Quick Note – Judges 6:11-21 – Prepped for the Attack

Judges 6:11-21 – 11 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 winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” 13 And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And 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.” 14 And 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?” 15 And 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.” 16 And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.” 17 And 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. 18 Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.” And he said, “I will stay till you return.”  19 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. 20 And 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. 21 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. 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.

In the book of Judges, the people of Israel fell into a cycle of sinning, being put into captivity, repenting, and being rescued by a judge.  This cycle happened many times with judges like Deborah, Samson, and Ehud.  But one of the most famous judges is Gideon, a strong warrior who conquered Midian with only three hundred men.  However, when God called him to be a judge, he actually had reservations.  Our passage today will cover three questions that Gideon asked God when God called him and God’s responses to those questions. 

1. If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?  And 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 and his people were under distress because of the Midianites.  Every time they planted food, the Midianites would come in and eat the harvest, so to keep the food they worked so hard to get hidden, Gideon was actually beating his grain in a winepress when God met him.  When God greeted him by saying, “The Lord is with you.”  Gideon could only respond by saying, “How?  If God is with us, why are all these bad things happening?”  This is the same question that comes up whenever troubles appear in a person’s life.  They ask the question, “If God cares, if He is here, then why is this happening?”  But look at God’s answer to Gideon, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?”  God basically told Gideon, “You see all this trouble.  You look at all the problems, and you are thinking, ‘Where is God?’  Well, I am here.  I am sending you to take care of it.”  God is always here.  He is watching and caring for His children even when they have sinned.  Sometimes, the answer to “Why doesn’t God do something?” is “I am sending you as the solution.”  We just need to be willing to go when He calls us to.  In Judges 5, Deborah, another judge, sings a song of praise when the people of Israel were delivered from Sisera, the Canaanite general, and his army.  In that song of praise, she blesses those leaders who took the lead and those people who offered themselves willingly (Judges 5:2).  Sometimes, the answer for “Where is God?  Why doesn’t He do anything?” is “I am sending you.”  Be willing to take the job and go.

2. 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.

After receiving the answer to his first question of “What is God doing?” Gideon asked the second question, which is “How can I do the job?”  Gideon, at that time, wasn’t the strong warrior we know him to be; he was only a measly man, who was the least in his father’s house, which was the weakest in the clan of Manasseh.  If anyone should be picked for the job, it wasn’t him.  However, God answered his question by saying one thing, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.”  How could Gideon save Israel?  By the strength and presence of God.  That was it.  As weak as he was, as unimportant, God could and would do the work.  It didn’t matter how useless Gideon felt, all God wanted Gideon to do was trust in Him.  He even told Gideon to whittle down his army from thirty-two thousand to only three hundred men (Judges 7) to show Gideon that it is not by their might but God’s presence that victory would be achieved.  When God gives us a job, as ill-equipped as you may feel, know that He is with you.  He will equip you; He will strengthen you; and He will be with you in performing that task.  You can do everything with His strength.  This is why Jesus told His disciples when sending them out for the Great Commission, “Lo, I am with you always.”  It was their encouragement; it was Gideon’s encouragement; and it can be ours. 

3. Are you who you say you are? 

This question isn’t directly asked by Gideon but is implied when he says, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me.”  After God told him, “I give this job to you,” after God told him, “I will be with you so don’t worry about your own strength,” Gideon needed only one more question answered, “Are you who you say you are?”  This is a fair question, because if the person speaking wasn’t truly God, then it didn’t matter if he was with him, that would be useless.  So God allowed Gideon to bring an offering and accepted the offering in the following verses, proving to Gideon that he was in fact talking to the LORD God.  At that point, Gideon could do nothing but obey.  He had spoken to God, was commissioned by Him, and was told that He would be with him.  How could he back out?  He could not.  It is important that we trust in God and God alone.  When God calls us, make sure that it is His calling by praying, studying His Word, and truly reflecting on that decision.  And if it truly came from God, then act on it.  Do not delay. 

Gideon asked God three questions before following his calling.  God responded three times to encourage and give Gideon the confidence to do the job.  What is God calling you to do today? 

Quick Note – Judges 16:15-22 – God, the Source of Strength

Judges 16:15-22 – 15 And she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies.” 16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up again, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. 19 She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. 22 But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Most of us know the story of Samson, the super strong judge appointed by God to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.  Samson was born as a Nazarite, so he was supposed to keep three major rules – 1) Not to drink or eat of the vine (grapes), 2) Not to be unclean by going near the dead, and 3) Not to shave his head.  Samson though had a tendency to break the rules of God.  At one point, he killed a lion and after some time, found honey in its carcass and ate of it, breaking the rule about going near the dead.  Although it doesn’t say in the Bible, whether he drank wine or ate grapes, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.  And in our passage today, we find that his hair was eventually cut by none other than his lover Delilah.  But today, I don’t want to spend time harping on how bad Samson was or how he made so many mistakes in his life, because who am I to cast the first stone, being that I sin against God often as well?  What I want us to focus on is where Samson found his strength. 

Many people think that the strength of Samson came from his hair, and when his hair was cut his strength was cut off, but that was not the source of Samson’s strength.  Many people think that if it wasn’t his hair, it must have been from his Nazarite vow, and because he had broken it by cutting his hair and interacting with things that were unclean, then that was why he lost his strength, but that was not the source of his strength either.  Samson knew exactly where his strength came from and we find it here in vs. 17 and then in vs. 20.  Unlike the times before, when Samson mocked Delilah and told her that if he were tied with new ropes or new bowstrings or his hair was wrapped into the web of a spinning loom, he would become weak, when Samson told Delilah this final time that if his hair was cut, he would become weak, he added a phrase.  He said that his strength would leave him.  And in vs. 20, we find out what, or better yet who, left him – the Lord.  Samson’s strength ultimately came from the Lord.  God was the source of his strength.  And because of his sin, because of his breaking his vows, because of his pride, God left Samson, and he became weak and was captured by the Philistines. 

We as Christians must remember that the source of our strength is not our knowledge of the Word of God.  Our source of strength is not the skills we’ve developed in the ministry.  Our source of strength isn’t our actions, our friends, our pastors and teachers.  Our source of strength is none of these things.  Our source of strength ultimately is God.  This means that if we want to be successful spiritually, then we must make sure that our relationship with Him is right and uninterrupted all the time.  Samson allowed lust and sin to break his relationship with God, and we must be wary not to allow any type of sin to do that to us.  We must be careful to keep our hearts pure and our relationship with him clear, so that we can always be in communion and communication with Him.  Let us make sure that we are always connected to our strength – our God.