St. Michael’s

February 8, 2004

Judges 6:11-24a

The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.  This is the greeting of the messenger of the Lord to Gideon.  How can that be?  Gideon is anything but a mighty warrior.  In the sixth chapter of Judges, we find him threshing wheat in a wine press.  For one thing, mighty warriors don’t thresh wheat and certainly, wine presses are not made for threshing wheat.  Wheat is threshed on the open hillside, where after the grain is beaten, the wind was used to separate the chaff from the grain. 

We find Gideon cowering in the wine press because threshing the wheat in the usual place will surely bring down his enemy upon him.  This was a time when the Israelites trembled in fear because of their Midianite oppressors.  In the passage prior to the one we read, we see the Midianites compared to locusts, they so consumed and covered the land, systematically ruining the Israelite crops and steeling their livestock.  The people of God were beaten, plundered, impoverished and starving, surely forgotten and forsaken by God.  Gideon was cowering in the wine press threshing the wheat, just trying to survive.

In the midst of this hopeless world of Gideon, the messenger of the Lord says to him, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”  Those words “mighty warrior,” are the same words used to describe those in the history of Israel who valiantly fought the enemy for God’s people; before Gideon, Joshua’s warriors were called mighty and then later David.  They are the words used to describe the bravest heroes of Israel.  Gideon certainly does not see himself as a mighty warrior.  He does not even credit the address with a response.  When Gideon answers the messenger of the Lord, he reveals not only his own state of mind, but also that of the entire nation.

Gideon answers the greeting with a question and then answers his own question, “Tell me sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this befallen us?  And where are all his wonderful deeds which our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?  But now, the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.”  Gideon knows all about what God has done for his people in the past.  He is well acquainted with the stories he has heard, about how the Lord performed miracles for his people, freeing them from their Egyptian oppressors, raising up leaders like Moses and Joshua who delivered them from their enemies.  He’s heard about all that, he just hasn’t seen any evidence of it lately.  He hasn’t seen any guiding pillar of fire at night or cloud by day and there is no Moses in site. If the truth were known, he doubts it ever happened at all.  Even if it did, even if God did reside with his people in the past, it is irrelevant in the middle of his current suffering.

Gideon knows what the people of God should be and he sees what they are.  Gideon knows what he should be and he sees who he is.  Paralyzed in the delta between what is and what should be, he stands helpless before his oppressors.  It is at this point, just when there seems to be no reason to go on, just when there is no hope in sight, that God sends a messenger. 

It is an amazing, miraculous thing that Gideon listens.  He listens, even though the messenger does not say what he so wants to hear.  Gideon wants to hear what we all want to hear, “The Lord is with you, your suffering will end and your days will be filled with gladness and cheer.”  But the heavenly visitor does not say that.  What Gideon hears is a promise, a promise and an invitation to join his Lord in the work that He is about to do.  The heavenly messenger says to this man broken and bent by his life, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian.  The Lord is with you mighty warrior.”

The promise from God is not dependent on who Gideon is.  Gideon complains, “Pray, Lord, how can I deliver Israel?  Behold my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.”  Gideon knows all too well who he is.   He has looked in the mirror too many times hoping to see someone else, but the reflection is always the same.  He is the weakest member of his family who is the weakest family in the whole tribe.  Gideon does not have the right background to be a mighty warrior.  The culture dictates that he is a nobody, a nothing from nowhere.  He is a hobbit from the shire.  

The promise is not dependent on what Gideon deserves.  Gideon is not a proven warrior.  Just prior to our lesson today, we read that God hears the cry of his people.  His first response is to send a prophet.  The Lord answers the cry of his people with a history lesson, “I led you up from Egypt, and brought you out of bondage; I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land; and I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell,’  But you have not given heed to my voice.”  The Lord sends a prophet to tell the people, you are oppressed because you have abandoned me, I am your deliverer and you have chosen to follow other gods who cannot deliver you.  But the people do not hear, there is no response; no repentance.  Surely Gideon must have heard the prophet also, but his reaction is no different than the rest of the people: a blatant disregard for God. 

In addition to this, we read after our lesson that the first act that God gives to Gideon is to destroy the altar of the false god.  Gideon is fearful, but this time, not of the outside oppressors, but of his own people.  Gideon is afraid of what his own family, his own people will do to him when he obeys God and destroys what they worship.  Is there no one this man is not afraid of?  This is no visionary leader, no mighty warrior. 

But none of this matters. I doesn’t matter that Gideon does not deserve and is not qualified for the promise the Lord has for him.  It only matters that it is the Lord who promises it.  It is not through Gideon’s skill, background, training or charm that the people of God are once again delivered from their enemy.  Gideon becomes a mighty warrior because the Lord is with him.  Gideon has an encounter with the living God and he is changed forever.  The power of the Holy Spirit breaks the oppression of experience and culture, empowering, equipping and freeing this unlikely warrior to be a deliverer for his people.  God has done this throughout our history, transforming lives, freeing us from the oppression of the world.

God has been transforming lives for thousands of years.  We stand on the rock with others throughout the ages who, like Gideon have been reluctant, undeserving servants, most of whom are unknown except to God.  Horatio Spafford, lost his only son and virtually everything he owned in the Chicago fire of 1871.  After working hard for two years to recover, he planned a much needed rest for his family.  He booked passage for himself, his wife and four daughters on a ship.  Last minute business kept Spafford from joining his family, but he sent them on as scheduled, promising to join them in a few days.  En route, another ship collided with theirs.  Their ship sank in twelve minutes.  Several days later, the few survivors landed in Wales and Mrs. Spafford cabled her husband the chilling message, “Saved alone.”  Heartbroken and grief stricken, while traveling to meet his mourning wife, Horatio Spafford heard the words of his Lord, “I am with you, mighty warrior,” and wrote the words that have helped so many others in their grief: 

When peace; like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is the power of his Lord that turned Horatio Spafford into a mighty warrior.

Perhaps, we are like Gideon, wanting to be on the mountain but finding ourselves in a wine press. Perhaps we, too, believe that our lives should be different from what they are.  We had such great plans.  But then suddenly there’s a great delta between who I am and who I want to be.  I’ve tried every way I know and I just can’t get there from here.  Perhaps you’re threshing wheat in a wine press and you don’t like it any more than Gideon did, but it’s all you can do, you’re just trying to survive. 

Perhaps you haven’t had a job for so long, you really don’t think you ever will.  Perhaps you’ve given up hope that your daughter or son will ever be able to kick their addiction.  Perhaps you’ve devoted your life to others and now, everyone is gone and there is no one to care for you.  Perhaps your beloved spouse of 30, 40 or even 5 years is not who he used to be and your life has been ripped apart because you just don’t know how you’ll make it without him.

It is when we are feeling the least, when we are threshing wheat in a wine press that the Lord says, “I am with you mighty warrior.”   He has the power to deliver us.  He has the power to free us from oppression.  Gideon became a mighty warrior, leading his small band to victory over their enemy.  Spafford became a mighty warrior, empowered to endure, equipped with the assurance to withstand the battle knowing that regardless of what the world would say to us, in spite of our experience and culture, he is with us.

God’s transforming power turned a coward into a mighty warrior, a deliverer for his people, but it was only temporary.  As we read through the book of Judges we see that the people again and again forgot God, always resulting in a destructive life.  God had every right to condemn his disobedient people.  How does a perfectly just God who is also perfect in mercy and love deliver his disobedient people permanently?  He comes to earth himself in the person of Jesus, Jesus, the perfect warrior who came to earth to permanently free us from our ultimate enemy, death.   The assurance that we have as Christians is that we are the people of God not because we deserve it or because of who we are.  We are his people because it is his perfect desire that we be so.  We can trust in the promise because of who he is, not because of who we are.

This is the good news.  It is the freeing gospel message.  The Lord has sent his mighty warrior and the battle is won.   On that day, when we see him face to face, we will understand that perfectly.  Until then, as we walk through our trouble torn life, He says to us, I am with you, mighty warrior.”