razing god

I. Introduction - This is not your grandma’s Gideon.

This morning as we open God’s word together, turn with me to Judges chapter 6 where we’ll encounter the peculiar story of a familiar character known as Gideon. Undoubtedly, each of you here is familiar with Gideon’s name and have sat through some sermon or bible story which featured at least a portion of his epoch. It’s also likely that, if you’ve sat through one of these sermons, you found that the preacher spent most of his time preaching about Gideon’s fleece. And after fleecing out the passage he no doubt made sturdy attempts to convince you that whenever you have a big decision to make you should pitch a cup of water onto whatever dusty mat you have laying around the house and trust God to morph into a divine shammy cloth to magically dry it up.

Such sermons wholly miss God’s purpose in this story and serve only to leave you with a bunch of dank kitchen mats while you sit there paralyzed with the fear of making life decisions. Although we won’t be able to cover the entirety of Gideon’s story tonight, what we will see in our passage is the severe affliction of God’s special people, God’s calling of Gideon to service, and we’ll see a battle that is more real to us today than some military skirmish that took place four thousand years ago.

Let’s read our passage together.

II. Body (Inductive)

Scene 1.

If you have read the book of Judges at any length you have noticed the frequency with which the Israelites—God’s covenant people, violate their covenant with God and subsequently experience the consequences of their failures.

We often read these passages in utter astonishment as we witness the Israelites time and time again go through the cycle of:

sinning against God, suffering for their sin, being saved by God, and sinning yet again.

This cycle occurs over and over like some dismal ride on an ill-fated marry-go-round and we come away dizzy and depressed having watched the downward spiral of a nation which was supposed to be God’s elect, special people.

In our passage today it is here again that the Israelites find themselves. Our passage opens with the disheartening refrain:

Judges 6:1 ESV

1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.

God, therefore, handed them over to experience the consequence of their sins—the revocation of His divine protection.

The result of God’s distance was the utter devastation of Israel at the hands of the Midianites, Amalekites, and the “people of the East.” The plight, our passage shows, was severe indeed. Look what Scripture says,

Judges 6:4–5 ESV

4 They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. 5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in.

So severe was the affliction that it drove the Israelites underground into the caves and dens of the mountains where they would hide

petrified to stay in their homes

to sleep in their beds

to harvest their fields

or to trade in their marketplaces.

Their world came to a complete stop as they faced the reality of their impending extinction. It is understandable, then, why we read in Vv. 6 that “the people of Israel cried out to the Lord” on account of their suffering. They were hopeless and helpless and they were seeking some sliver of light to pierce through the midst of those dark and dreary caves.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I call upon the Lord in the midst of suffering, I cling to the hope that He will bring me relief. What God sent to the Israelites, however, was a prophet. And 3,000 years later I can still see their shoulders slump as they shout in frustration, “oh, c’mon!”

You see, a prophet usually arrived on the scene when God wanted to have the proverbial “come to Jesus” talk with His people. Although His prophets did indeed declare good news, it was usually sandwiched between or preceded by a couple of chastening Louisville Sluggers.

This prophet was no different. Look at verses 8-10. Through him the Lord reminded His people,

Judges 6:8–10 ESV

8 the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. 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. 9 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. 10 And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”

Take a moment and consider with me the stark contrast between the Israelites two enemies.

On the one hand, the Egyptians were the most powerful nation in the world during Israel’s enslavement.

They had a massive army, organized in its ranks with a unified command.

They had a king who was revered as a God, and who wielded his might with what seemed to be divine authority.

They had wealth and weapons power and cunning. There were a force to be feared, to be sure.

On the other hand, Israel’s new enemy is a marauding band of desert-dwelling nomads.

They have no centralized structure

no emperor who possesses even a sliver of Pharaoh’s power

They do not have nearly the military prowess of the Egyptian generals

Yet the Israelites are crushed. This forces us to wonder, “what in the world happened?” How did the Israelites overcome the Egyptians yet fall to the Midianites?

That’s like going toe-to-toe with Mohammad Ali and taking home the win then turning around and losing a fight with your pre-teen child!

The difference in the outcome was a result of God’s presence. Whereas God had brought Israel up from under Pharaoh’s oppression, He has now left them to suffer the fate of their sin.

Take a look with me at our passage and notice, however, that there is something missing. Do you see what’s missing? There is a striking absence in the story.

Vv. 1 tells us “the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” and for that evil they suffered.

Vv. 7 tells us Israel “cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites.”

Do you see the gaping hole? There is no indication in this passage that the people repented.

They left God and chased after the gods of the Amorites— Baal and Asherah.

They violated their covenant with God, they worshiped these idols,

and when they suffered, they simply cried, “God, we’re hurting, please help!”

The sad truth of this saga is that the Israelites were so blinded by their physical oppression that they wholly missed the spiritual oppression ravaging their nation.

They were indeed an oppressed people. However, the more severe oppression did not come from outside their nation but originated within their own hearts.

The worse reality is that we’re no different! And here’s the truth for both the Israelites and us:

1. Focusing on our physical trial can cause us to miss our spiritual battles.

You and I, honestly, we look at the Israelites in astonishment and we wonder, how can they be so obtuse? Be honest, at some point this last week, this last month, you experienced your own trials and you were so fixated on the physical trial you missed God in the midst of it.

Husbands & Wives: Husbands, it’s happened to you, your wife getting under your skin, or wives, the trial of your husband hopping on your nerves like a weathered trampoline and its about to break. And the only time you called out the name of Jesus in those moments was the one time you now gotta repent for.

Parents: if your kids are anything like mine I know you had your fair share of trials in the last week and all of a sudden you become like David and start calling down curses from God above. All of a sudden you started to sound a bit like Jesus wondering exasperatedly, “of foolish and wicked generation, how long must I bear with you?”

Employees: Some of you, overwhelmed with the stress you deal with at work spent your time daydreaming about your perfect quitting story like, “people are gonna remember the day Jerry quit. They’ll talk about it for years to come.”

And yet in the midst of these worldly trials, just like Israel, you missed what God was doing in the moment. And if you had just caught a glimpse of Him you would look more like the refined gold of heaven than a worn-out lump of overworked clay!

In all of these things what seems to be true is that we often take our eyes off of Jesus and we fix them on our worldly trials and we tragically miss the spiritual work God is trying to accomplish!

Scene 2.

Turn with me back to our passage.

As our author carries us into the next scene, we encounter a most unlikely hero greeted in a most unusual way by a character we are told is “the Angel of the Lord.” However, as we will come to see, neither of these men are not at all who they at first seem to be.

Judges 6:11 ESV

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.

Suffice it to say, this angel is no created angelic being, but is, in fact, the preincarnate Lord Jesus Himself—descended into creation to call upon this man, Gideon, to be His instrument of help for Israel.

When we find Gideon, he is busy hiding in a winepress, beating out what scraps of wheat he and his family had been able to hide from the Midianites.

There is a difficulty in translation here since neither you nor I have ever “threshed wheat” or been near an ancient near-eastern winepress.

While Gideon was here at the winepress, depicted as a poster child of fear, he at some point became aware that he was no longer alone. And what followed was his life-changing encounter with God

The Lord’s greeting for Gideon was both ironic and prophetic. Look at what he says to Gideon in verse 12:

Judges 6:12 ESV

12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.”

Now, up to this point it was painfully apparent to Gideon, and should be to us as well, that the Lord was obviously not with Israel. And neither was Gideon behaving in a mighty way.

In fact, Gideon was not a mighty man at all, but he was hiding from the mighty men who wanted nothing more than to end his scant and timid existence. Herein lies the ironies of the Angel’s greeting.

The Lord’s greeting was also prophetic insomuch as Gideon, though he was now weak and afraid, would eventually become a mighty man of valor. This, however, would not be because of his might, but because of God’s.

Gideon’s beginning is not the sort that you see in a typical hero story. He is not only full of fear and cowardice, but he is also blind to Israel’s sin and impenitent toward God. Look at how he responds to the Angel’s greeting. Verse 13:

Judges 6:13 ESV

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.”

In other words, Gideon is saying, “if God wanted, He could save us—history proves it to be true. But instead, He has just let us suffer. It’s His fault we’re here.”

By his own words Gideon shows he not only failed to acknowledge Israel’s sinful role in their current predicament, but he places the blame wholly at God’s feet!

For Gideon’s sake, and for ours too, what we’ll see is that when God calls us, He never leaves us where He found us. Instead, He takes us from our sin-sick condition and graciously draws us into His peace where we are molded and shaped into vessels for His good purposes.

In Gideon’s case we see that God assures him that He will go with Gideon and God will give him strength to conquer the Midianites. But not yet. Gideon first has a different battle to fight—one raging within Himself.

Look back at our text and see what happens next:

Judges 6:15–24 ESV

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. 22 Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. And Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” 23 But the Lord said to him, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.” 24 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.

Throughout this encounter with God we witness Gideon go from a state of impenitence to one of reverence and worship.

We see him go from blaming God

to questioning God

to testing God

and ultimately to worshiping God.

His encounter ends with him building an altar to the Lord, having experienced a renewed peace from God. And this is important for us to not miss—Gideon’s peace began when he fixed his worship.

What was true for Gideon is true for us today, too. Don’t miss this—

2. Before we fight the battles around us, we must fight the battle within us.

Although God was calling Gideon to fight a battle against the hordes of Midianites, Amalakites, and the People of the East, Gideon could not fight that external battle until he first addressed the spiritual battle raging within his own heart—one of misplaced worship and his skepticism of God.

As you sit here today and consider the external battles you’re fighting:

the ones which at times seem so insurmountable that you maybe even doubt God’s goodness, or that He will give you the strength to overcome.

As you consider these battles I wonder: has your attention has been diverted from the battle raging within you? The one which requires you to move from questioning God to worshiping God—from a state of impenitence to one of worshipful reverence. God is calling to you, to tell you that those external battles which consume your attention are not for this morning.

The battle for today is to get your heart right with God, to forcefully remove the idols from the throne of your heart and restore God to His rightful place at the center of your worship and in your life.

Scene 3.

It wasn’t long before the Lord called upon His unlikely hero to fight his next battle. Our passage tells us it was that very night which God directed Gideon to abolish the pagan worship in his clan. Listen to what God says, read with me:

Judges 6:25–26 ESV

25 That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it 26 and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah that you shall cut down.”

In other words, God said to Gideon, “not only will you tear down these false gods—to raze them from your clan—not only will you abolish their worship, but you will establish my name over their desecrated ruins and use these idols as kindling to worship me.” In doing so, God declared His name—His glory—to be far above any other god.

By this act of obedience Gideon not only cleansed his clan of pagan worship, but he cleansed his family’s house as well.

Our passage tells us that his own father was responsible for the keeping and tending of these apostate worship sites (6.26). They were erected on Gideon’s family land, and they had to be razed, cleared from Gideon’s family, if he was to be God’s chosen instrument.

Read with me what happens next as Gideon responds in obedience.

Judges 6:27–30 ESV

27 So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night. 28 When the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asherah beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built. 29 And they said to one another, “Who has done this thing?” And after they had searched and inquired, they said, “Gideon the son of Joash has done this thing.” 30 Then the men of the town said to Joash, “Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah beside it.”

What we see is that the desecration of these cultural gods produced an immediate backlash.

Here, again, is another irony. According to Jewish law the people of Gideon’s clan were guilty of apostate worship—a sin worthy of death. Yet, these apostate men instead levied a capital charge against Gideon for restoring the worship which they never should have abandoned in the first place.

Rather than being put to death, however, Gideon instead receives a new name—Jerubbaal. He is marked as a spiritual contender having opposed Israel’s pagan gods.

Gideon’s troubles didn’t stop when his obedience began. On the contrary, they became worse. Not only was he a marked man by foreign enemies but he was now a pariah in his own home town! And although he was now experiencing more temporal anguish, he had begun to remedy Israel’s true problem—the problem of their spiritual oppression and apostate worship.

Here’s what we see in Gideon’s saga:

3. God’s first concern is not our physical peace but our spiritual welfare.

How often, might we admit, are we like the Israelites? When the trials of life descend on us, we so often turn to God and cry “Lord, help!” We look immediately for physical reprieve instead of searching for the spiritual battle taking place within and around us.

But Jesus set a better example for us. We instead should strive to be more like Christ who, when faced with His greatest moment of suffering, humbly prayed to God, “nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22.42). In so doing, Jesus took His eyes off of His physical plight and humbly turned them to the spiritual battle raging around Him—a battle He could not miss for the sake of God’s eternal plan.

III. Conclusion

Today, we must also ask ourselves, “How is my worship?”

Have you established some worldly idol in your life which needs to be razed?

Has something captured the affections of your heart and taken your eyes off of the One who guards your very soul?

I think far too often we as Christians are guilty of relegating worship to a moment in time when we’re gathered in our churches. We hum a little song, maybe give a Baptist’s raise of the hands, and we think we’ve done our worshipful duty. Then we leave our churches to enter back into reality where our hearts are again captivated by the idols of this world.

Though we profess that we worship God, we fail to live our lives as “living sacrifice(s), holy and acceptable to God”—our true and spiritual act of worship (Rom. 12.1).

You and I must also recognize that God has called us to be instruments of His righteous work in this world. And God, in His grace, will not leave us in the condition in which He finds us.

He brought us from death to life, from hell-bound to heaven-held. And the work He is now doing in us is to make us evermore Christlike as we glorify His name.

We must fervently pursue lives of worship that glorify our God. You see, worship is not simply one aspect of the Christian life, it is the very atmosphere in which the redeeming work of God takes place.