Breaking the Cycle

Prayer

Stuck in the Cycle

So it’s probably good that I was gone for a week because what I’m going to share this morning is going to feel very repetitive - because it is. Because the book of Judges is very repetitive. The rinse and repeat cycle of the Israelites - their continued and persistent unfaithfulness to God.

Again, just in case you don’t have it down by rote memory by now: it begins with sin, Israelites doing evil in the eyes of the Lord; oppression, God sending a neighboring nation to oppress the Israelites; repentance, they cry out to God for help; God delivers, raising up a judge to defeat the oppressing nation; and finally, peace in the land as long as that judge lives.

Today, we want to look at what it might look like to do what the Israelites proved incapable of doing - breaking the cycle. Being faithful to God over the long haul. Let me just say from the outset, that we have a huge advantage, we don’t do this alone - we have the Holy Spirit in us, working in us, giving us the power to overcome sin. We are united with Jesus, joining with him in his death and resurrection, his resurrection power in us, we can move out of sin and into righteousness, into right living. Being truly good.

But sadly, that’s not what happens here, in fact, in today’s story, story of Gideon, we start to clearly see things getting progressively worse, both in terms of Israelites and in the leaders and its judges - in this case, Gideon. We started with good, faithful judges - Ehud and Deborah, but now, with the story of Gideon, we start moving into the period of “Okay” judges - because, trust me, it gets worse.

So, the story of Gideon - now, it’s long, it overs three chapters of Judges, six through eight. Rather than read the entire text, I’m going to summarize the story, and pointing out the significant aspects of the story with key verses.

In Judges 6, we get the call of Gideon, he is the man God is going to raise up in order to deliver the Israelites. The story, per usual, starts with “the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” So God oppresses them for seven years by giving them over to the Midianites. And it’s rough - the Midianites were cruel. The Israelites would hide out in the mountain clefts and caves. The Midianites would come into the land and destroy the crops the Israelites planted, they ravaged the land. So the Israelites cried out to the Lord.

God sends an angel to Gideon, who is threshing wheat in a winepress - he’s doing it in hiding. Normally you’d thresh wheat on a hill, so the wind could blow away the chaff. Angel says to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Which is a bit of a strange thing to say - Gideon certainly doesn’t feel as if the Lord is with him - or with the Israelites. Where is the Lord? And how mighty a warrior can he be, threshing wheat in hiding?

We see Gideon’s reluctance - the angel tells him that God is sending him to save Israel from Midian. Gideon’s response, Judges 6:15, “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” In spite of the Lord’s assurance that he will be with Gideon and that Gideon will indeed defeat the Midianites, and defeat them soundly - strike them all down, Gideon seeks a sign.

Lord graciously gives him a sign - Gideon sets an offering before the Lord, a young goat and some unleavened bread. The angel touches the offering with the tip of his staff, and fire flares from the rock, consuming the meat and bread. Gideon is blown away.

God commands Gideon to take a bull from his father’s herd, and to tear down his father’s altar to Baal, and he is to cut down the Asherah pole and use that wood to sacrifice the bull. It is ritual to cleanse the space from the idolatry that his own family has engaged in! So Gideon does it, but watch how he does it, Judges 6:27, So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night rather than the daytime.

Now there was legitimate concern here - the townspeople come the next morning having investigated the matter and demanding Gideon’s death for breaking down Baal’s altar. But the whole purpose of the sign (offering consumed by fire) was to embolden Gideon, to trust God’s presence and power with him in spite of the dangers.

But Gideon’s father defends him. So, now in the clear, Gideon moves to do as God commands, Judges 6:34-35, Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. He send messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet them.

Chapter ends with Gideon asking God for more signs, more assurance that God will truly save Israel by his hand. Gideon places a wool fleece on the threshing floor on the first night - in the morning there is only dew on the fleece, and the ground is dry. Gideon asks again, the next night the reverse is true - the fleece stays dry while the ground is covered with dew. So we see God showing mercy to Gideon and his wavering faith.

So this brings us to chapter seven, the defeat of the Midianites. The main aspect of this chapter is God winning the victory for the Israelites - and doing it in grand style. It begins with Gideon, or as he’s often called in the story, Jerub-Baal. He is camped out with the 32,000 Israelites from the various tribes who have responded to Gideon’s call to arms.

But the first thing that God tells him is to let any man who trembles with fear to go back home. So out of those 32,000 men, 22,000 of them leave, so that only 10,000 are left to fight the Midianites.

But that’s still too much for God - he wants to make it clear to the Israelites that it is by his strength that they will win this battle, not theirs. So he tells Gideon to take them down to the water to get something to drink, and then to “Separate those who lap the water with their tongues as a dog laps from those who kneel down to drink,” versus those who get down on their knees to drink. Now this seems a rather strange condition, but Gideon does it - out of the 10,000 men who remained, the number drops to 300.

So just think about that for a moment, Gideon started with 32,000 men. He now has 300, less than 1% of the total he started with. So here’s the battle strategy, given by God - they are to surround the Midian camp at night. At the given signal, each one of the 300 men are to blow their trumpet and then smash the jars which held the torches they carried.

Normally, only a small percentage of an army would be blowing the trumpets and holding torches - this would free up the majority of them to hold shields and swords and engage the battle. So the impression would be that the Midianites were surrounded by a much larger army. The ruse worked. Judges 7:22, When the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords. Those that survived fled, chased down by Gideon and his men and other Israelites from neighboring tribes who were called to join the chase.

Now, at the very end of chapter seven and the beginning of chapter eight, we have this interaction with the tribe of Ephraim and Gideon, where the Ephraimites are upset with Gideon for not calling them to join the fight against Midianites, which Gideon handles quite diplomatically. But then we see as Gideon and his three hundred men give chase to the Midianites - they are worn out. so the ask the people of two different towns, Sukkoth and Peniel, for food - but both of whom refuse to render aid. They are hedging their bets - don’t want to help if the Midianites end up winning, they are afraid it will come back to haunt them.

These little stories, as random as they seem, reveal a lot - a fracturing among the people of God. Distrust and infighting among the tribes of Israel. This is where we see their behavior start to get worse - and it will only continue as we work our way through Judges.

It’s not just the people, but the judges, leaders, themselves. We’ve already seen Gideon’s hesitant faith - his acting in cowardice, destroying the idols by night, his asking for more and more signs. Here, too, we see some ugly behavior - on his victorious return, Gideon punishes the men of these two towns: Judges 8:16-17, He took the elders of the town and taught the men of Sukkoth a lesson by punishing them with desert thorns and briers. He also pulled down the tower of Peniel and killed the men of the town.

I want to close our look at the story of Gideon by looking at how it ends up. Gideon returns home, and Israel is ready to make him king, Judges 8:22, The Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us - you, your son and your grandson - because you have saved us from the hand of Midian.”

Now Gideon has what looks like the perfect response, vs. 23, But Gideon told them, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you. I mean, Amen to that. Gideon gets it - it is the Lord God and he alone who is to reign, he is the King.

But the story doesn’t end that neatly, we see some serious cracks it - let me give you two examples. First, Gideon asks for part of the plunder, an earring from everyone’s share. It comes out to be quite a lot. But note what Gideon does with it. Judges 8:27, Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.

Well, that’s not good. This golden ephod served as an oracle device - it became idol where people would come to seek guidance, ask questions - and apparently that included Gideon and his family.

Second example we see in description of Gideon’s family. Now, he settles down, the land has peace for forty years, his lifetime. Then this, Judges 8:30-31, He had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives. His concubine, who lived in Shechem, also bore him a son, whom he named Abimelek.

Now you may think he just loves marriage - but the only people who would have this many wives were kings. Most of these marriages would come out of political arrangements. So even though Gideon claimed he wouldn’t serve as king, ruling over Israelites, he essentially does, taking on that role - just not the title. Then this little note - the son of his concubine, Abimelek. That name means, “My father is king.” Gideon, “the least in his family,” created a regional political dynasty.

What we’re clearing seeing here is this never-ending cycle, the continual return to sinful behavior. Rinse and repeat. What I want to share with you is how we might break the cycle of sin in our own lives. Now, we are blessed to know the fullness of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. That through Jesus, his dying on the cross and rising to new life, uniting ourselves with him in faith, we are forgiven of all our sins. Made new in Jesus, the old is gone.

Well, not completely - remnants of that sinful nature are still with us. Deeply ingrained ways of thinking, attitudes, behaviors that we have to work to change. Colossians describes it as taking off the old self and putting on the new. It’s the process of sanctification, being sanctified, made holy - made to be like Jesus, to be those who truly love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. Those who love their neighbor as themselves.

I want to offer you two things that help us do what the Israelites had great difficulty doing, breaking the cycle of sin in our lives (courtesy of Dallas Willard). First one is this - we must become more and more enthralled with God. Amazed by Jesus.

Duty will take you only so far. But desire, desire is a powerful motivator. And we will desire Jesus more and more the more we become enthralled with him and with his kingdom. We sin because we trust ourselves (or other things) more than God. But when we see the greatness of God - his power, his glory, his mercies, his wisdom, his beauty, his truth…

Gideon is a perfect example of this - God, through all the signs he gave him, was revealing to Gideon his power and glory and goodness - sending an angel to speak with him, consuming the offering Gideon made with fire, the fleece versus the ground - twice! Then leading him to victory with only 300 men versus an army of thousands! Gideon had every opportunity to be absolutely enthralled by God, blown away. And yet, in the end, he was more captivated by a desire for power, riches, by an idol he himself made.

Quote by C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Lewis’ whole point is that there’s nothing greater than Jesus. He - and he alone - should be our greatest desire. We settle for slop when we settle for anything else. But the more we see who Jesus really is - love that took him to the cross on our behalf…glory revealed in his creation…just to consider the power of the sun - one of billions of billions of stars God spoke into existence…wisdom of Jesus (Willard - the smartest person who walked the earth), over and over again in the Gospels we see how people marveled at his teachings…read the gospels and see depths of his compassion (woman caught in adultery, Blind Bartimaeus…). There is no one like Jesus. No one comes close.

So, that’s the first, being enthralled with Jesus. Second is a joining with God toward holiness - because we need him. We absolutely need him.

Recognize what we readily see in the Israelites - that we are far more prone to sin than we want to acknowledge. Those habits are deeply, deeply ingrained. Much of our sin is our normal, every day responses in life - our initial reactions, way we normally think about things. But so much of it is rooted in falsehood that we’ve come to believe and that we act out of.

I have to manage the way people view me so they will like me - so I present a false front. I have to be in control of every situation - and so fear and defensiveness when I am not. Things in life have to work out to suit me - and I get angry or impatient when they don’t. People should act the way I think they should - and when they don’t (as they will invariably won’t), I start judging them. You hurt me, therefore, I need to hurt you - so I do, by a stinging remark, angry tone, ignoring you.

We could, quite easily, go on and on and on. We have much to learn about the kingdom of God, about the way of Jesus. Entirely new habits to form, so that our normal way of being is to love. To show compassion. To be humble. To have a servant’s heart. To be filled with joy. To trust Jesus, the one we are enthralled with.

There were times in my life when there were sinful aspects that I wondered if I’d ever overcome. Not to say I’ve overcome them, but I have certainly grown out of sinful habits more into the way of Jesus by embracing these two things - loving Jesus, recognizing my need for me. Wonderful news is that as great a hold sin may have on us, the power of God, the Holy Spirit in us, is much greater! As we entrust our lives to Jesus, and the work he’s done for us on the cross, his Spirit fills us in order to transform our hearts from the inside out. Life changes begins here.

Spiritual Disciplines

Enthralled with Jesus - Pray to see Jesus. Read a gospel story each day. Spend some time (don’t cut it short) of time just observing creation (our trip to Colorado, the glory and majesty of mountains, stars one night - mosquitoes!). Rock formations at the Garden of the Gods. Animals at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Consider a sinful attitude or behavior you’re struggling with…join with Jesus to overcome that sin. Commit to it. Pray for the virtue that would be the opposite of that vice (humility for pride, trust for fear, generosity for selfishness, etc.). Be attentive to your heart, and what falsehood may be spurring that sin. Begin to replace it with Jesus’ narrative. His word. Pray dependently on the Holy Spirit.

Let’s break the cycle.