation that saw God’s miracles, saw God leading Israel, they served God all their days, stayed close to Him. But the generations after, having never seen the miracles of God, they drifted away from God. They went their own ways. And eventually they had abandoned God all together.

That’s where we meet Gideon. And to illustrate just how far they had gone from God, there is a statue to other gods over the city he was in. The people were serving the idols and false gods of the people who had originally inhabited the promised land.

How terrible!

And living in the United States today, we could say the same thing. There are many idols, and Michigan has forgotten the God who planted us here in this land. We worship at bars and clubs and theaters and marijuana shops and party stores. We worship money, and influence, and power, and entertainment. Yet there are still many churches, and many believers even in our city. There is a faithful remnant. It’s similar to Gideon’s day.

A faithful few still knew Jehovah God, and followed him, but most had abandoned Him.

We see in Judges chapter 6, God sends his messenger to meet with Gideon.

It says, in Judges 6:11-24, “The angel of the Lord came, and he sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. 12 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “The Lord is with you, valiant warrior.”

13 Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? And where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Hasn’t the Lord brought us out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.”

Gideon is wondering, where is God in all our struggles and difficulties? Where was the God of peace and provision and healing? Gideon was right, God was not with them. Because they were not with God. They had abandoned Him. And when a nation abandons God, there is no peace. There is no rest.

Just like the Eagle whose nest was being harassed by a bird, so Israel, having left God, were being harassed and attacked by a foreign enemy called the Midianites.

It continues in verse 14, “14 The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the grasp of Midian. I am sending you!”

15 He said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s family.”

16 “But I will be with you,” the Lord said to him. “You will strike Midian down as if it were one man.”

There we see the solution in verse 16. God says, I will be with you. That is the solution. God will be at the center, and all will work out. And if we keep God in the center of our lives, not on the side, but at the very center, then we will be victorious in our Christian lifestyle.