*Open with skit*
Have a man standing and looking at a piece of art work (Man 1), another man walks up (Man 2) and they stand next to each other for a moment.
Man 2 - turns to the other man and says, “What do you think about this piece?”
Man 1 - answers by completely bashing the piece of art as well as the unknown artist.
Man 1 - when finished answering the question he asks the first man, “What do you think?”
Man 2 - “I like it! I think it’s a very emotional and thought provoking piece of art.”
Man 1 - “You like it!? How could you like this ugly thing!?”
Man 2 - “Well I painted it.”
Man 1 - fumbles with his words, apologizing and embarrassed.
Imagine being in a situation like this? Sometimes when you hear a story like this you just want to laugh at them, but when we find ourselves in a situation like this we feel awful. You are embarrassed and don’t know what to say from that point. You are juggling your words trying to take back or justify what you said. Just last Monday I did something somewhat similar as I was talking to a guy from our church named George at the leader’s dinner.
A couple of the leaders were talking about how it is often so cold in the church building, especially in the fellowship hall. George agreed and said that the other day he found that a couple of the windows in the fellowship hall had actually been left open for a time and that was probably why it had been so cold. I looked over at the windows and saw that the Christmas lights that had been set up weren’t there anymore and quickly put two and two together. I proclaimed that whoever took the lights down probably left the windows open. My tone was a bit accusatory and degrading. George looked up from his meal and shared that he was the one who took the lights down. I just kind of said, “Oh, ok,” and went back to eating feeling a little embarrassed.
Tonight I want to look at the story of a man who found himself in a very similar situation. Please grab a bible and open it to Judges 6:11-23. (Pg. 238 in your pew Bibles) I encourage you to keep the Bible open and follow along tonight as I am going to be walking through the passage.
Just to give you guys a little bit of background on this text, the Israelite people, as 6:1 tells us, “again…did evil in the eyes of Lord” and now the people found themselves being oppressed by the Midianites. Every time the Israelites would plant crops, the Midianites would come and destroy everything in their path, leaving the Israelites with nothing to eat. Because of this, the Israelites had to develop ways to hide their food to keep their people alive. One of the ways that they developed was threshing wheat in a winepress which would have been a pit carved out of rocky ground. Usually wheat was threshed in the open because then the wind could blow away the unwanted chaff. By doing it in the winepress they were hidden from view and they were able to provide food for their people. This is where our story is set.
In verse 11-12 it reads, “The 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. When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.’”
Gideon responds in verse 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.’”
Gideon is upset by the greeting from the angel of the Lord. He basically laughs in his face. “Ha, God is with us!?” What are you talking about? We are being oppressed! People are dying, our cattle and sheep are dying, we haven’t had a good meal in years, and we have had to live in caves the last seven years! God isn’t with us! The very fact that I am in a big rocky hole, threshing wheat shows me that God isn’t with us! Where are the miracles? Where are the wonders? The Lord is not with us, the Lord has abandoned us!”
How many times have we ourselves felt this same way? How many times have we proclaimed this same statement? As we sit in our room, covering our head with a pillow because Mom and Dad are yelling and fighting and are heading for a divorce. When we see our parents working so much that they don’t have time for us. As we attend a funeral of a loved family member or young friend. Or as we sit and contemplate life in the aftermath of an event like 9/11 or the disastrous Tsunami. We have a lot of ways that we can relate to Gideon’s attitude. Let’s look and see how the angel of the Lord responds to Gideon’s blunt comment.
Verse 14 says, “The 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?’” What kind of a response is that? The angel of the Lord does not only not answer Gideon’s comments, but it seems like he completely ignores them. The angel’s answer sounds like a politicians answer to a question that involves lowering taxes. It just doesn’t make sense.
Gideon, as well, is thrown off by what the angel of the Lord says to him. Gideon’s confusion goes a little deeper than just being confused that the angel seemed to have ignored his concern. Rather, Gideon claims that the idea of himself saving Israel is preposterous because of his small family and his age. He says in verse 15, “‘But Lord,’ [which according to my commentaries is better translated, “But sir,”] Gideon asked, ‘how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least [or youngest] in my family.’”
At this, the Lord responds in verse 16. “The LORD answered, ‘I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.’” Here we begin to see a major change in Gideon. At this point Gideon starts to realize that the “sir” that he has been talking to was not a “sir” at all. In fact, he begins to wonder if this was the angel of the Lord himself.
Paraphrasing now at verse 17, Gideon says “If I haven’t upset you, prove to me that you are really the angel of the Lord. I’m going to go and get some things for an offering so wait here until I come back.” And the LORD said, “I will wait until you return.” So Gideon goes in, probably to his house, and gets everything he needs and brings them back out to the tree that the angel of the Lord was sitting at. In verse 20, the angel of the Lord gives Gideon instructions of what to do with the offering.
“The angel of God said to him, ‘Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.’ And Gideon did so. 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.”
As Gideon watched this take place he realized what he had just done. “Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!” he proclaims in verse 22. “Not only that, but I just complained to the Lord himself that he had abandoned us! I insulted him and mocked him! For sure the Lord is going to kill me on the spot!!” The Lord decides to spare Gideon’s life though saying in verse 23, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
That day, out at the winepress, Gideon learned a very important lesson about faith in God, a lesson that I think we can all learn from. Gideon learned that the foundation and the beginning of faith is not having all the right answers! It’s not being able to answer “Why?” any time something evil or disastrous happens. Gideon thought he had figured out those questions. “Why are we being oppressed? Why is all this bad stuff happening? Well, obviously because God has abandoned us.” But, obviously, that wasn’t the case because the man that Gideon was voicing his conclusions to was God himself.
In verse 14 as the angel of the Lord is responding to Gideon’s concern and he says, “Am I not sending you?” in essence he is saying, “I am here with you! Don’t you trust me?” The beginning of faith is when we acknowledge that God is with us, despite the circumstances and situations that we find ourselves in. God never promises to explain everything to us when we become a Christian. He never promises that bad things won’t happen to us. He never promises that we will understand everything that goes on in the world. What he does promise, is that we can trust Him! That he will never leave us and that even when things don’t make sense to us, he is still control.
I’d like to close with a story that my youth pastor told me my senior year of high school in a discipleship group. When he was younger, he hit a point in his life that everything in his life seemed to be falling apart. Everything that he could think of was just going wrong. After a final draw that pushed him over the edge, he decided he was going to just drive around for a while. While he was driving he yelled at God the entire time. “What are you doing to me God! I can’t take this anymore! Why are these things happening!” He yelled these things over and over, wanting answers to his questions. Finally, with anger and frustration in his voice he yelled, “Where are you God!?!”
As he yelled that last question to God, as he could still hear his voice resonating in his head, God spoke to him. God spoke but three words. “I’M RIGHT HERE!” he heard God say. At this, he pulled over and wept on the side of the road.
God didn’t answer the why questions. God didn’t explain everything. Instead, he asked him to trust him.
Let those words resonate in your hearts and souls! God is saying to you tonight, “I’m right here!” Things aren’t always going to make sense and we are not going to have all the answers. But we can put our faith in God, that no matter what, God is with us.
