YHWH Shalom
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Dangerous Cycles
Dangerous Cycles
Do you ever just watch someone, or maybe even watch yourself, make like the same mistake over and over again and just have this overwhelming feeling of frustration? Like what the heck man… get it together! Albert Einstein actually labeled this phenomena as Insanity - Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But we do tend to act this way because as humans we are creatures of habit… even if those habits are bad.
There’s this genre of TV episodes that I really can’t stand. They don’t seem to happen much any more, but like in the 90s they were super popular. I call them time warp episodes. Where you watch the same thing unfold in a slightly different way over and over until the main characters finally figure out what they need to do differently in order to get out of the time loop — usually in order to not die. Kind of like the movie Groundhog Day if you have all seen that. Yeah you know that movie. The same day just keeps happening over and over again.
I don’t know why, but I don’t really have the patience to sit and watch the same thing over and over again like that. After like 2 iterations of the same thing I’m just like alright lets figure this thing out.
Which, by the way, is not a super admirable trait when you have a toddler. Because he basically just wants to do the same things day in and day out. And he does the same things that hurt him, or are dangerous day in and day out. So you know, pray for me and such.
But anyway the point of all of this is to get you warmed up to the kind of literature that we are going to find ourselves looking at today. We’re going to find ourselves in the book of Judges, which if you’ve ever read it, is kind of a train wreck. But before we get there let’s just take a few moments to review where we’ve been the past few weeks.
My name is
My name is
We’re on week 4 of our sermon series “My Name is Hope” where we are looking at the different names that are ascribed to God in the Old Testament, and seeing how they lead us to a more full understanding of who Jesus is and how that helps us to find our ultimate hope in Him.
So far we have looked at how God was referred to as God Almighty — the God who created the cosmos and all that we see and experience in our world. This God, all powerful, is capable of rescuing his people and creating a new future for them. Then we saw how God was referred to as “The God who Sees Me” and the powerful message that brings into our lives as we hang on to the hope that God sees us in the midst of our trials, pain, and general human experience. Last week in the contemporary service I preached about the personal name of God, which was given to Moses when he encountered God in the burning bush… The name YHWH.
Now if you haven’t listened to that sermon, it’s available on the church website and facebook. But the short of it is that the name YHWH really communicates the “foreverness” of God. God always has and always will exist, but beyond that and more personal to us is the fact that God’s commitment to humanity and God’s covenant people is deeply forever as well. God is forever the God who can and does wield his almighty power to deliver his people and create a new reality for them. God is forever the God who sees his people and rescues them from their circumstances, even when those circumstances are self inflicted. God is forever on the side of God’s people, and this is an absolutely unconditional reality. It is the essence of why we can call God good and why we can confidently put all of our hope in him.
Today we are going to continue on in this theme and look at one more name that is given to God. Now, we are doing this because we are finding that names in the Bible tell us something special about the person that they are attributed to. Especially names that are given to God. They teach us something about God that we carry into our lives as we seek to follow him.
The Judges
The Judges
Today we head into the book of Judges. So at this point God has rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the land that he had promised to them. And you get to thinking… finally. Because this trip has been really hard fought. Israel was a mess as God led them out of Egypt and it took them an entire generation — 40 years — to make an 11 day journey because they couldn’t get their act together. But eventually they cross into the land, take possession of it, and we get to thinking like finally things are good here.
But they don’t stay good for very long. The Israelites are consistently breaking their covenant with God. They are deeply influenced by the cultures and gods of their neighboring nations. Particularly they consistently built altars to and worship the god Baal. The worship of Baal was not only in itself a deep breach of the covenant that Israel had made with YHWH, but it involved a lifestyle that was in direct contradiction to the moral and ethical standards that God had outlined for them in the law code.
And so what happens is that things don’t go well for Israel. These practices consistently cause Israel to face the downward spiral that individual and corporate sin create. They are attacked by their neighbors, oppressed by them, and then in their desperation they cry out to YHWH for help. And YHWH, being a God who forever sees his people, who forever uses his power to rescue those he loves, steps into history to save them. In the book of Judges he does this by calling and then raising up leaders called Judges. These people call Israel to repentance and to follow YHWH. And then they deliver Israel from whatever mess they’ve gotten themselves into.
And then Israel does the same thing again. And the cycle continues like groundhog day. But they don’t ever seem to figure out how messed up they are.
Today we find ourself towards the tail end of one of these cycles. Israel has been worshipping Baal, and things are not going well. This is Judges Chapter 6:
The Israelites 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 prevailed over Israel; and because of Midian the Israelites provided for themselves hiding places in the mountains, caves and strongholds.
For whenever the Israelites put in seed, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them.
They would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the land, as far as the neighborhood of Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, and no sheep or ox or donkey.
For they and their livestock would come up, and they would even bring their tents, as thick as locusts; neither they nor their camels could be counted; so they wasted the land as they came in.
Thus Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help.
So things are pretty dire. God has allowed the mess of Israel’s mistakes to impact them. In this case they are being controlled by the nation of Midian, and the Midianites are practicing some pretty ruthless tactics, essentially acting as a siege of Israel, trapping them in the places that they have gone into hiding, cutting off their food supply. Things are not good here. So Israel does what Israel does when they are backed into a corner they turn to God, and the story goes on.
When the Israelites cried to the Lord on account of the Midianites,
the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites; 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, 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 live.’ But you have not given heed to my voice.”
So Israel does what Israel does, they mess things up and then cry out to God. And God lives up to his name thus far. He shows up the same way he always has, and is like listen, I told you what NOT to do, and you absolutely did that. You worshipped other gods. But the story won’t end there, God is not resolved to leave his people in the state we find them in. So the narrative goes on.
Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as 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, you mighty warrior.”
Gideon answered him, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors 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.”
God shows up, and Gideon is like um hey, question. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? I think that you and I can probably resonate with this right? Like when things are really falling apart, when we feel like we are backed into a corner this is a perfectly acceptable question. Like dude… where were you?
God’s response?
Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.”
He responded, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
God kind of ignores the complaint and instead is like go on, I’m going to use you to fix it. And much like Moses at the burning bush, Gideon is like “I’m not the guy.” and it goes on like this
The Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them.”
Then he said to him, “If now I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me.
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 until you return.”
So God’s like I’m gonna take care of this with you. I’ll give you my power. To which Gideon says, hold that thought, I’ve got to make sure you’re trustworthy. And God is totally fine with it. He’s like ok do what you must do. I’ll be here.
And with that Gideon goes inside and makes a sacrifice, and then brings it out and puts in on the rock, and the Angel of the Lord reaches out and touches it and it’s instantly burned up. And Gideon is like holy smokes! (literally)
well actually this is what he really says:
Then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of the Lord; and Gideon said, “Help me, Lord God! For 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.
Finally here we have our name for God for today. The Lord is Peace: YHWH Shalom in Hebrew.
And so the curious thing that we have to decipher is why. Why in this particular context is Gideon naming God - Peace? I mean the Israelites are in the midst of a 7 year siege. God’s solution to that seems to be for Gideon to raise up an army and conquer the Midianites, which may bring peace eventually but certainly not now.
I think that we really need to read further on in order to truly understand what Gideon is referring to.
That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father, and cut down the sacred pole that is beside it;
and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, in proper order; then take the second bull, and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the sacred pole that you shall cut down.”
So Gideon took ten of his servants, and did as the Lord had told him; but because he was too afraid of his family and the townspeople to do it by day, he did it by night.
And what I contend is that this is what Gideon really means when he names God YHWH is peace. Because yes, the outward appearance of peace will come when the threat of the enemy is taken care of, but true peace comes when the source of chaos is dealt with.
The reasoning and logic of the book of Judges is that everything that’s happening to the Israelites is because they continue to do what is evil in the sight of YHWH. They worship other gods. And so YHWH’s first order to Gideon is to go and tear down the altar to Baal and build and altar to YHWH in its place.
The altar to Baal is a symbol of the source of Israel’s disorder. It is where they practiced the very act of disobedience to and wandering from their God. Peace, you see, is actually an inside job. Peace for Israel and for us comes when we are aligned with the source of peace — YHWH.
To call God: YHWH is peace, or YHWH Shalom is to acknowledge that true life giving and life sustaining power comes from our ultimate rest in God. Shalom is a word that encompasses a range of meaning: mostly well-being, wholeness, success.
And what that means for Israel and beyond is that these most fundamental human desires — to be well, to be whole, and to succeed — are deeply rooted in our connection to the God whose very identity encompasses these traits.
Prince of Peace
Prince of Peace
Many many years later, like 1500 years later, after Israel and all of humanity had continued to falter and fail at living into God’s peace, God saw the oppression and plight of the human race. And so he came to truly embody his identity of Peace.
Jesus came into this world as the most peaceful being that humans have ever encountered, an infant. And as he grew and ministered to the world he embodied what YHWH was speaking into Gideon all those years before.
While Israel was waiting for a revolution to free them from the yoke of Rome, Jesus instead offered true peace. When speaking to his disciples about his death, he made this promise to them:
The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.
I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”
Jesus’s words are a reminder that true peace is not contingent on what’s happening around the disciples. That it’s not contingent on what is going on around us.
Gideon faced great trial because of his act of destroying the altar to Baal. Jesus faced persecution that resulted in the cross because of his call on people to repent and his willingness to stand in opposition to people and systems that kept people separated from God. And Jesus’s disciples faced hardship and martyrdom as they created a counter-cultural movement that saw and cared for the people that were cast out of Roman and Jewish society.
Tearing down Idols
Tearing down Idols
This invitation is the same for us today. Jesus, the prince of peace offers us true shalom, true peace so that we might experience the transformational power that comes when we live our lives in line with the one who brings order, well being, wholeness, and success. While the situations surrounding our lives may be chaotic, Jesus invites us to attach ourselves to the source of peace and then carry that peace out into the world that desperately needs to see it.
God challenged Gideon to bring peace by actively resisting that which was stealing the life and well being of Israel. To expose the cycles of sin and degradation that they were subjecting themselves to.
Jesus offers us the same invitation. To clear out the altars that we have created in our own lives that cause us to live the same day or experience of spiritual poverty over and over again like groundhog day or terrible time-warp episodes — The propensity that we have to worship ourselves, our desires, our finances, our political identity — and to find our peace by submitting ourselves to him and him alone.
He offers us the invitation to live in a way that extends that peace into our world, to be a tangible olive branch of human flourishing to our broken and hurting world. That’s who Jesus, the baby born in a manger, was and is. And we, the people who follow this Christ Child are called to be the same. That’s what the silent night accomplished. That’s what the gift of Christmas truly is. It’s our job to reach out and take it.