Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 5, God Uses Gideon

Hope you guys had a great week. we are going to. be continuing our series here. In the Old Testament, we're gonna be looking at judges, but let's go ahead and pray together.

Lord, we thank you so much for your written word that has been delivered to us. through your spirit, through various prophets, laid down in script and preserved for us to this day, we ask that you would open up our hearts to understand it, to apply it to our lives. We pray for those who will be teaching our children as well. And just thank you for this wonderful day that we can worship you together.

in a free country, we pray for, Christians, brothers and sisters all around the world that do not enjoy such freedoms. We ask God that you'd be with them as they worship you as well. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.

All righty. Hope you guys. Had a wonderful week in the Lord. We had a.

A good week. I'm a little bit tired, so you guys try to keep me awake, ask a lot of questions. I might need somebody to Go refill my coffee here in a little bit, if anybody wants to volunteer. But, looking forward to this morning.

We're gonna be answering a question as we move to our lesson, why did God choose Gideon? Is it because he was so buff? Is it because he was so good looking? So smart, such incredible strategy, military strategy.

We'll see as we look through the text, that's gonna be one of the main questions we're gonna try to answer this morning. His haircut That's an interesting proposal, yeah. So, we're in the middle of a quarter called Obedience and Disobedience. This is part of a, for what, for us is a 4-year study program where we're going through the Bible, historically, chronologically, we're looking at the scriptures, both learning how to observe, interpret, and apply.

we're also trying to draw out apologetics as we're looking at the scriptures, we're doing systematic theology as we're looking at the scriptures and so on. we are in the middle of, in this quarter, lesson 5. Last week, we talked about Israel disobeying God. After the conquest.

We'll do a little bit of review here in a second. We're gonna be looking at Gideon this morning, how God uses Gideon. And, so let's do a little bit of review and then we're going to study the text and then try to apply the text. I hope you guys enjoy the, I don't know about you, but there's so many, it seems like every week I just open up the text, I start reading it.

And sometimes I'm just like, man, why aren't there more, more movies made about some of this material? There's just so much incredible human interaction. One of the things I remember RC Sproll teaching years ago, I went through one of his hermeneutics classes. We taught it here at Cornerstone called Knowing Scripture, and he just says, the Bible is so fascinating, he talks like a Colombo.

the Bible, it's just full of sex and murder and intrigue. And I'm like, really? I And, and grace and mercy and God and there's just so much interesting interplay. The Bible is one of the greatest books in the world.

And I just love the way as soon as, Sproul gets up there and starts, talking about the Bible, he could be talking about bacon, you just wanna do whatever he says and But it's true, there's just so much just humanity, raw humanity in scripture, and yet God meeting human beings in their raw humanity, coming down and, and having grace, showing mercy. We see judgment, we see the Creator, we see the creature, lots of just incredible stuff. So, we've been going through the seven seas of history, creation, corruption.

We saw catastrophe in the flood, we saw the Tower of Babel, that's confusion.

And then we're in this period that our curriculum calls confusion, and then, we'll be talking about Christ, His birth, both him on the cross and then consummation. leading up to this point, last week, we began the period of the judges. And we left Israel last time, they had forgotten all that God had done for them, and began to serve the idols of the Canaanites. Remember, does anybody remember last week, at some of these periods in Israel's history, would Judaism have been the dominant religion?

No. In fact, just like in India today, if you were to look at some of the statistics of India, you would find that Christianity is, what is it? I think the last stat was something like 2% are Christians, whereas you have a large percentage are, are Hindu, Buddhists, and, and Islamic, right? This is the type of period that we're dealing with in much of Israel's history.

Yes, they go through some cycles where there's some repentance, but in much of Israel's history here, You have Canaanite religion actually dominating the landscape. And so in that sense, when liberal theologians argue that Jews were not monotheistic, You'll sometimes take a religion course at your junior college or college and they'll say, Judaism is not a monotheistic religion, they're polytheistic. In one sense, they're right. Because Jews did not exclusively worship Yahweh as they were supposed to, they would worship multiple gods and they fought, they fell frequently into the worship of Molech and Baal, the Canaanite gods as we're gonna see again today.

However, what your liberal theologians aren't telling you is that's not the way it was meant to be, that there, that if you look at Judaism in the way it's prescribed. There is one God and they were only to worship that one God, but the way Judaism is described, they definitely did fall into idolatry in the worship of false gods., so, there's, there's been several judges that, when we get to Gideon that have already been raised up by God to lead the people, but then they, there's these cycles that where they continue to fall back into idolatry.

They face discipline at the hands of God, and, and, and God brings in the pagan nation. So, we're gonna see one of those cycles with Gideon.

What we're skipping over, unfortunately, is Deborah. We're gonna leave that to you guys. I said we're, maybe we'll talk about EHUUD today. I'm sorry, I lied.

EHUD would be a great guy to study. Go back and read EHUD on your own. If there's any movie makers in here, please make a movie about EHUUD. it's a very interesting tale.

OK, so that's in a nutshell, a big part of our view. So, so we're gonna find today, we're about 150 years removed from the death of Joshua, approximately 1245 BC somewhere in there. And so, we're gonna begin to look at this period where the Midianites come down and begin to do some damage. I actually want you, I want to open up to Judges chapter 6 as we jump into this.

And we're actually going to start in verse one. Cause there's just too much good stuff. To skip over and to get to 11. So let's Open up to judges.

So on the one hand, the Book of Judges can be rather depressing. On the other hand, it can be rather encouraging. To see how that God is continuously reaching out to His people. So, let's start in verse one and we're gonna read this together and I'm gonna do a little bit of running commentary, but I want you guys to feel free to, to, to interject and ask questions.

So starting in verse one, then the children of Israel did evil in the sight. Of the Lord And so this is gonna be one of our patterns. The people of Israel do evil in the sight of the Lord. You could, this first section of scripture between 1 and 10.

You can almost divide it as the problem and then the solution. Actually, all the way down to verse 24, the problem, the solution. So the problem starts off with Israel did evil. Right?

And so the Lord in response to evil. Delivered them into the hand of Midian for 7 years. This is one of the issues that we see on the pages of scripture is that God is not just passive in history. God is actively moving pieces around and, and we, it's hard for us to grasp this, but he takes Midian of pagan people, brings them.

And actually delivers Israel over to them. These are active verbs, right? God delivered them over. It's like he takes Israel, Israel's in a basket.

He takes Israel, says to Midian, here you go. You take Israel and you will now do what you wish. verse 2, and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel because the Midianites, the children of Israel, made for themselves dens, the caves, the strongholds which are in the mountains. Very interesting passage.

So at this point, Israel now has to become cave dwellers. They're in dens, they're in strongholds, and, and one of the things we always need to try to look for in literature is little time indicators. We've got the narrators speaking to us, not directly to us, they're speaking to an original audience, right? And, and so the narrator is speaking to this original audience and saying, those, those caves and dens that you guys, if you guys go on a little hike up in the mountains and you find these caves and stuff?

Well, that's where they used to stay. So there's a time period that the narrator is narrating about something in the past, right? And you see these indicators throughout the book of Judges, the narrator will say things like, to this day. Keep looking for those phrases, to this day.

It just reminds us that this is being spoken to an original audience about a time in the past. It's always a good hermeneutical principle to remember, it's not just the Holy Spirit giving us the scripture, it's the Holy Spirit speaking through a writer or narrator to an original audience that has now been preserved for us today. So in verse 3, so it was when Israel had sown, Midianites would come up. Also a Malekites, and the people of the east would come up against them.

So there seems to be a coalition here. We got Midianites, Malekites, and then these peoples of the east, and they would particularly come up at what time? Yeah, so we've got the harvest period. Then verse 4, they would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza and leave no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor donkey.

This is a scorched earth warfare. Anybody remember like the first Gulf War and and when Saddam Hussein's armies were being moved out, what did they do? Yeah, they just started burning all the oil. Now, they, they were doing this for themselves.

In this case, the enemies were coming in and, and trying to get rid of all the food and, and really trying to starve Israel to death, right? Kinda reminded me of what's that. that children, children's movie ants, when you're a parent, you watch a lot of children's movies, right? And the grasshoppers are always flying in, on their helicopters or their motorcycles, so to speak.

Yeah, but is it Bug's Life? OK, it's Bug's Life. So they come in every time, they're supposed to have, seeds gathered for the evil grasshoppers. It's the grasshoppers, and so they come flying in.

And so here the Midianites come in. And like locust, in fact, to look at verse 5. for they would come up with their own livestock and their tents coming in as numerous as locusts because their camels were without number and they would enter the land to destroy it. OK, so this is the problem.

And when we look at the problem, it, it starts with Israel committing evil, right? They stopped worshiping the Lord. They're now probably, as, as we've seen in previous context, worshiping false gods. God delivers them into the hands of a pagan people who does not worship God.

So that's, so that's an act of deliverance. Then, it's not just God's sovereignty, but there's also human agency. The Midianites are really doing things by their own will. They're coming in during harvest time, destroying everything, scorching the earth, trying to starve the Israelites, and the Israelites are hiding up in the hills, they're in dens, they're in caves, and so this is the problem.

it can legitimately be asked in such a context, why, how is it that God can use an evil people to punish his own people? There's also things that could be raised theologically about human responsibility and divine sovereignty, right? We've, we've seen this in the past. but clearly, if we're, if we're just taking the text at face value, it's not just something that happened, it's something that God did.

He delivers Israel into the hands of the Midianites, and yet the Midianites are a pagan sinful people. So now let's, let's look at verse 7. We begin to see part of the solution, and it came to pass when children of Israel cried out to the Lord because of the Midianites. Stop right there.

So they cry out, this is another part of the cycle. They now cry out to the Lord. So 7 years of repression has, has occurred. They cry out to the Lord, they cry out to Yahweh.

and, verse 8 that the Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel. This prophet, In this context, is there any evidence of what this prophet's name is? No, just some prophet. We have no idea what the name of the prophet is, but part of God's response to Israel crying out is to send a prophet.

And the prophet says to them, thus says the Lord, God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, out of the hands of those who oppress you. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. Also, I said to you, I am the Lord your God.

Do not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. What, what's going on here in this context? The prophet is revealing thus says the Lord's speech, and how would this ring on the ears of the Israelites? How do you think they would feel after hearing this prophecy in their situation?

Yeah, Gary, then we'll come to Joe. Say it again. OK, so it could be that they're feeling that God's about ready to abandon them. OK, Joe.

Remember that OK, so yeah, wow, we OK, yeah, we remember. That's right. OK, we remember that. This is everything that you did for us, and yet here we are again.

OK. So, they're looking for encouragement. God sends a prophet and they're being reminded of their feelings. OK, that could be.

let me ask you a question. Could it be, as the prophet opens up his mouth, he says, thus says the Lord, God of Israel, I noticed a, a lot of the, just the first person speech of God speaking. I brought you up from the land of Egypt, brought you to the house of bondage. I delivered you.

I, I, I, and, and I don't want you to fear the gods of the Amorites. you, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but part of what I sensed that is coming out of this prophecy is God reminding Israel who God is, that he is all powerful. Remember? Don't you guys remember?

I did all this stuff. Think of the Midianites, compare them to the Egyptians. Look what I did to the Egyptians. I did this.

And then I, and then I said, don't fear the gods, the Amorites, but You have not obeyed my voice. So, there seems to be a reminder of God's power and there seems to be a reminder of his, of his love, but also there's a, there is a reminder of you have, you've fallen back. I don't know about you, but if, if you play, any of you guys play athletics, if you're, I don't know if you've ever been on a team that just seems to be, just cleaning everybody's clocks. I've, I've coached a few teams where it just seems like game after game after game, we're winning.

And then all of a sudden you play a game and you get beat and it's the first time the team has ever gotten beat and I'll tell you that's, that's, it can be a real key point of the season when you get beat for the first time. All of a sudden, your players can suddenly forget that they won the 1st 10 games and, and even that team that they just lost to, they've beat them a couple of times in the past. And they can start to reel and start to doubt and just be like, oh man, what's happening?

And, and maybe they lost because they made some mistakes, they made some bad decisions.

What's a coach to do? One of the things a coach needs to do is remind them, hey, you guys, you guys were undefeated before this game. We've lost one game, right? You guys have just done a, you guys have, you guys have, there's a lot of season left.

You guys have beat these guys in the past and you got to remind them of what's happened. as well as try to figure out, OK, what was it that we did wrong? How can we correct this? any USC fans here at all, or?

All right, yeah, USC had a, they didn't start too well, but they ended up ending, ending very well. And so, this is a part of God's solution is a part of the solution in this section is, first of all, Israel cries out. Remember that place of weeping that we talked about last week, Bohim? there seems to be a theme in the book of Judges and really throughout the scriptures is when God's people humble themselves and cry out, when they come to the place of weeping, God is right there ready to meet them.

Remember, we see in First Peter, God resists the proud but gives what? Grace to the humble. So, here, Israel had exalted themselves in their pride, began to worship false gods, but as soon as they cry out, boom, God sending first of all, a prophet. To set them up and remind them.

Now, the next part of God's solution, we look at verse 11 and this is where our curriculum kicks off. Now, the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Oprah, no relation to Oprah of today, which belonged to Joash, the abbey is right. while his son Gideon thrashed wheat in the wine press in order to hide it from the Midianites. I just, I don't know, I, I love, one of the things I love about reading scripture is There's some things that, some themes that are so familiar because it's about human beings, and there's some things that are so foreign because this is a different culture.

at least, for me, having grown up in the city, I've, I've no idea what it means to thresh wheat. I've never done it, right? And to thresh wheat in a wine press until, until I start looking up some resources, I have no idea what it's talking about. I, I've, I have no idea of how to envision this.

But you need to think about a wine press as some above-ground spa thing that's unfilled. Right? So think of something that maybe has 4 walls, it's above ground, it's unfilled at this point. And so, normally you would be out in public threshing your wheat.

Like you, you get a threshing floor, you get some stones, you're out beating the wheat, where everybody can see, perhaps on a hill so that the wind can blow and blow the chaff., the chaff's gonna be light, the wheat's gonna be heavy, the wind's gonna help blow away the chaff, and then you're gonna have the wheat left behind. The only reason to be getting into your spa or getting into your wine press is you don't want anybody to see you threshing the wheat. And it's gonna be a lot harder because there's no wind to blow the chaff away.

And in a wine press, you're not necessarily gonna get your huge old stone down there to start rolling around on the wheat.

Does that kinda make sense? Or think of a, a, a swimming pool that's completely empty. But the point is, is that Gideon is trying to hide the fact that he's trying to get food for his family. from the Midians, Midianites who had come in, who were coming in to basically try to destroy all of the food.

So the angel of the Lord appears and to Gideon, who's hiding, trying to get food for his family, but he's hiding while he's doing it. Verse 12, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. That's a very interesting pronouncement. now, there could be some things that The Lord knows about Gideon that we don't know in the narrative yet.

All we know in the narrative so far is that Gideon is hiding while he's threshing wheat. But the angel shows up and says, come on, bulldog, let's do this. you have got, you've got what it takes. You are a mighty man of valor.

Verse 13, Gideon said to him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has this happened to us and where are his miracles, which our fathers told us about saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? And now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. So Gideon is expressing how he feels. But there could be a chance that he's also communicating something that was a common sentiment in Israel at this time.

We don't know who all heard that prophecy from, that was just previously pronounced. was that prophecy pronounced? Does it say in the context? It just says, The Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel.

So that would seem to imply what the Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel. What would that seem to imply as far as the scope of the prophecy? Yeah, so it seems like in some sense, the prophet, was he a traveling prophet saying the same message all around Israel? Did he pronounce it to the leaders and then the leaders sent out the message?

It seems like this message would have been broadcast fairly broadly to the people of Israel. but Gideon either hasn't heard that prophecy or he's heard it and he, but he hasn't yet embraced it. He hasn't come back to embracing what, what was being pronounced. he is still reciting this mantra of the Lord has left us.

If the Lord is really with us, why am I threshing wheat in a wine press? Why, why are the Midianites continually coming in and using the scorched earth policy to keep us up in the caves, to keep us in dens? this, you get the impression, don't you, that this is a difficult existence. That Gideon And his are experiencing.

Verse 14, then the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours. And you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? Does anything strike you strange about that verse?

Yeah, go on. Yeah. so the angel Lord shows up and says, you mighty man of valor. And he says, oh Lord, if the Lord's with us, why is all this happening to us?

Where's all the miracles? The Lord is surely forsaking us because we're under the hand of the Midianites. He turns to him and says, go in this might of yours. That just doesn't seem like an appropriate response.

Yeah, Joe. Oh, good point. Yeah, so, maybe the angels showing, angel Lord showing up and, and perhaps Gideon is one of the few that are actually taking the chance to be out in their wine press threshing the wheat, whereas others are still, are hiding in their caves. That could be.

Yeah, maybe, maybe he's the one that's out there. or, yeah, that could be, or, or maybe. the Lord is seeing something that's there in Gideon, even though it's not, it doesn't seem to be on the surface. and Gideon's res reply doesn't seem to be a reply of a mighty one, and yet here, the angels saying, go in this might of yours, you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Have I not sent you? So there's this pronouncement now over Gideon, you are gonna be The deliverer. So, verse 15, he said to him, O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseah and I am the least in my father's house.

A lot of layers going on here. We got Ephraim and Manasseh, right? These were children of Joseph. Out of Ephraim and Manasseh, who was the literal firstborn?

Anybody remember? Say it again. Manasseh was the literal firstborn, but who got the rights of the firstborn? Ephraim So, this is one of those little switcheroo things that was always happening, seems to be happening in the Old Testament, right?

Is Manasseh was the literal first born, but Ephraim gets the blessing and so, and, and so Gideon's not even from Ephraim's tribe, he's from Manasseah. And not just in Manassah, he's from the weakest clan in Manassah and he's the least, he says, in his father's house. this could be viewed in a lot of different ways. It could be viewed as Gideon is lacking in proper self-esteem.

Right? Or he could be laughing, lacking and. it just feels weak. It could be just an honest expression of humility.

that he just understands where his place is. but there, there's clearly, he's, there's not, there's clearly that he doesn't feel like he is a mighty one. He doesn't feel like, yeah, you're right. You, you picked the right guy, God.

angel of the Lord shows up and says, I'm your man. No, he doesn't, he doesn't sense that at all. Verse 16, the Lord said to him, surely, I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. So another pronouncement, the Lord will be with him.

Verse 17, then he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who talk with me. Why, why would Gideon want to sign? That it is the Lord talking with him. What could be some possibilities?

Say it again. OK. OK, great. Yeah, this could be very new in a lot of ways.

Yeah, Wade. Right. Right. Yeah, so it could be that Gideon, he, he recognizes the, the heft of what is being asked to do.

That's great that you're telling me that I'm gonna be the deliverer. I wanna make sure that you're really You're really the God who you claim to be. if anything about the history of false religions, so many false religions start with what? An appearance of an angel, Joseph Smith, Muhammad, all these false religions start with some apparent revelation and then people run off, with this revelation.

So, I don't know. There, to me, and you, you can correct me if, if you think I'm wrong, there would seem to be, now at this point in redemptive history, he doesn't have a, a Bible that he can go check this out with. Let me go check the scriptures. Let me be like the Breans.

Let's see if these things are so. This is just an, a messenger that appears under the Taberan tree and says, here's Almighty man of valor, here's what you're gonna do. And so this first question to me seems to be legitimate. I want to make sure you really are Yahweh or Yahweh's representative.

We'll talk about what angel of the Lord means here in a second. So, do not depart from here, he says in verse 18. I pray, I pray until I come to you and bring out my offering set before you. And he said, I will wait until you come back.

So, Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread and an I of flour. The meat he put in a basket, he put the broth in a pot and he brought them out to him under. the terebinth tree and presented them. Now, just to get a sense of the time of this, Gideon didn't walk in, open up the fridge, stick something in the microwave, and then bring it out about 5 minutes later, right?

Preparing a goat, what do you got to do to prepare a goat? You gotta kill the goat. You gotta skin it, drain the blood, cook it. I don't know how long it takes to cook the goat, you got, get all the organs out of it.

then you've got, the flour, the oil. This is a hefty ancient meal preparation period. So, so the angel of the Lord is hanging out under the tree. Gideon comes, presents this stuff before the angel of the Lord.

And Verse 20 then the angel of the Lord said to him, Take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock, pour out the broth, and he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in his hand, touched the meat and the unleavened bread, and fire rose out of the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread, and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. The impression that you get at the end of this phrase. is not that the angel of the Lord just slowly walked away into the horizon, but the impression you get is that the angel of the Lord disappeared.

He puts his staff, consumes the offering, and then disappears. Now notice Gideon's reaction compared to what he had his reactions were before verse 22. Now, Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, Alas, O Lord God, for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.

verse 23, the Lord said them, peace be to you, do not fear, you shall not die. This is a very common reaction when people interface with the angel of the Lord. They're not just high fiving, they don't go up and give him a big hug. They're like, I will die.

And so once he realizes that this really was the Lord's representative, and as we're gonna see here, actually the Lord Himself, his sense is there's so much sense of holiness. I am so, we're implying here so sinful and so human, I deserve death. Look back at verse 14 and then 16. So remember the way this scene starts off, it's the angel of the Lord that shows up under a terebinth tree.

Gideon seems to be interacting with him much the way Abraham was interacting with those three angels back in Genesis 18. And so, but in verse 14, it says, then the Lord turned to him, verse 16, and the Lord said to him, this is pretty common when we see the angel of the Lord is, is the Lord will show up and then the angel of the Lord will say, thus says the Lord or will say, I say to you. And, and right here in 14 and 16, it calls the angel of the Lord, the Lord. And so this is what Leads Bible interpreters, theologians for many, many centuries to view this as what we would call a theophany.

That means an appearance of God Himself in preincarnate form. so, in, in Genesis 18 to 19, there's 3 messengers that show up, and, and they actually sit down in front of Abraham and they eat in front of him and then 2 of them take off and then Abraham begins to go into this prayer before the third person, right? That's left behind and, and calls him Lord. And in this case, we've got angel of the Lord, the Lord, and then when the sacrifice is consumed, normally, if there's any, not just normally, all the time, if, if a human being tries to offer any form of worship to an angel in the Bible, what is the universal response?

Get up, do not do that. Do not worship me. We see it in Revelation. We see it in the, where else?

The Book of Acts, I believe, wait, yeah, Revelation. We don't, you just don't worship, you don't worship angels. In this case, the angel receives the offering, burns it up. And, and so that would seem to corroborate the idea that this is a theophany.

Where people would call this a Christophany is because the Bible says no one has seen the Lord, and no one can see the Lord in his essence. And so, it's at least suggested that Christ would be the representative of the Trinity that would be revealing Himself in pre-incarnate form in the Old Testament, coming in the full incarnation in the New Testament. Again, that's a lot of systematic connections. I don't know how much we can insist that this is Christ in the second person as this Theophany, but definitely this is the Lord appearing in some preincarnate physical form.

Here in the book of Judges. We're gonna see it later too in the book of Judges. Any questions on that? This whole angel of the Lord stuff.

It's actually one of the, it's one of the indicators and pointers towards the Trinity. it's, it's part of what builds towards that doctrine. When we're looking at from the Old Testament. Right, so let's, let's go back over to verse 24.

So, Gideon is comforted. Now the angel of the Lord has left, we would assume that in verse 23, now, Gideon is hearing a voice from the Lord. It doesn't say that directly, but the appearance of the Lord has left, and yet he's still hearing from the Lord. Verse 24, so Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it the Lord is Peace.

And to this day, it is still an Oprah of the Abiezites. So, the original readers could go to this place and see where that altar was built. To me, I just find that stuff fascinating. The author, the narrating says go over there and you can find it to this day.

Let's continue, verse 25. Now it came to pass. The same night that the Lord said to him, Take your father's young bull, the 2nd bull of 7 years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the wooden image that is beside it. Build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement and take the second bull and offer the burnt sacrifice with wood of the image which you shall cut down.

let's just stop right there and let's contemplate what Gideon's being asked to do. At this point in Israel's history, is the dominant religion Judaism or Baal worship? It's clearly bail worship, so much so, even his own dad has an altar to bail right there on the family property. And so Gideon is now being commanded, go destroy your father's.

Baal worship, the, the, the altar that's made to bail and kill one of your father's bulls. And now create an altar for Yahweh. What if God were to come to you and say, I'm, I want you to go to, Saudi Arabia. And I'm going to command you to go, no, let's send you to is Mecca in Saudi Arabia?

OK. Let's, let's send you to Mecca and we're going to have you go into one of the mosques and I want you to basically go in there and demolish the mosque and in its place, I'd like you to build a church. Yeah, That's, that's something else. we see this stuff in church history.

I, I don't know if you guys have ever read a character named Raymond Loll. Anybody, any Raymond Loll fans? OK. he is a, he's a pre-Reformation missionary, let me think here, around the 1200s, who learned Arabic better than anybody of his age, even though Arabic was his second language.

People, the Turks and, and people in Arabia would say that there was virtually no accent in his Arabic. He was an Arabic scholar. He was from Spain and he would, and he, I think one of his first missionary trips was when he was in his 60s and he basically just went in traveling around Arabic lands. He would stand up upon a box and proclaim Allah as a false god and command everybody to repent and and follow Jesus Christ.

Raymond Lowell And he saw people converted. He saw people come to know Christ. There were many times he had to run for his life, many times where he was out of the country cause he'd get sick. His last time coming to the country was in his 70s.

He did finally get killed after he had led many, many, many, Muslims, to Christ. this, I'll have to double check the exact year. He's in, what would be called the medieval period. So when you're studying medieval church history, he's one of the last guys that you study in medieval church history.

So it's before the Reformation starts getting kicked off. Well, to use the word Catholic is, is difficult because we were all Catholics in the medieval period, right? And so, so yes, he's, he's out preaching the gospel, and he is, seems he's preaching repentance and stuff, but there is some, some trappings and some of the stuff that he's sharing. but nevertheless, it seems like he was preaching repentance towards, repentance and faith, and paid the price for it.

Then you have guys like, I'm not a big fan of Saint Francis of Assisi, but he would walk right in the middle of these battles. So just hold up his hands and stop, stop, stop, right in the middle when they're having warfare and then he would start preaching to both sides. And these, just, and they, and the Muslims thought the sultans, they have this tradition where they think that crazy people must be prophets. And so when he came out right in the middle of the warfare, they said this guy must be a prophet.

He's so crazy. And so the sultan brought him into his palace and listened to him preach the gospel. Never became a Christian, but he was just like, who are you? Please tell me what you have to say from God to me.

And so that was Saint Francis Pier. one of my favorite characters, I was trying to remember his name earlier and now I've, I've forgotten, it was the missionary that came in to Europe and basically chopped the tree down of that was the tree to Thor. Do you guys remember that story? There's a big tree that was made to the god Thor.

He walks into town and says, I'm gonna chop this tree down. If, and if Thor's real, he'll strike me dead and he chops the tree down. And everybody's sitting around waiting for thunder to come down and destroy him. Nothing happens.

And so then the whole town gets converted to Christianity. So, these types of stories are not, it's not like this never happens, but it is pretty crazy that the Lord is asking Gideon to basically destroy this altar to Baal. So, what does he do? in, in verse 27, Gideon took 10 men from among his servants and did as the Lord said to him.

This tells you a couple of things. Gideon is a man of property. And, and that the job that God was commanding him to do wasn't something he could do by himself. We're talking about a pretty large altar that if you want to get it all done in one night, it would take many men.

And so, but because he feared his father's household and the men of the city too, too much to do it by day, he did it by night. All right, so Gideon's bold, but he does it by night. I wouldn't necessarily call him a pansy, but he goes out and he does what the Lord commanded. and so, what happens verse 28, when the men of the city arose early in the morning, their altar was, there was the altar of Baal torn down and the wood image that was beside it was cut down.

The 2nd bowl was being offered on the altar which had been built and so they said to one another, who has done this thing? And when they had inquired and asked, they said, Gideon, the son of Joash has done this thing. So somehow they, I don't know how secretive you can be in the middle of the night with 10 men chopping down an altar and then cutting up a bowl. The, the bowl obviously is making noise as it's being cut up and dyed and stuff like that.

Then the men of the city said to Joash, bring out your son. That he may die because he has torn down the altar of Baal and because he has cut down the wooden image that was beside it. Now, the wooden image, some of your translations probably say Ashrapole, is that right? OK, so what you have here is the bale.

Remember the bal is like the male deity. The Ashhurapole is to the female aspect, the opposite of Baal, right? There's the female deity and then there's the male deity. So they both go in together, they go together.

This is probably, even though it's, it's on Joash's property, it's probably on a hill somewhere. it would be one of these things that we call a high place. You see this in the Old Testament and, And so, when you first read this, the jury's out. OK, what's Joass gonna do here?

Cause Joas clearly has an altar on his property. His son has destroyed it, angered the neighbors. What does Joash do verse 31. But Joa said to all who stood against him, would you plead for bail?

Would you save him? Let the one who pleads for him put to death, be put to death by mourning. Wow. So, I guess Joe Ash was not a true believer in bail if this is his reaction.

And he's a pretty bold guy himself. if he is a god, let him plead for himself because his altar has been torn down. Therefore, on that day, he called him Jeru Jeru Jerubal, saying, let Baal plead against him because he has torn down his altar. Then all the Midianites and Amalekites, the people of the east, gathered together and they crossed over and encamped in the valley of Jezreel, but the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.

Then he blew the trumpet and the Aber Israelites gathered behind him and he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh and who all gathered behind him and he also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtalii. These are other tribes of Israel, and they came to meet them. So, now the stage has been set. We had the problem.

Israel had fallen into evil. God and, and God sent the Midianites to, to oppress them, but then they cry out to the Lord, they humble themselves. God basically brings a solution in what seems to be three different waves, right? First wave is what?

A prophet brings a prophet. Then after the prophet, we don't know how much time elapses, but then he sends whom? angel of the Lord. Angel of the Lord speaks to Gideon and so Gideon is the next part of that solution.

Gideon becomes the deliverer. Gideon's afraid, but the Lord says, hey, I am the Lord, consumes the sacrifice, gives him an initial test. OK, let's give you a, let's give you something small before you, we give you something big. Go destroy the altar of Baal on your father's property.

We don't know why Joash had this altar. Maybe he was just trying to be ecumenical, maybe he really had a heart for Jehovah, but he's like, well, if we're gonna be good neighbors, we've got that hill over there and our neighbors are gonna want to have an altar to, to bail, and so we'll go ahead and play the part. whatever happened, Joaf seems to turn pretty quick either to defend his son or it really reveals his true heart is, what, I've been wanting to get rid of that thing for a long time.

Now my son has finally risen up and done it.

And then he stands up before the whole city and says, if you're gonna stand for bail, you will be dead by morning. It's a pretty big turn of events. and now there's this rallying point and you get the feeling that, warfare is coming and the big verse in, in, you probably circles in your Bible verse 34, but the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. And so in this section, we have the Lord sending the Midianites, and by the end of this section of scripture, we have the Spirit of the Lord falling upon Gideon.

God is involved in, in the whole thing. and so let me go back to our main question that we start with at the beginning. Why did God choose Gideon? Why do you think God chose Gideon?

Yeah, Nate. Yeah, that's a great answer. God, it's, it's very common for God to choose the weak to demonstrate his own power. God's eyes are running to and fro throughout the whole world to see those whom he can show Himself mighty on their behalf, right?

And we, there doesn't seem to be, I don't know that Gideon was like just a super, super righteous guy. he definitely seems to come from a family that had some moxie, but I don't know that you could argue that he was already out there busting up altars. he doesn't seem to be iconoclastic already in his In his approach to life. I don't know if you guys, I used to be a Dodger fan and then I turned my back on them when they traded Mike Piazza.

But back in the day, they had a pitcher, Orel Hershiser. Anybody remember Orel Hershiser? And if you listen to Tommy Lasorda talk about Orel Hershiser's story, Tommy Lasorda would say that Orel Hershiser actually had some confidence problems when he was a younger pitcher that he was getting, he would get bombed and And, and there were some confidence issues, but Tommy Lasorda nicknamed him Bulldog. And, and he just drilled that into oral cert.

He kept calling him bulldog and he told everybody that he was a bulldog. And later on, when he asked Tommy Lasorda, why did you do that, he said, because I needed him to become a bulldog. And so he called him a bulldog in order to make him a bulldog. And the angel of the Lord, the Lord shows up and God knows what he's gonna do and here's a guy that's just Feel like we've been abandoned by God.

I'm hiding in this wine press, threshing wheat to feed my family. Where is God? He has left us. who am I?

I'm from Manasseh. I'm not even from Ephraim. I'm the weakest in my family. The Lord comes along, takes a guy just like that who feels like I really can't do it.

And he says, you mighty warrior of God. And so what is God doing? He's, he's, he's trying to instill within Gideon this identity that of who his God really is. And in that, I think there are some really impressive lessons for each of us, and this might be as far as we get today, and that is that When God looks at his people, he looks at the church today.

There's no doubt the impression that you get in the New Testament, that's very similar to the Old Testament. The Old Testament, God looks at Israel and he says, I did not choose you because you were mightier, stronger, more righteous. I chose you to demonstrate my mercy and power for my own name's sake. How many times in the Old Testament do you see God saying, I will fulfill my promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for my name's sake.

And then when Jesus goes to call these 12 disciples, you get no impression that these guys are just really super intelligent and they've got all these gifts and boy, they're strategists. boy, they've got just it, they've got it all pegged out for how they're gonna grow the church in 90 days or less. No, Jesus comes and picks fishermen who are unstudied, untutored, and begins to fill them with the spirit and to fill them with this identity of who their God was. And as Christians, I don't know that God is so much calling upon us to think of ourselves in and of ourselves as this mighty people that's going to take the earth by storm and, and we're gonna see the gospel spread throughout the world because we've had the proper strategies and we've, we're just the smartest and, and we've got the best technology and so on and so forth.

Now, God takes the weak to confound. The wise, it's the fools that overturn, things of this world and, and so you see this theme over and over again. We won't be able to talk about this in this lesson, but then God begins to send Gideon out to the big, task that was before him, and what does he, what does he do? we have, what is it, 20.

Was it 30,000 people that gather and then he cuts off 20, 22,000 leave. They say, we're, if anybody's afraid, you can leave. 22,000 leaves, so he's left with 10,000. And then there's this really strange test.

Let's have all these soldiers go and get a drink of water at the lake. And if anybody bends down and gets a lake, like a normal Israelite soldier. putting their mouth to the ground, gets on their knees, then they're out. But if for some reason they get water in their hand and then begin to lap it like a dog, then they're in.

And only 300, the fact that only 300 out of 10,000 will lap like a dog. Say, what is wrong with these people? I don't know about you, but if, if you've ever gone, if you ever do any, backpacking or something like that, and maybe you're really back there in the woods and, and, there's times where I've gotten down in a stream, if I know there's no cows in this area, there's no, Is that Gerardia or anything like that? Yeah, seasoned water., I get down there and I, I might pick up some water and bring it up and cup it like a cup.

But I think the only, I'm trying to think in recent times, the only, human being I've seen lap like a dog is my son Samuel. There's, I have seen him with rainwater in the backyard, get down and lap like a dog, probably because he saw the cat lapping his water or his water and would imitate our cat. But nobody would look at that behavior and say, I want you in my military., we're training some special ops. In order to qualify for our special ops.

This is a black op operation, you must lap like a dog. No way. The impression I'm, we'll, we'll come back to this next week. I, I'm kinda wondering, I don't know if any commentators say this, did they have, did these 900 have some, some mental issues?

Did their mama drop them when they were kids? I'm not sure why they would do that. if you guys can do some research and, and try to figure that out, why would they do this type of thing? So, God's gonna take very strange odd behavior, take those 300 people, put Gideon out on the Midianites, and he's gonna accomplish an amazing victory for the people of Israel.

All so that he gets the glory. So who is the who is the hero of our story today? God, God is the hero. And, and, and we are, and one of the things that we see here on the pages of scripture is that no matter how dark times might seem, when God's people just turn and take one step and cry out, God is there.

He's ready to lift up again and things can seem incredibly dark and then all of a sudden it can just turn on a dime. If, if God's hand is in it. I don't wanna I'm not, I'm not, gonna make a big political statement or anything like that in this, in this lesson. But it, it was befuddling to me that in the inauguration, there were more invocations, than any other time in the history of the United States.

There were 6 invocations that were delivered. Lots of scripture read and then Franklin Graham, who is not even there, there are Christian conferences that don't want Franklin Graham on their platform because of his stance on certain issues, shows up and reads 1 Peter chapter 2 and says, we need to pray for all leaders and says, because, God desires all men to be saved and there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. And then he says, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Now, I know that not everyone in that platform were all conservative evangelical Christians that believe in the Bible.

But that's befuddling to me. If you would have asked me like 2 months ago, would Franklin Graham be on the platform during our invocation reading 1 Timothy chapter 2? I would have said you were crazy. but that was, I don't know about you, but I got a little bit of a shiver down my spine to see Franklin Graham up there reading that passage, from the scriptures.

But again, that's just my personal opinion. but who knows? Maybe, maybe there's some, some shifting going on. Let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your sovereignty, your power and your kindness. Lord, we look at Israel and we see so much of our own history, we see so much of ourselves. we even in the United States, we see periods of darkness and where, even the church seems to be running, a foul and away from you and then we see it crying out at different points in history. We see the Great Awakening in the 1700s, the Second Great Awakening.

and we see you pouring out your spirit many times throughout the history of your people, willing, to hear their cry, to send prophets, to send deliverers, and the ultimate delivered being Jesus Christ. We thank you for the salvation that we have through Him. we thank you that any, at any time that we can turn from our sin. And, and cry out to you in humility and that you are there ready to meet us.

Lord, protect us for being those that would be stiff-hearted and, and proud and find ourselves, being resisted by you. We pray that you would give us that place of weeping and crying out, so that we may walk in humility all the days of our lives. And we pray, Father, that we would see in our generation, many, many, more come to, tear down the altars in their hearts and to worship the true God of the universe. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.