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Foreign with me
Our scripture reading this morning comes from Judges chapter 6, beginning at the first verse.
The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. The Hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian, the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land as far as Gaza and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.
For they would come up with their livestock and their tents. They would come like locusts in number, both they and their camels could not be counted, so that they laid waste the land as they came in. Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.
When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. He said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell,’ but you have not obeyed my voice.’
Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O Mighty Man of Valor.’
Gideon said to him, ‘Please, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.’
The Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?’ He said to him, ‘Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’
The Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’ He said to him, ‘If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.’ He said, ‘I will stay till you return.’
So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them.
The angel of God said to him, ‘Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them on this rock and pour the broth over them.’ And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of his staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes, and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes, and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.
Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord, and Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Peace be to you; do not fear; you shall not die.’
Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it ‘The Lord is Peace.’ To this day, it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Lord, you give us your word, and oftentimes these stories remind us of our own lives. These stories remind us of other stories that have come before and will come later in Scripture. Help us to be repentant, to not continue this same cycle as we see over and over again. Bring us onto the new path, your way, the way of Jesus Christ, and keep us on that path always. It is in his name that we pray. Amen.
After the Lord humbled and overthrew the oppression by Jabin of Hazor, the so-called king of Canaan, the land of Israel had rest for 40 years. It was a time of quiet and relative peace without any significant outside disturbance or interference. But as the cycle turns again, the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.
This time, however, we are given a rather strong description of what the Midianites were doing to Israel during this period. The Hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian, the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and in the caves and the strongholds. See, the Israelites built and dug out for themselves bolt holes like ancient panic rooms out in the wilderness. They would leave their towns and homes, going out to stay in rough dens where they could hide their property or themselves out in the wild places.
For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land as far as Gaza and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock in their tents. They would come up like locusts in number; both they and their camels could not be counted, so they laid waste to the land as they came in.
See, the Midianites and their allies here are being described like locusts. Locusts would have been the worst thing imaginable in terms of biblical judgment as an image. Swarms of locusts covered Egypt as one of the Lord’s ten wonders of judgment against Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods for their refusal to let Moses’s people go. One of the Covenant curses for disobedience that Moses pronounces during its renewal with the second generation of free Israelites was, ‘You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locusts shall consume it,’ a curse which would be so absolutely devastating to both the pastoral and agrarian societies, leaving no grass for the animals to eat and no produce—no grain or wheat—for the people to eat.
We live here in Midwest America; we live in the midst of farm country, and most of us know farmers or have known farmers in our lives, so we can actually better envision the havoc that a swarm of locusts can do. They will eat everything, everything green and plant-based; nothing is safe from them. They can ruin a person’s entire harvest in just a few hours, moving on to the next field in their path.
They’re constantly moving, constantly eating. They eat to support their migration and their reproduction, and that is what the Midianites were doing—consuming everything of value and worth that belonged to the Israelites, enriching themselves, and then moving on. They exploited Israel; they took advantage of Israel and were growing fat off the toil and effort of others. And that is why the Israelites had to hide whatever they could whenever the Midianites came to town, as if they were like some kind of outlaw gang in the 1960s westerns.
However, there is good news in divine judgment. Whether it comes in the form of and likeness of locusts or some other manifestation, judgment is always meant to bring God’s people to repentance. Judgment is for correction, not punishment, even when it feels like that to us, because the Lord wants us to return to him, and he wants to forgive us and give us grace and peace.
So who were these Midianites and why were they being such a plague on Israel? The territory of Midian was south of Israel and east of the Sinai Peninsula. Traditionally, they were tribes of nomads wandering far and wide in and out of other territories as they pleased.
Moses, he went to the land of Midian when he fled Pharaoh in Egypt, and there he met Zipporah, a daughter of Reuel, also known as Jethro, the priest of Midian. Following the Exodus from Egypt, Moses and the Israelites initially had a good, decent—or at least a fair and non-problematic—relationship with the Midianites, but during the wilderness wanderings, their relationship soured.
Moab, east of the Dead Sea, and the Midianites were often on very good terms. Moab allowed the Midianites passage and access to their land. But when Israel was making their way to the Jordan River to take possession of the Lord’s promised land, the Moabite king Balak worked with the elders of the Midianites to block and thwart Israel. They called upon the prophet Balaam to curse Israel, but he was only able to bless them.
During their travel through Moab, many of the Israelites were seduced physically and spiritually and took Midianite wives. They yoked themselves to Baal of Peor, which infuriated the Lord who sent a plague on them. Moses purged all of the idolaters from their camp—both Israelite and foreigner.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Harass the Midianites and strike them down, for they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the chief of Midian, their sister who was killed on the day of the plague on account of Peor.’ So with the Lord’s command, Israel went to war against the Midianites because of their spiritual seductions, and they slaughtered all that they could.
Needless to say, after this point, there certainly was bad blood between the two nations. Now, because of Israel’s continuing sinfulness and idolatry, Midian got to enjoy some revenge upon Israel, and Israel was brought low because of Midian, and the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord. Notice again, Scripture does not say that Israel repented; they did not put away their idols or turn away from their sin. But still, they did turn to the Lord as their hope and help.
So God responded by sending his people a prophet, and he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell,’ but you have not obeyed my voice.’
This nameless prophet is sent to remind the people who the Lord is and what the Lord has done for them. His words echo the prologue to the Covenant: ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.’
He accuses them for their disobedience, because fearing other gods means revering other gods, honoring other gods, and worshipping other gods. The Lord has sole claim upon his chosen people, Israel. This means that any reverence, any honor, or any worship given to any other God, any creation or fantasy, puts them before the Lord is theft from God, taking away what is his rightfully and what is due to him alone.
Again, the sin of Israel, and our sin, is idolatry, just as it always is. The Lord’s pronouncement of ‘But you have not obeyed my voice’ was a declaration of Israel’s guiltiness. It is the rendered verdict of the Divine Judge. Therefore, what follows is the imposition of his righteous sentence. The locust-like plague of Midian was God’s judgment upon Israel for their sins of idolatry, for their covenant unfaithfulness, and their spiritual adultery.
Yet the Lord remains merciful and gracious, and so, in his time, he raises up a deliverer for them to rescue them from the might of Midian and combat their religious prostitution. Thus, the scene shifts to the town of Ophrah in the territory of Manasseh. Now, we don’t know exactly where this town was, but we are sure that it is somewhere deep within the heartland of Israel. All the territories of Judah, Dan, Benjamin, Ephraim, and the Negev Desert were between it and the land of Midian, while the territories of Reuben and Gad and the Jordan River were between it and Moab, the Amalekites, and the other people of the East.
This demonstrates really how widespread and how deep this problem of the Midianites truly was for the Israelites. They covered the land; they were everywhere. But now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites.
We are again introduced to the angel of the Lord, but who is he? Being that the Hebrew word for angel literally means messenger, one could assume at a cursory reading that this angel was the same individual as the nameless prophet mentioned a few verses back, since being a messenger from God was his function.
But as we read further into the story, we realize that this angel is someone much more important, someone else entirely. I hate to belabor the point, but these frequent appearances of the angel of the Lord in the historical books of Joshua and Judges serve as evidence of Christ appearing in the Old Testament.
I don’t mean to say that this was Jesus, the man God, the Son in his human nature, but that it is a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Eternal Christ, God the Son, and his eternal divine nature. Incidents like these are called Christophanies.
But why is that an important distinction? It’s important because it demonstrates the Lord’s direct and personal action in calling and sending his chosen servants. The how and why of it will become more clear as the story progresses. Furthermore, this appearance by the angel of the Lord is important within this story because it shows how the calling of Gideon echoes that of Moses.
The angel of the Lord appeared to him, Gideon, and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O Mighty Man of Valor.’ The angel calls Gideon a mighty man of valor, a label or an epithet which might have referenced his daily vocation; he might have been a soldier, but it will certainly come to describe Gideon better as our story progresses.
Gideon said to him, ‘Please, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.’
Gideon asked the angel why. He asked, ‘Why has the Lord abandoned us, his people? Where are all his miraculous works?’
We should each remember that asking God why—asking him why in response to our perceived worldly misfortunes—is one of the least helpful questions that we can ask. The answer to why is one that we never want to hear but which we most need to hear: our sinfulness. Whenever we want to ask God why, we should instead be asking him, ‘What do I need to repent of in my life?’ And then ask him for forgiveness.
So, as Gideon asked the angel why, we already know the answer because it was given to us by the prophet.
The Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?’ Ignoring his question, the angel tells Gideon to instead go himself and save Israel.
Wait a second! Did I say the angel told Gideon to go? I’m sorry; I misspoke. The text actually says, ‘And the Lord turned to him and said.’ The Lord tells Gideon to go—not just an angel, not just a messenger, not just some prophet—but the Lord himself.
This is why we call this encounter a Christophany. We know that God is spirit, a key attribute shared particularly by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, while God the Son, who is also the Eternal Lord, is known to have taken physical form. Leaving us with the theological presumption that this is the pre-incarnate Christ, understanding that the speaker is more than just an angel makes this a divine encounter carrying the full weight and import of all that means.
This encounter should also remind us of the Lord’s call of Moses back in Exodus chapters 3 and 4, where the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’
Then the Lord said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt.’ Gideon asked the angel, ‘Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’
So how did Gideon respond to the Lord’s command to go? How do you or I often respond to God’s command to go? Much like Moses before him, and like we still do, with excuses. ‘What, me? How can I? But my family’s the smallest, poorest, and least influential in the territory, and I am the youngest, weakest, and least important person in my family. How can you expect me to save Israel?’
He sure sounds a lot like Moses when he was talking to the Lord at the burning bush, doesn’t he? When Moses also tried giving God a bunch of excuses for why not him: ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? Behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’ Oh my Lord, I’m not eloquent either in the past or since you’ve spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and tongue.’
We can only hope that Gideon, given the similarities of his call to Moses, will also become a leader of Israel in the same mold that Moses eventually did.
But we are like Gideon, and we can always find and will always offer some excuse for why we cannot go. We tend to forget that whenever and whomever the Lord sends, he always promises to be with them, to help us, to sustain us through all of our trials. So instead of trying to make excuses by telling God just why I cannot go, instead of explaining to him why not me, let us respond to his command for us to go by reaffirming and accepting his choice, by asking, ‘Why not me?’ to ourselves, and then go and do it.
And the Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’ The Lord promised Gideon to be with him, to give him the power, the might, and the strength to stand against the Midianites.
Gideon was not yet certain who it was commanding him. It was not so much that he was doubting God, but it was more that he was doubting whether or not it was the Lord commanding him. He was not really wrong to be cautious either. The Apostle John writes, ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.’
We know that there are malign spirits in this world from ancient times who will speak things contrary to the Lord’s will. Meanwhile, our own sinful hearts will also try to tell us what we want to hear, sinfully building up our own self-importance, our self-worth, and pride—all to set us up for a tragic fall. This is why it is right for us to be certain that any word of the Lord given truly does come from him and why we should be skeptical of anyone claiming to possess a new revelation or strange prophecies, testing them against the scriptures, verifying whether or not they align with what God has already said in the past.
Paul tells us, ‘Do not despise prophecies, but test everything and hold fast to what is good.’ Stopping to discern whether or not something is from God or from Satan is important for Gideon and for us because the Lord’s command, when he commands us, that is a form of prophecy. The Lord is being prophetic, proclaiming here what he shall do or declaring what shall be done because it is his sovereign will and command.
Gideon said to him, ‘If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.’ He said, ‘I will stay until you return.’
See, it is very much okay for the properly skeptical Gideon to ask him for a sign from God to confirm the messenger and his message before he willingly commits himself. It is not sinful to ask for a sign; it is not a lack of faith; it is not doubting God or Jesus Christ. This is why the prophets and the apostles performed their signs and wonders and why this is why Jesus performed all of his miracles—to confirm the messenger and their message.
These signs confirm who he is; they confirm who sends the prophets and apostles and who gives them the message. Gideon asked for a sign not because he doubted the Lord, but because he wanted to believe the Lord. He wanted to believe that this was not just the desire of his own heart or a thirst for his own glory, because standing in his presence, Gideon’s heart was being inflamed by the Holy Spirit with the desire to believe and obey.
Most importantly, the Lord wants us to know the truth, and he wanted Gideon and us to believe him, so he is very willing to provide us with a sign when we are willing to accept it.
So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them. The angel of God said to him, ‘Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them on this rock and pour the broth over them.’ And he did so.
Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. Fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the cakes, and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.
The angel of the Lord gave Gideon a sign like he asked. The sign he gave was doing something which only the Lord himself could do—causing fire to spring up out of the rock at a command to utterly consume his offering before disappearing himself from Gideon’s sight.
Who else can summon fire at will? Who else can just disappear? No ordinary human person, that’s for sure.
Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. Now Gideon finally gets it. Now Gideon finally realizes who it is that he has been speaking with. Now Gideon understands that he was not speaking to just some mere prophet but that the Lord himself had come and visited him, just as the Lord and his angels had once visited Abraham on their way to Sodom.
Now it becomes clear that the person whom he thought was a man was not only the angel of the Lord but is actually the Lord himself—the second person of the Trinity, pre-incarnate Christ. How can we be sure of this? Why could it not have just been a prophet?
First, we know that later on in scripture, the prophet Elijah will call down fire from heaven, right? You know, to consume his offering on Mount Carmel, but that only happened after he first appealed to the Lord through prayer. God is the one who sent the fire, while Elijah merely asked for it. The angel doesn’t.
Second, although Gideon probably assumed that he went to prepare a meal that was only for his guest at the direction of the angel, the meal was transformed into a sacrificial offering, meaning that Gideon brought the angel a sacrifice—a clear act of worship—which the angel of the Lord accepted. However, angels do not receive human worship, and every time we see a human try to offer one worship in scripture, they always redirect them back to the Lord.
This means that by accepting this act of worship, the angel could only have been the Lord. It was such an incredible sign that the angel gave to him. Gideon stood in the presence of the Lord; he conversed with the Lord and made all kinds of excuses and demands of the Lord before he realized—before he actually understood who it was he was talking to.
And Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.’ When he realized this, Gideon despaired of his life. He felt more than that. It was the feeling of embarrassment you might get when talking in the hallway, saying things which are maybe not the nicest or the best, and then a parent, your teacher, or the person you were talking about walks by and you know that they heard everything.
Looking back on everything which Gideon had said to the angel, I’d be mortified as well. Even far beyond the terrifying realization of unknowingly being in God’s presence.
Fortune, because of our justification of Christ Jesus, we are able to stand in the Lord’s presence, and we shall kneel before him in joy and love. We can do this only because of the redemption that Jesus purchased for us on the cross and our regeneration by the Holy Spirit. His presence holds no terror for us because of our adoption as the Lord’s children, so we may call him ‘Abba, Father.’
The Lord is merciful and gracious, so just like he said to Gideon, we can look forward to the moment when, on that day of judgment, God will say to us as well, ‘Peace be to you; do not fear; you shall not die.’
I would wager that Gideon must have felt like Isaiah when he stood before the throne of God, because Isaiah also responded to the Lord’s presence in fear, saying, ‘Woe is me! For I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.’
So, just as Isaiah responded to God’s mercy and forgiveness by declaring, ‘Here I am, send me,’ before he was sent by the Lord, and just as Gideon praised God and worshipped him after receiving the Lord’s mercy, so should we.
Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it ‘The Lord is Peace.’ To this day, it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites. Gideon built an altar and worshiped there.
Once Gideon stood in the Lord’s presence, his first response was to seek the means of returning to God’s presence. Before a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, the thought of going to church may seem to be onerous and a chore—even undesirable. But once we’re welcomed into his fellowship as sons and daughters, once we hear Christ say to us, ‘Peace be to you; do not fear; you shall not die,’ the idea of coming to church becomes a joy and a pleasure for us, exceedingly desirable.
Then we want nothing more except to be gathered together with the other saints as often as we are able. This is why Gideon named this altar ‘Yahweh Shalom,’ as he realized—as we well know—that peace, that shalom, that wholeness is only found in a positive, loving, faithful, and obedient relationship with the Lord—with Jesus Christ.
To Gideon, he responded positively to the Lord’s command to go in faith, and over the next few weeks, we’ll see just how well and how faithfully he obeyed the Lord.
But finally, we need to remember that whenever God’s people sin—when we sin—the Lord is good and right to enact judgment upon us for our sinfulness, although this enactment always remains proportional to our sin.
But we’re never punished more—or even as much—as we deserve. God does not escalate, and he does not judge us more harshly than we deserve. The Lord’s judgment is given as a means of correction, not just punishment. Divine judgment in life is always intended to help us recognize our sin, to encourage us in turning away from our sin and towards Jesus Christ in faith instead. His judgment in our lives is a call to repentance.
The Lord is gracious and merciful because he has raised up a deliverer to rescue his chosen people—a deliverer who saves us from both the cause of sin and the consequence of his acts of judgment: Jesus Christ.
But sometimes in life, that deliverer ends up being just an ordinary person, not unlike you or I. Lastly, when the Lord puts his call upon our lives, it is well for us to test the spirits, confirming that it really is God’s calling for us.
It is not faithlessness, nor is it doubt; it is a very prudent and reasonable thing, and quite a biblical practice to do, because we do not want to be led astray by Satan or our own sinful nature.
However, once it is confirmed for us, once we are sure that what we are being called to is of God and is in alignment with his revealed will and word, then we must respond positively, decisively, and immediately. Most importantly, this response must include the praise and worship of our sovereign Lord, our divine Commander, along with our faithful obedience.
Amen.
Let us stand and say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Our final hymn is number 169, ‘Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart.’
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