Gideon
Notes
Transcript
There seemed to be little hope to the people of Israel.
There seemed to be little hope to the people of Israel.
Sometimes it looks like the people of God are in a position of little hope for the future.
"We’re only a small people. We’re surrounded by hostile pagan influences. We’re struggling to even hold on to keep what we have. I can’t see how God's people will triumph in this area. There’s no unity amongst our own people.”
These and many other thoughts were crossing Gideon’s mind at rapid succession while he was beating out wheat inside the small, yet somewhat sheltered wine press in order to save it from the Midianites.
The Midianites were also descendants of Abraham, through his second wife Keturah, and for a long time they enjoyed peaceful international relations with the Israelites. But the expansion of this semi-nomadic people led them to pursue greener fields for their animals in order to sustain their growing families, and those pastures were often in Israelite territory.
Seven years of Midianite terror had a devastating effect on the Israelite economy and emotion. Like locusts, their innumerable hosts devoured every green plant in sight, leaving the land devastated, with nothing left over for the Israelite flocks and herds. Fearing the brutality of the invaders, as soon as they appeared on the horizon, the Israelites fled for the hills, transforming natural geological features into defensive strongholds. The bible highlights the intensity of their fright by citing a triad of refuges: “mountain clefts”; “caves”; and “strongholds.”
There seemed to be little hope to the people of Israel.
When they cried out to the Lord because of Midian, the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites. He said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt. I rescued you from the Egyptians and from all who oppressed you. I drove out your enemies and gave you their land. I told you, ‘I am the Lord your God. You must not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you now live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites.
The Bible continues in verse 11:
Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
“Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.”
Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
“But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”
The Lord said to him, “I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.”
“One with God is a majority” – Martin Luther.
Today you’re going to see how God used Gideon, and a small group of people, 300 in total, to defeat an army of over 120,000 strong men. Is it possible, that God can use the weakest of the weak, and the smallest amongst the small, to accomplish big and amazing things, when we trust in His word. My sister Danuta will show us how God accomplished this in the past, how He accomplished this in her own life, and how He might do this again for the Nelson Bay Church.