Judges 6

Introduction (1-6):

**On April 8, 2009, 4 Somali pirates approached a US cargo shipped called the Maersk Alabama and boarded it, seeking money and hostages

-the crew of the ship was able to capture one of the pirates, but the remaining 3 pirates captured the the Maersk Alabama’s captain John Philipps

-After a failed hostage exchange between the pirates and the US cargo ship’s crew members, the pirates took one of the lifeboats from the cargo ship and left with Captain Philipps as their hostage

-The US military was alerted, and soon 2 military ships were detached to follows the pirates

-The military did their best to negotiate the return of captain Phillips, but it soon became clear that a rescue operation would be needed

-the first step in the rescue operation was the deployment of SEAL Team 6 from Virginia

-The team consisted of elite military snipers who parachuted into the ocean and were picked up by one of the military ships on April 11

-the next step was to get a clear shot:

-the lifeboat had run out of fuel, so the pirates agreed to let the military attach a cable to their boat to keep them moving

-However, the cable was slowly shortened in order to pull the lifeboat closer for a clear shot

-Finally, when a clear shot presented itself, the Navy SEAL snipers simultaneously shot the three remaining pirates on the boat, killing them, thus allowing them to rescue Captain Phillips**

The theme of the book of Judges is: God’s compassionate rescue of ruined sinners

In our passage this evening, we have a rescue operation by God Himself:

Judges 6:1–6 “The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord handed them over to Midian seven years, and they oppressed Israel. Because of Midian, the Israelites made hiding places for themselves in the mountains, caves, and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and the Qedemites came and attacked them. They encamped against them and destroyed the produce of the land, even as far as Gaza. They left nothing for Israel to eat, as well as no sheep, ox or donkey. For the Midianites came with their cattle and their tents like a great swarm of locusts. They and their camels were without number, and they entered the land to waste it. So Israel became poverty-stricken because of Midian, and the Israelites cried out to the Lord.”

-This is a mess

-Isreal has chosen to serve other gods and disobey

-And now their nation and their land is devastated

-Israel is desperate for rescue

So the question I want to answer this evening is this:

-How does God rescue ruined sinners?

-How does God deliver the nation of Israelites from their sinful mess?

-but tonight is not just about Israel

-No, I also want us to consider:

how can God rescue me if I’m caught up in sin?

Perhaps this evening, you’re struggling with sin in your own life

-perhaps it’s your harshness towards your spouse or your kids

-perhaps its the sin of worry

-or you’re struggling with sexual purity

-perhaps you’re struggling with apathy in your walk with the Lord and aren’t pursuing Him like you ought to

-How does God rescue us from the sin we fight against, and the mess that we get ourselves into?

-We’ve certainly come to the right book of the Bible, since God is constantly rescuing Israel in Judges!

-So if the question is: how does God rescue people from their sin?

-Our text gives us 3 ways God works to rescue His people

1. The Conviction of God’s Word (7-10)

The New King James Version Chapter 6

And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried out to the LORD because of the Midianites, 8 that the LORD sent

-Please don’t gloss over this simple truth!

-When the Israelites had made a mess of things

-When their sin was causing the utter devastation of their land

-God didn’t send them a politician

-He didn’t immediately send them a military commander

-He didn’t send them a better national strategist to improve trade and economics

-No

-He sent them a Prophet

-Because Israel needed something

-More than they needed food

-more than they needed clothing

-more than they needed soldiers

-more than they needed even relief from their suffering

-Israel needed a word from the Lord

This prophet said to them:

The New King James Version Chapter 6

“Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage; 9 and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 Also I said to you, “I am the LORD your God; do not fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.” But you have not obeyed My voice.’ ”

-The Israelites needed to feel the cleansing sting of God’s Word

-They needed to be reminded of God’s grace and deliverance from Egypt

-They needed to be reminded of God giving them the land

-they needed to be reminded of God’s demand that they serve and worship Him alone

-And they needed God’s rebuke that exposed their idolatry and spiritual adultery against God

They needed to hear that they had not obeyed God

-Rather, they had worshipped other gods

-Brothers and sisters, please understand what this is: it is the painful, yet merciful rebuke from the Compassionate God

-when our lives are a wreck because of our sin, we often think it’s someone else’s fault

-We think that we really just need relief and a change of circumstances

-We need God to come in and make the pain stop

-but what we actually need is to stare directly into the mirror of God’s Word and see our sin for what it really is

**This runs contrary to our current culture of victimhood

-people are told that their sin of drunkenness is due to a disease called alcoholism

-people are told that it’s not their fault that they are murderers or rapists, because society has failed them

-people are told that it’s not wrong to live in sexual immorality, it’s just them living out their true identity**

-But brothers and sisters, the first step in God rescuing people from their sin and its wreckage is for people to hear the Word of God!

-At our church, we want to call sin what it is!

-Drunkenness is a sin

-Immorality is a sin

-Homosexuality is a sin

-Being unkind to someone on facebook is a sin!

Every time you are convicted from God’s Word,

-Whether that’s from your personal devotions,

-or from a sermon in church,

-or from being confronted by another Christian,

-you ought to thank God for that!

-The conviction of His Word is your only hope for true repentance and healing

-If you’re unsaved, the only way you’ll get saved is through God’s Word revealing your sin and then revealing Christ to you!

-And the only way, if you’re saved, for you to come out of sin you’re living in is for God’s Word to expose your sin and point you to Christ’s grace

-So please understand, the first way that God rescues you from the mess of your sin is through His Word exposing your sin so they can repent

-And for God’s Word to point you to Christ, who can offer you His grace

-So first we see the conviction of God’s Word

2. The Power of God’s Presence (11-24)

-Notice what happens next

The New King James Version Chapter 6

11 Now the Angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order 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, you mighty man of valor!”

-The Angel of the Lord in the OT is often understood to be a physical representation of God Himself

-And because of this, many people believe that the Angel of the Lord is a pre-Incarnate appearance of Christ

-And while we don’t have time to get into all the nuances of that debate, I think that’s a very strong possibility

-So, God seeks out a pretty unimpressive man named Gideon, who’s in the process of trying to thresh out some grain while hiding from the enemy

-And while he’s in the process of doing this, the Angel tells Gideon, “Yahweh is with you, you mighty man of valor!”

-It’s kind of funny and ironic, and I can’t help but wonder if Gideon looked around and had one of those moments of . . .

“who me?”

Notice Gideon’s reply

Judges 6:13 Gideon said to Him, “Please Sir, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? And where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about? They said, ‘Hasn’t the Lord brought us out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.”

-In other words, Gideon is mystified at how the Israelites got to this point

-He essentially says, “I thought God was supposed to be powerful and protect us. Why isn’t He doing that?”

-Gideon’s response shows how far Israel has fallen in the relationship with God

-However, Gideon is that man that God chooses

Judges 6:14 The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not sending you?”

However, Gideon, like Moses a few hundred years before this, doesn’t seem to want to be the guy in charge of this rescue operation

Judges 6:15 He said to Him, “Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.”

But notice God’s reply:

Judges 6:16 “But I will be with you,” the Lord said to him. “You will strike Midian down as if it were one man.”

-We’ll come back to that in just a moment:

After God promises to be with Gideon, Gideon wants a sign to from the Angel to prove He’s really from God

-So Gideon goes and gets an some goat and broth ready as an offering

-The Angel tells him to put the meat on the rock and pour the broth over it

-When Gideon does this, the Angel touches the food with his staff, and the food gets completely burned up, and the Angel vanishes

-Gideon is pretty freaked out by this, having now realized that this was the Angel of the Lord

-And he wonders if he’s going to die because he’s seen the Angel of the Lord face-to-face

-However, God reassures him that he won’t die, so Gideon builds an altar to the Lord there.

Now, let’s go back to verse 16 after Gideon had given excuses about why God shouldn’t pick him

Judges 6:16 “But I will be with you,” the Lord said to him.

-And brothers and sisters, this is the next key component of God’s rescue of ruined sinners

-In order for sinners to be rescued, they need the Word of God to expose their sin

-However, that alone is not enough

-It’s not enough just to see the truth of our sin if we don’t have the strength to get ourselves out of it

-It wasn’t just enough for Israel to see their sin, although that was important

-They also needed the power to get out of their sin and slavery

-They needed a Savior to rescue them from the disaster they were in

-They needed the all-powerful God to step in and deliver them

-Isn’t this the same with us?

-For an unsaved person, they must hear the Word of God about their sin

-However, they also need someone to rescue them and save them

-They need the Spirit to come and regenerate and indwell them

-And even for us as Christians, when we make a mess of things in our marriage, our parenting, our relationships, our spiritual life

-We need the Word of God to reveal our sin to us

-But we also need God’s power in order to overcome sin in our lives

-And that is exactly what God promises to us:

“I will surely be with you.”

-this may not mean that our hard situation with instantly go away

-this may not mean that all the consequences of our poor choices will disappear

-But it does mean that by God’s power in our lives, we can repent and do the right thing through God’s indwelling Spirit

-Please let me encourage you today:

-If you’re a Christian, you do not have to face your sin alone

-God has given you His Spirit

-He has given you His Word

-He has given you the accountability and encouragement of His people

-You can grow in grace and overcome sin because God is with you

**A man I know who’s in ministry was meeting with a man that he disciples

-And this guy he meets with is newer Christian

-He was saved a few years ago out of a sinful lifestyle

-And he’s been faithfully coming to church and being discipled, but he still struggles with various sin issues

-But in their discipleship time, this newer Christian was sharing with this pastor how God was helping him overcome these sin struggles:

He told the pastor, “I used to really struggle with being an impatient and frustrated driver on the road, but God is really helping me be patient.

-He told the pastor, “God’s been helping me do better in my struggle against lust! I’ve been able to do better in keeping pure thoughts.”**

And what this new Christian was experiencing is the power of God in his life to help him change!

-Sure, it takes time

-It takes effort in fighting against sin

-It takes faithfulness to church, and to the Word, and to prayer

-But because of God’s abiding presence, we can grow in our holiness!

-We can see God overcoming sin in our lives!

-Please brothers and sisters, please understand the importance of what we’ve been learning in Romans 6 recently,

-and what’s being taught this evening:

-Because of God’s powerful presence in your life now as a Christian, you can walk in victory over sin

-You can grow in your patience with your spouse and children

-You can grow in being less anxious and trusting God more

-You can grow in purity over sexual sin

-You can grow in your love for those around you

How?

Through God’s powerful presence in your life through His Spirit

So in God rescuing sinners from sin, we’ve sin the conviction of His word, we’ve seen the power of God’s presence

And finally

3. The Call to Obedience (25-32)

Look at verses 25 and 26:

The New King James Version Chapter 6

25 Now it came to pass the same night that the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image that is beside it; 26 and build an altar to the LORD your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement, and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down.”

So God has proclaimed His Word to His people, revealing their sin

-God has promised to be with His people to deliver them

-But it can’t stop there

-No, there has to be a response now

-There must be obedience

-It seems that Gideon’s father is the one in charge of Baal worship in the village

-And God gives Gideon a simple command:

“Go and tear down those idols, then go and build an altar and make a sacrifice to me.”

-A simple command!

“you’ve been given my word!

“You’ve been promised my presence!

“Now go and be obedient.”

So look what happens next:

The New King James Version Chapter 6

27 So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the LORD had said to him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night.

-Now, it may be tempting to be critical of Gideon here and talk about what a coward he was, doing this at night

-However, I think we need to pay careful attention to the text

-First, God never commanded him to tear down the altar during the daytime

-He just told him to tear it down and sacrifice to God

-Second, it seems that Gideon’s fear of harm was a pretty legitimate fear!

-If you look at the following verses, the next morning, the men of the town see what’s happened to their Baal altar and image, and they begin trying to figure out who’s to blame

-They eventually piece together that it was Gideon, and they go to Gideon’s father Joash, who seems to be the leader of this idolatrous worship, and they tell Joash to bring his son out for execution

-But notice what Joash says,

The New King James Version Chapter 6

But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Would you plead for Baal? Would you save him? Let the one who would plead for him be put to death by morning! If he is a god, let him plead for himself, because his altar has been torn down!”

So Joash essentially says,

“wait a minute . . . if Baal is so powerful, why can’t he defend himself? Why does he need us to protect his dumb altar and image? What kind of god can’t even stop a guy from pulling down his altar?”

-Whether Joash is more motivated by a desire to protect his son, or whether God is opening his eyes to some common sense, we’re not told

-But we do know that Gideon is spared execution

-But here’s the point I want us to see from the text

-Was Gideon’s obedience timid and fearful?

-it was

-Did he lack boldness?

-Sure!

-But was he obedient?

Yes!

-Listen: overcoming sin in your life can be hard work, even with God’s Word and His Presence

-Sometimes our obedience may not be as bold and filled with faith as we would like

-But please let me encourage you in this: God can even bless timid fearful obedience

**I’m sure all of you have played the game hot and cold

-It’s when you’re trying to find an object, perhaps at your house, and your spouse or your kids are trying to help you find it by yelling out whether you’re hot or cold

-hot means you’re getting closer, cold means you’re getting further

-And sometimes you end up pretty far away from the object

-your kids are yelling at you: cold, really cold, freezing, Antarctica!

-The moment you simply turn the other direction, what do they say: warmer**

-Brothers and sisters, it’s like this in our walk with the Lord

-No matter how far you may be from the Lord

-Even if you’re freezing cold, so to speak

-If you’ll simply turn back to him in repentance and obedience, you’re already getting warmer

-Perhaps you know that you’ve been sinful and harsh towards your spouse or a family member

-And it’s hard to go and ask for forgiveness and

-It’s hard to try to be more patient

-But guess what? God can bless your willingness to obey, as feeble as it may be

-Perhaps you know you’ve been sinful in your pursuit of Christlikeness

-Maybe you’ve been lazy in Bible reading, or prayer, or coming to church

-It can be hard to ask God’s forgiveness and ask someone in church to hold you accountable

-But you know what? God can bless that simple step of obedience

-Brothers and sisters, do not despise the significance of simply turning to God in repentance and obedience, as feeble as it may be

-God will absolutely bless and honor that

So as we close,

-how does God rescue us from sin?

-If you’re an unbeliever, first, He gives you His Word:

-He reveals the truth about sin and about salvation through Christ

-Then He grants His presence through the Spirit when we get saved

-And then He calls us to obedience

-If you’re a Christian, and you’re caught up in sin, what is God’s plan for your rescue and sanctification?

-First, you need to come face to face with the truth of God’s Word about your sin

-Second, you need to be reminded of the powerful presence of God in your life through which you can overcome your sin

-Third, God calls you to simple repentance and obedience, no matter how weak or frail it may seem

-This is how God compassionately rescued ruined sinners in Judges

-And this is how God compassionately rescues ruined sinners today