Read: Judges 6: 11-16 and Ephesians 1: 15-23
Text – as readings
INTRODUCTION
It is not easy, is it, to stand up and be counted as a Christian? Perhaps it’s more difficult in some situations than others. It may not be too difficult when you are with Christian friends; but when you are on your own at work or at school or college – perhaps even sometimes at home – that’s when the going gets tough.
That’s why, this evening, I want to address this question by, as it were, opening three windows: the first will open to reveal an Old Testament character called Gideon. The second will open onto the world of a New Testament character, Paul. Through the third we will look out onto our world today.
It is my hope that the things we see and hear as we open these three windows will help us to understand how God gives power to Christians for everyday living.
So, without further ado, let’s open the first window.
Through the FIRST WINDOW we see and hear
GIDEON’S PROTEST
Looking through this window takes us back more than 3000 years to events recorded in Judges 6: 11-16. The main theme of this book is that of failure through compromise. The people of Israel simply were not living up to their calling as the people of God. Again and again they wandered away from God and worshipped idols.
God would have been just if he had left his people alone to die in their sin – but he did not do so. Instead, he raised up rulers called Judges – hence the title of this book. These Judges were called by God to deliver his people from their enemies, and call them back to the worship and service of the one true and living God.
Gideon was one such leader. He would become a mighty warrior. But that was certainly not how he saw himself when God called him. But before we come to his story let’s paint in a little more of the background.
Judges chapter 6 opens with the oft repeated words: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. After suffering for a while they cried to the Lord in the midst of their oppression. Having first sent them a prophet to rebuke them, the Lord then called Gideon to deliver them from the hands of their persecutors.
But how did Gideon react to this call? Did he immediately obey and take up his task? Not a bit of it. He protested – although it has to be said that his protest was one of incredulity rather more than disobedience.
Look again at Judges 6: 11-15.
11The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
13“But sir,” Gideon replied, “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.”
14The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
15“But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
This encounter with the angel of the Lord caused Gideon all sorts of problems. First, he wanted to know why, if the Lord was with them, they had experienced seven years of tragedy? The answer, of course, was that they had suffered because of their sin. Even so, it was because of their suffering that they had turned again to the Lord, seeking his face in prayer and repentance.
But Gideon was not sure that he liked the way God seemed to be responding to the people’s prayers. And that accounts for his further protest: (Judges 6:15) “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” “Surely”, he was saying, “God can’t want me as a leader”. As he looked at himself and his family the idea that he was, or ever would be, a mighty warrior seemed laughable. He came from a poor family and he was the youngest member of it. Actually, he wasn’t that young: he was probably about forty years old at this time but you can hear him say, can’t you: “Surely, Lord, you don’t mean me”. But God did mean him. What is more, God promised that Israel’s enemies would be defeated through his leadership at this time.
What is more, God had already said something to him that was very significant. It’s recorded in verse 14: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” There was no mistake. God had called him. And God understood his felt sense of weakness and had already made provision for it. Gideon was to go in the strength that he already had.
Of course, we may well understand Gideon’s protest – and even believe that we have reason at this moment to feel as he did. Yet, his call is clear and the principle on which he should proceed is set out in those few words: “Go in the strength you have”. You have enough strength to take the next step. So take it!
We too should take these words to heart. Whatever challenges we face, God is saying that we already have enough strength to take the next step. So, “Go in the strength you have”.
The story of Gideon is a fascinating one but we cannot stay to pursue it now. Let it suffice that we have learned this one thing: as God calls us day by day to serve him he has already given us enough strength to take the first step in obedience to him.
But it’s high time that we turned from Gideon to open our second window.
Through the SECOND WINDOW we see and hear
PAUL’S PRAYER – Ephesians 1: 15-20
Again, all we shall have time for is to pick up on the great Easter theme of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and its relevance to our subject this evening.
Look at verses 19-20, where Paul tells us about God’s mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead. There has never been a greater demonstration of God’s mighty strength than the resurrection.
But look again at this passage. What Paul asks for is that we should know (as distinct from know about) God’s incomparably great power for us – a power so great that it can only be described by likening it to God’s mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.
This is the strength that is available to all believers. That is why Paul says: 17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. Paul is asking that we know and experience God’s power.
But in order to understand fully the significance of Paul’s prayer we must first go back to an earlier point in Ephesians 1. Look at verse 3 where Paul says: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The “all” here includes all who trust in Christ - from the youngest to the oldest; from those who have been in the way only a few hours to those who have been followers of Jesus over many years – all of us have already been blessed…in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. What riches are ours in Christ!
So now let us return to Paul’s prayer and ask why he should feel the need to pray in this way. The reason is simple. It is one thing to have every blessing stored up for us in Christ; it is quite another thing to know it and avail ourselves of it. That is why Paul prays. 17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you…
Words such as these - the Spirit of wisdom and revelation…the eyes of your heart may be enlightened – show us that both knowing and using this power are included in what Paul wanted for those early believers.
This then is the strength, the power that was available to believers in Paul’s day and is available to us today. So, how should we expect to experience this power at work in us in our daily lives?
It’s time to open our third window.
Through the THIRD WINDOW we see how the power of God is experienced in
THE BELEIVER’S LIFE
2 Corinthians 12: 9-10
Paul knew the power for which he prayed and had often experienced its effects in his own life. But he was also no stranger to weakness. And, though it seems hard to believe, these two things - weakness and power – go hand in hand. In response to his repeated prayers for healing and strength God said to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.
The answer which God gave to Paul caused him to cry out: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest upon me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong”.
The lesson that Paul learned holds good for us too. It is just at the time when, for whatever reason, we feel our weakness that God’s strength is particularly available to us. This is how we may receive strength to serve God, to stand up and be counted as a Christian. But it is important to bear in mind that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Our sense of weakness is not removed but we receive strength to confront whatever challenge faces us.
But now, as I come towards a conclusion, I wonder if there are those here who have not yet set out on the road that leads to the discovery of life in Christ Jesus. Whatever your situation, let me urge you not to give up but to look to Christ and to him alone. However many twists and turns may yet lie in your path Jesus can and will rescue all those who turn to him.
Let me illustrate what I mean by telling you of a never-to-be-forgotten milestone in the life of one who was at the end of his tether but who lived to become one of the staunchest defenders of the faith in the last century. Your situation may well not be as dire as that of Malcolm Muggeridge, but, in any case, the story is fascinating and instructive.
In his memoirs, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Malcolm Muggeridge tells of events that took place in Africa in 1943. He was forty years old but his experience of those four decades had been of progressive disillusionment.
After Cambridge he spent three years in India, which shattered his early religious beliefs; and two years in Stalin’s Russia, which left his idealistic materialism in ruins. Even the Second World War only led to further disillusionment. He tried to enlist but was turned down on health grounds. He was accepted as a spy in the British Secret Service, but found that being stuck in Lorenco Marques, monitoring the German disruption of Allied shipping, far from glamorous. As a result he says: “Much of the time I spent wishing I was dead”.
To cut a long story short, one night, in sheer despair, he decided to end his life. He drove the six miles out of town, undressed, left his clothes on the beach, waded out in the dark cold water and started swimming. Quickly he was out of sight of the beach and could see only the lights from the distant town. But all of a sudden he began to tremble and then, without thinking or deciding, he began to swim back to the shore, his eyes fixed on the glow from Peter’s Café and the Costa da Sol. He says of them: “They were the lights of the world; they were the lights of my home, my habitat, where I belonged. I must reach them. There followed an overwhelming joy such as I had never experienced before; an ecstasy”.
His conversion? No, not at all, but simply the beginning of a long quest to understand the glimmer of light that he had sensed in the midst of his despair and which seemed to him to be represented by those lights on the shore. On that momentous occasion he had been given both strength and resolve to begin the long journey back to God.
So let us all reflect on this great truth: God knows our every need and as we look to him he will meet that need and bring us through. Therefore, let us resolve, in the midst of our felt weakness, to go (on) in the strength (we) have.
