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| His story starts sorta like this |
“Go
in this strength that is yours. Save Israel from Midian. Haven’t I
just sent you?”
Gideon
said to him, “Me, my master? How and with what could I ever save
Israel? Look at me. My clan’s the weakest in Manasseh and I’m the
runt of the litter.”
God said
to him, “I’ll be with you. Believe me, you’ll defeat Midian as
one man.”
Judges
6:14-16, The Message
I
will be with you. It is always so. No one who goes at the
behest of God ever goes alone.
J.A.
Motyer
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| Here's an epic landscape to go with an epic story |
The
tale of Gideon in the Book of Judges (Judges 6:1-8:35) is a story
that is screenplay-worthy: a little-known farmer rises to prominence
to lead the nation into a fantastic victory over those who are
oppressing them. It's almost Braveheartesque, minus the
copious blood (except, of course, for the big battle scene at the
end). It has an unlikely hero (Gideon), it has ruthless bad guys
(Midianites, among them Oreb and Zeeb) and it has an epic battle
climax (Gideon's brave 300 against the horde of Midian). All it lacks
is the girl and a Howard Shore soundtrack (the man who scored The
Lord of the Rings).
His
story begins much like all Star Wars movies do with a crawl letting
us know that, among other things, it is a dark time for the people of
God. Once again they've lost their way. Once again they have
forgotten their history. Once again the Hun is not only at the door
but comes and goes as he pleases. They live like badgers in mountain
caves and strongholds doing what farming they can on the plains below
before another Midianite raiding force swoops in on them on the
latest in military hardware – the camel (v. 5) – a strike force
that struck terror in the heart of the sons and daughters of Abraham.
“When
Israel planted its crops, Midian and Amalek, the easterners, would
invade them, camp in their fields, and destroy their crops all the
way down to Gaza. They left nothing for them to live on, neither
sheep nor ox nor donkey. Bringing their cattle and tents, they came
in and took over, like an invasion of locusts. And their camels—past
counting! They marched in and devastated the country.” (vv.
2-5)
Dark
days indeed. Things are so bad that it jolts their national memory
and a collective cry goes up to the God of their fathers (v. 6). And
just like in the Moses story in the Torah, God raises up a man to
lead them.
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| To people on foot this would be a fearful sight |
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His
name is Gideon and when the camera zooms in on him we find that he is
threshing wheat in the most unlikeliest of places, a hole in the
ground. I wasn't raised on a farm. I was raised in a suburb of
Milwaukee so unlike several members of Refuge the rhythms of planting
and harvesting are not imprinted on my soul. I have it on good
authority, however, that wheat was never threshed in a hollow;
rather, the work was done in a wide, open place where the wind could
carry away the chaff. What's more, most farmers did such work with
the help of a threshing sledge pulled by oxen. But instead, we find
our hero toiling in a winepress, a carved-out depression in a rock,
beating his meager harvest out by hand and hoping to keep a low
profile as he does for fear a Midianite raiding force will spot and
spoil him.
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| You're gonna need more than a Jedi mind trick |
And
then it happens: like a flash of silent lightning an angel shows up
and interrupts his anxiously fervid work. But not just any old angel
– it's “the angel of the Lord”. The last time he showed up an
octogenarian minding his sheep on the backside of the desert was
conscripted to take on the superpower of his day (see Exodus 3:1ff).
It's always a weighty thing when this angel shows up. History is
usually in the making as it is now. When he made his appearance to
Moses a generation or more ago it was with lots of special effects –
a bush on fire that didn't burn up and, at least in my mind, an eerie
wind that caused the fire to burn in a ghostly way. But this time he
shows up like Obi-Wan in his hut on the edge of the Dune Sea who
greets Gideon like a long lost Jedi.
“God is
with you, O mighty warrior!” (v.
12)
I
can never read that without imaging Gideon doing a double-take,
looking over his shoulder in a “You talking to me?” kinda way.
Something about that greeting, however, touches a nerve in him.
Unlike most angelic encounters recorded in the Bible,
he's not afraid. He's, in fact, peeved.
“God is with us? That's a good one. Really. Then tell me this, wise
guy: if God is with us why is all this happening to us? Where is the
God of the stories our fathers told us, of Moses, of the devastation
of Egypt and the Red Sea crossing? Nope. It can't be. The fact is
we've been turned over so that Midian can have its way with us”
(vv. 13-14). Admittedly, it's pretty bold talk for a guy speaking to
an angel, let alone the angel of God. But clearly
his sense of injustice has been awoken and he has no time for
“back-in-the-day” kind of musings.
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| When this angel showed up it changed Moses' life |
What
I love about what happens next is that God likes this kind of retort.
He's not offended in the least that an earthling has just taken him
to task for something that is clearly their fault (they, after all,
have been the ones who have been unfaithful). Instead, he commissions
him on the spot to go and do something about it. It has something of
the feel of Gandalf choosing Bilbo to be the lucky number while
blowing smoke-rings outside of Bag End. “Good. There is strength in
you. Go in this strength that is yours. Save
the nation from the Midianites. I'm sending you” (v. 14).
Immediately,
Gideon realizes he's gone and stepped in it and tries to defer with
the oldest ploy in the book: “Me?...Look at me. My clan's
the weakest in Manasseh and I'm the runt of the litter” (v. 15).
All those years before Moses had much the same response when Yahweh
had sought him out to deal with the Darth Sidius of his day: “But
why me? What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead
the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (3:11) God's
standard response (Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, ad
infinitum) to such weaseling is always the same: “I'll be with
you.” That's it. And apparently, that should be enough. There will
follow a bit of a test (vv. 17-24) that will literally put the fear
of God into Gideon, but the two-fisted promise remains: “I
will be with you. Believe me, you'll defeat Midian as one man” (v.
16).
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It
seems God has a knack for always choosing the “wrong” people for
his work – a moon-worshiping herdsman from Ur is called to follow
Yahweh to a land he does not know and becomes the father of his
people, a two-faced sycophant with a penchant for
manipulating others wrestles with Yahweh and becomes Israel, a
man in the prime of his life who failed miserably at delivering the
nation from Egypt the first time is sent back to do the same now as
an old man. Over and over the story is repeated: unlikely people are
called by God to do unlikely things and the result of their obedience
is blessing for God's people. Writing about Moses, J.A. Motyer says:
If
Moses lives in our memories as the towering leader of Israel in
deliverance and pilgrimage, it is well to remember where he started
– insecure, uncertain, unprepared, unworthy and
un-almost-everything-else! (The Bible Speaks Today: The
Message of Exodus, p. 60)
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| Hannah before the run |
Which
leads me to ask this: What situation grieves you? What
thing out 'there' is 'wrong' and causes you to mutter under your
breath or in your car where no one can hear you, “Someone oughta do
something about that”? Most of us hopefully have heard
by now of William Wilberforce, the face of the abolition movement in
Nineteenth Century England, but have you ever heard of a girl named
Hannah Redders? In the fall of Hannah's senior year of high school a
germ of idea was planted: to run across the State of Wisconsin and
raise awareness about the reality of the sex trafficking industry
right here in the heartland as well as raise $20,000 for a non-profit
in Milwaukee which cares for survivors of such a hideous trade. It's
pretty audacious for anyone, let alone an 18-year-old kid. In fact,
when she shared her plan to make this 400-mile journey in ten days
with her uncle (me), a pastor and a Cross Country coach to boot, I
told her that maybe because of her injury history she should aim a
little lower – like run from Madison to Milwaukee. She would have
none of it. And six months later, on a warm day in June, there I was
with her, her family, a couple of my kids and a few friends, outside
of Superior beginning the journey. Her plan was simple: she would run
20 miles a day and then recruit others to run an additional 20 miles
a day and by Day 10 cross the finish line in Milwaukee. So with a
reading from a short devotional and a prayer and a picture it began –
the Rescue Run.
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| Day 1 of the Rescue Run south of Superior |
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| Day 9 of the Rescue Run just north of Milwaukee |
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Over
the next ten days, she snaked her way south, accompanied by her
family and with various friends and family members along the way. On
Day 10, as planned, she finished her course in Milwaukee, having run
200 miles of the distance herself, with some fanfare and with the
additional accomplishment of raising over $20,000 for Exploit
No More.
That's pretty cool stuff for anybody let alone an 18-year-old girl.
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“Go
in this strength that you have...” Again,
what cause moves you? There is plenty of wrong in our world and not
all of it is in D.C. or in the Middle East. Some of it is right in
our own back yard and God is looking for a man or a woman to say,
“Yes, I'll go” armed only with the certainty that he will be with
us. The weight of Scripture tells us that's more than enough to
handle any resistance we may encounter as we seek to take on the
Midianites in our neck of the woods. Relying on anything less than God's adequacy may, in fact, point to the reality that we really are not up to the task.
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| How do you defeat a foe clearly stronger than you? |
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