Hall of Heroes: Gideon, man of dust.

15^th Sunday after Pentecost,

August 24, 2008

 

We’re continuing with our series Hall of Heroes today by looking at a name that you may not be too familiar with: Gideon.  God’s hand in Gideon’s life is recorded in the book of Judges, so I invite you to take out your Bibles and open them up to chapter 6, verse one.

Judges is the sixth book in the Old Testament, so the order goes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – the Torah or Pentateuch, written by Moses through the Holy Spirit while the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years.  They record the events of God’s working with His people from day one of creation in the beginning of Genesis to the Israelites ending up getting ready to step into the Promised Land at the end of Deuteronomy.  Next comes Joshua, which records what happened after Moses died and the Israelites went into the Promised Land and did not do what God told them to.  Then comes the book of Judges where we see how the failures of the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua went on to plague successive generations of people.  Judges records the Israelites falling in and out of love with God over and over again, and how God raised up deliverers for the Israelites, called ‘Judges’, to deliver the Israelites out of the hands of their enemies and turn their hearts back to Him. 

Gideon was one such judge, but he never wanted to be!  Gideon was not one who wanted to be used by God.  Let’s look at our scripture, chapter six, verse one: Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites.

First, underline the word “again.”  The Israelites had a problem – they would not stay on God’s side, and as a result God would send enemies to oppress them until in their deep need they would repent of their sins, turn back to God, and devote themselves to him.  God would deliver them, but they would just go back and do the same thing over and over again.  That is why God gave them into the hands of the Midianites.  It’s a good thing to remember: God does punish His children; He does allow them to suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions, especially if their decision is to sin and continue in sin.  Follow that path long enough, and hopefully the person will come to the point of being broken, and cry out to God for help and deliverance as they repent of their sins – literally, turn away from their sins – and go back to God.  This is the reason God allowed the Midianites to oppress the Israelites.

Who are the Midianites?  They were the Israelite’s half brothers.  The Israelite nation came from the line of Abraham’s son, Isaac.  However, after Abraham’s wife, Sarah, died, Abraham remarried and had more children, one of whom was a son named Midian.  At one point Abraham gave all his children some money, and sent them away from his favorite son, Isaac, to whom he gave his entire fortune[1].  You can imagine the animosity this caused with all of the other children of Abraham toward Isaac.  That animosity never died out, and as it relates to the descendants of Midian – the Midianites – it came back to haunt the descendants of the favored son, Isaac – the Israelites. 

Let’s just pause here for a moment.  Are there things in our lives we need to take a good hard look at?  Are there sins we are committing today that are going to haunt successive generations?  Abraham’s sin was not remarrying, his sin was playing favorites with his children.  Interestingly enough, that sin of playing favorites went right on down Abraham’s line – his son Isaac played favorites with his children[2], and his children played favorites with their children[3]; and their children played favorites with theirs[4].  Abraham also lied from time to time when it suited his purposes[5], and his son Isaac employed the same practice[6], as did Isaac’s children[7]. 

These kinds of things are called generational sins, and they are passed on from one generation to the next until someone finally recognizes it, stands up, and says, “No more!”  Is there something like that in any of our lives here today, and when is it going to stop?  Who is going to stand up and say, “No more!  This sin will not reign in my life, or in my family anymore!”  Understand, if Abraham would not have played favorites, or if his son, Isaac, had said, “I’m not going to do that in my family; I’m not going to go down that same path and commit the sins of my father” and reached out to his brother, Midian, the Israelites would never have had problems they had with the Midianites as recorded in the book of Judges.  The centuries old animosity would not have existed building to the point where the descendants of Isaac were being oppressed and killed at the hands of their brothers.

Speaking of the Midianites, let’s go back to Gideon.  Starting with verse 11:  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.”  Then jump down to verse 14.  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?”  “But Sir” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

You can make a note of a couple of things in your Bibles.  The name of the town, Ophrah, means ‘dust.’  God came to Gideon, the least in his tribe, the most insignificant, most under qualified person in the town of ‘dust’ and called him a Mighty Warrior.  It doesn’t matter what our qualifications are or are not, what matters is what God thinks of us – He doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.  It doesn’t matter where we are from, what matters is where we are going by the hand of God.  It doesn’t matter what others call us, or even what we call ourselves, what matters is what God calls us.

Know what God calls you?  Redeemed.  Beloved.  Saved.  Son.  Daughter.  Precious.  He calls us something even greater than He called Gideon – the one He chose to go up against the entire nation of Midian.  He called Gideon a Mighty Warrior, He calls us “more than conquerors.”  A warrior conquers enemies; we are more than just a conquering warrior.  Next to these verses in your Bible, write this scripture reference: Romans 8:35, 37-39: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  … No in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is because of the cross that tried to hold Jesus and the empty tomb that couldn’t, that believers in Jesus as their only hope of being saved from hell can never be separated from God’s love.  We are more than conquerors because the battle for our souls has already been fought and won, and we’ve been given the benefit – the promise of eternal life in heaven.  And there is nothing that can separate us from that.

You see no matter how bad it gets here, God is still in control.  No matter what we are faced with, God still has His children in the palm of His hand.  Even though the Midianites had completely over-run the land, God had not forgotten His children. 

Feel like you’ve got any ‘Midianites’ in your life today?  Here’s a couple of questions to ask yourself:  Are these Midianites in my life because of some unrepentant sin I’m engaging in?  Are these Midianites in my life as a result of a generational sin that is still working its way through my life and my family? 

Remember back when we did our series on the Spirit’s healing for emotional wounds, and what we said one of the most powerful phrases Christians have at their disposal is?  “In Jesus name, no!”  Is it time to employ the Holy Spirit, and the armor God has given us in Ephesians 6, and turn to those Midianites – whether they are there as a result of our sins or someone else’s, and say, “No more.  In Jesus’ name, no more!” and hit our knees in prayer for ourselves and our families?

Because one thing we see throughout the Bible, is that all battles really belong to the Lord[8].  None of us who call on the name of Jesus ever go into battle on our own.  Those Midianites in our lives can be taken care of by our God who promises to never leave us.

A word of caution though: just like the Israelites, we need to be sure we are not the ones actually inviting the Midianites into our lives through our sins.  There is ‘right’ and there is ‘wrong’ and God is the one who gets to make that call, and He has made that call and made it clear in His word what is and is not sin.  We can’t continue in sin and expect God to deliver us from the Midianites we’ve invited into our lives through the sin we aren’t actually intending to give up; through the sins we are not intending to repent of.  Remember ‘repent’ literally means to turn away from.  Repenting says, “Over there is sin, so I’m going to turn my back on it and go over here.”

Let’s go back to Gideon and the battle with the Midianites.  Gideon listened to God, and gathered 32,000 men to go into battle, and God said to Gideon, “No, that’s too many people.”  God whittled the number of soldiers down to 300.  Three hundred people were all Gideon was given to go up against a nation who is described in verse 5 as “a swarm of locusts”, the number of whom were impossible to count.

God had Gideon and his warriors form a circle around the Midianite camp at night, and at one point they all shouted and held up their lamps.  God caused the Midianites to get very confused, and they turned on each other, and ended up wiping a number of themselves out before those remaining tried to run away.  They were caught and dealt with by Gideon and his woefully small and under qualified army, and other Israelites who came out to join the fight.

The battle was the Lord’s.  He took care of the Midianites for the nation of Israel.  He was the one who caused the Midianites to fail, and gave His children all the benefits of their destruction.

Jesus took care of the devil for us, paid the price for our sins, and gives the benefits to us.  The question for us now is, “Now what?”  Do we remain in Christ, get rid of the Midianites in our lives in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, or do we follow the pattern of our ancestors and commit the same sins – those generational sins – and stay with Him only as it works to our benefit, and then turn away later when it’s easy or when we’ve forgotten all He’s done for us? 

After Midian was defeated, Gideon took his place as a Judge, and we read at the end of chapter 8,   “During Gideon’s lifetime, the land enjoyed peace forty years… No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They set up Baal-Berith as their god and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.”

The Israelites were rescued from the Midianites, and for awhile returned to God and worshiped Him.  But only for a while.  Pretty soon they forgot God again, and went back to their sinful ways, and God allowed them to once again experience the consequences of their sinful choices and lifestyles.  God will allow us to do that.  He loves us too much to force Himself on us.  He gives us the freedom to choose to walk away from Him.

He also loves us too much to withhold forgiveness and restoration.  And so I’ll ask again: Got any Midianites in your life?  Got any generational sins that need to stop?  It’s time.  God’s mercy and grace are here for each one of us just like it was for Gideon and the entire nation of Israel.  It’s shown in the cross.  It’s shown in the empty tomb.  It’s shown in the nail scarred hands of the Savior who reaches out to each one of us, and says, “Come to me.  Let me love you.  Know today that I will never leave you or forsake you.  I have called you by name, you are mine, and no Midianite will ever change that.  Let me take care of them.  Give them to me, and watch what I’ll do.  Turn away from them, leave them behind, let me forgive you.  Come to me, all who are tired and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

That’s a promise from our God to you and me.  And God never breaks His promises or changes His word.  He didn’t do it to Gideon in the thick of battle, and He won’t do it to us, either.

Amen