WHAT’S WRONG WITH GOD’S PEOPLE?
The book of Judges is a strange book. It tells of Israel’s continuing struggle to live in the land God gave to them while constantly being harassed by their neighbors. They deepen their troubles by forgetting God and then crying out to God when they are at whit’s end. Then God saves them by sending a flawed hero to deliver them from trouble. The book ends with a very troubling word: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Why study this book then?
We can relate to the people in the stories, to their struggles with faith. We can relate to the feeling of living in a world that is against us. We can relate to the struggle of these people who feel that if God is on our side, why can’t we win one? We can relate to the flawed heroes. We can relate to their struggle to believe in God when there are so many problems in the world.
What’s wrong with the world? Even though the Israel-Iran conflict is a world away, we can’t help but watch and wonder what will happen. Our nearest neighbor, the US, continues to place tariffs on us. We can blame different people or groups for the problems we experience. Let’s blame the “woke” people, the liberals, the Republicans, the Trumpers, the lobby groups, the greedy rich, and the criminal elements.
But, as Darryl Dash put it, Judges holds up the mirror and says, “The problem with the world is you.” In the book of Judges, the problem wasn’t the Canaanites or the people who didn’t believe in God. The problem was staring at them in the mirror. The problem with the world is us!
1. The Problem: We live in a messed-up World (6:1-6)
The children of Israel had been promised a land of their own. After God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, crossed the Red Sea in a miraculous parting of the waters, God led them through the wilderness till they reached the Promised Land. All they had to do now was take it. God gave it to them. God said take it, I will help you. What went wrong?
The first thing we read in Judges 6 is this: “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD…” This is not a new thing. If you turn to chapters 1-2, you will see the constant refrain “they did not drive out the inhabitants of the land” and thus allowed evil influences to persist.
The result of their failure: Midian oppressed them so badly that they had to build hideouts in the mountains and flee to caves whenever these marauding gangs came to load up on groceries. They were like Vikings raiding coastal villages taking what they wanted and leaving nothing.
Our unnamed narrator piles up the verbs to express how devastating was the experience (see 3-6). This went on for seven years; every year after a crop was about to be harvested, the Midianites came and stole their hope. I don’t know if “seven” is metaphorical for a complete devastation or literally seven years. But it was bad. The ESV says that “Israel was brought very low because of Midian.”
It was depressing. Think about this: If God has promised us power through the Holy Spirit, why is the church struggling to survive in Canada? Why is the world winning our young adults to its godless ideologies? Popular culture is eroding our core values as a people of God so that we are being pressured to accept ideas contrary to our faith, to go with the flow, and abandon our outdated beliefs. We just want to go to church, raise our families according to the Bible, have good marriages, and live our lives. Why can’t we do that?
2. The Real Issue: We have forgotten God (7-10)
The people of Israel cry out to God! This is nothing new if you have read Judges before. The cycle of sin in Judges is an ongoing story. Israel serves the Lord – Israel falls into sin – Israel is oppressed – Israel cries out to the Lord – God raises up a judge (a deliverer) – Israel is delivered. Then it starts all over again. So, you would expect that same pattern in this story. Not quite.
This time the LORD sends them a prophet. Someone commented that sending a prophet was like having your car break down, calling for a mechanic, only to have a philosopher sent out to discuss physics.
The prophet speaks, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me,” (8-10).
And…? Did you finish your sermon preacher? There’s more, right? Shouldn’t there be a “therefore”? Yahweh reveals to Israel what he did for them (“I brought you up…”), reminds them of their part (“do not fear their gods”), then leaves them hanging. Or does he?
Do you ever wonder at the answers God gives you? Or the lack of one? We have desperate needs, and God doesn’t seem to deliver. Like Israel, we want to escape from our circumstances while God wants us to interpret our circumstances. More than immediate relief, Israel needs to understand WHY they are oppressed. I know this is not a popular answer, but maybe you are left in your trouble to understand something about God. Understanding God’s way of holiness is more important than the absence of pain. Is God teaching you something? Is there idolatry in my life I need to deal with?
Dale Ralph Davis said, “We should not miss the kindness of God in all this. One of the kindest things God does for us is to bring us under the criticism of his word to expose the reasons for our helplessness and misery.” He does this through the Word of God and sometimes by a sermon.
3. When we forget God, we lose Perspective (11-22)
The people of Israel feared or worshiped the idols (the culture) of their neighbors. “Fear” is what we focus our attention on; that’s why worship and fear are kind of synonymous. If we focus on something constantly, we are worshiping it. And it consumes our thoughts.
Why were the people living in fear in caves? Not because of the Midianites. They were living in fear because they had forgotten the gospel of God. Why do we not experience the power of God in our church at times? Because we have forgotten the gospel. We don’t believe it. We don’t believe it will transform us. Then we lose perspective.
Gideon is found by the Angel of the LORD in a winepress where he was threshing wheat. You don’t thresh wheat in a winepress. But he’s hiding. He’s afraid that the little bit of wheat that will feed his family will be taken away. The angel of the LORD seems to mock this saying, “The LORD is with you, might warrior.” It’s not mockery. Ironic, maybe.
Check out Gideon’s response: “Pardon me, sir…” (13). He doesn’t know it’s the angel of the LORD. The key to this response is “Why?” If Yahweh were with us, why am I beating out wheat in a wine press? If Yahweh were with us, why do the Midianites keep coming down on us every year? If Yahweh were with us, why does it feel like he’s abandoned us?
See, we can relate to Judges. We ask “why” too. If God is with us, why doesn’t he answer our prayers? If God is with us, why are bad things happening to me?
Did God abandon them? Go back to verses 8-10 and we remember that Israel abandoned God. They forgot God. Moses said, “If God’s not in it, I don’t want it.” These people forgot God, lost perspective, and now they fear God has left them.
The LORD says to Gideon, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand…” (14). To which Gideon says again, “Pardon me, sir…” He continues to argue with God that he is not the right choice. “…but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family,” (15).
When we lose perspective, take our eyes off of God and look at ourselves, we find another product of fear – inadequacy. I’m not enough. My family’s not rich. I’m the youngest in my family. I’m not cut out for this. Sound familiar? I say this to myself all the time. I struggle with my inadequacy as a husband, a father, a preacher…all the time.
I think that’s a good place to be though. We are inadequate; we are insufficient. That forces us to rely on God. Paul hinted at his own inadequacy saying, “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,” (2 Cor. 3:4-5).
4. God Shows Up Anyways (6:11-12, 23-24)
Gideon is fearful. He has forgotten God and the good news of God’s promises. Gideon represents the people of God in Judges 6. And in a sense, Gideon represents us. This chapter emphasizes Gideon’s lack of faith and hesitation to do what God tells him to do. He is an example of what the prophet said was wrong with God’s people. Gideon is us.
But the wonderful grace of God keeps peeking through the negativity of this chapter. While fear grips the people of God, while they suffer for their lack of faith in God, God keeps showing up.
Look back at v. 12 – the angel of the LORD said to Gideon, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” Yahweh doesn’t say how or what Gideon is supposed to do, the details come later. What’s important is that “the LORD is with you.” Then the LORD says, “Am I not sending you?” Isn’t that enough? And in answer to Gideon’s claim of inadequacy, insufficiency, and weakness, The LORD answered him, “I will be with you…” (16).
Dale Ralph Davis wrote, “Nothing is more assuring than God’s “I will be with you’; nothing is more overwhelming than the fact that it is God who says it.”
It’s very telling that Gideon does not recognize the angel of the LORD. That’s why he keeps calling the angel “sir,” not out of respect, but because he doesn’t realize who is standing before him. Only when the angel of the LORD (who is essentially the LORD himself) zaps the supper Gideon prepared, does Gideon finally recognize God.
We may not recognize God when we are afraid and when the odds are against us, but God keeps showing up. He is present. God is sitting outside our hiding place and waiting for us to recognize him.
Why does God describe Gideon as a mighty warrior when he is anything but? Here is a mouse, a chicken if you will, hiding in dens like everybody else. Why does he honor Gideon with this status? Because God saw Gideon’s potential if he allowed God’s power to use him. God saw not what Gideon was presently, but what he could be. Where people see a shapeless hunk of marble, Michelangelo saw David. Where people see the least likely, God envisions a hero in you. Because when God shows up, anything is possible.
Gary Inrig said, “One of the great truths of Scripture is that when God looks at us, he does not see us for what we are, but for what we can become as he works in our lives. He is in the business of taking weak, insignificant people, and transforming them by his presence in their lives.”
What’s wrong with God’s people?
Sometimes they forget God. And they forget that when hard times come God is with them. God is with us.
It seems it is possible to believe everything the Bible teaches, how God delivered his people from Egypt, through the Red Sea, and all of that; it’s possible to believe that Jesus died for your sins and God has forgiven you and called you his child; it’s possible to believe this in your heart and still live as if it isn’t true. Our heads nod in agreement, but our hearts and the way we approach the problems of our world suggest that the head and the heart do not agree.
If we ask why God has abandoned us in our troubles, then we have forgotten the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have lost perspective, and we begin to fear. We are like Peter standing on the Sea of Galilee watching the waves instead of gazing into the face of Jesus.
If we forget the gospel, we forget the God who has been with us in many other troubling times.
In times of oppression and when fear grips your heart, I challenge you to:
Remember – recount the times in the past when God has been very present, when he has answered your prayers beyond your imagining, and when he showed up.
Pray – ask the LORD to reveal himself to you in your troubles and difficulties. He may not deliver you until you have understood what caused these troubles.
Believe – that God can use you even when you feel like the “least likely candidate” to change the world you live in.
AMEN
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