+ Advent Midweek 3 – December 15th, 2021 +
Text: Judges 6:11–24; (7:2–9)
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A mighty man of valor. That’s what the Angel of the Lord, the Son of God, calls Gideon when he appears before him in Judges 6. With a title like that you might think that Gideon was a Hebrew Hercules, a Jewish John Rambo, Manasseh’s own General MacArthur . But no…Gideon’s story sounds more like a diary of a wimpy kid than the valorous feats of a decorated warrior.
When the Angel of the Lord, Christ in the OT shows up. Gideon is hiding from the Midianites, who were oppressing the children of Israel. The Midianites would come up like locusts on the land and destroy Israel’s crops and kill or take their animals (Judges 6:1–10). As a result, many of the Israelites were forced to make dens and strongholds for themselves in the mountains and in caves. What little wheat Gideon was able to gather he was forced to thresh in secret, in a winepress. Gideon’s clan was also weakest in Manasseh, and he himself was least in his father’s house. Not exactly a poster-boy for Israelite army recruiting. Gideon is lowly, weak and even whiny
So we can understand Gideon’s response to the Angel of the Lord’s greeting: “the Lord is with you.” 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? . . . But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
We see in Gideon a reflection of ourselves. There are times when the people of God’s new Israel, the Church, feel like Gideon. Perhaps there have been moments in the darkening days of this Advent-tide when you have asked similar questions. If God is with us, if He really is Immanuel, why is the Church struggling or mistreated or ignored? If God is with me, why is life so often such a mess? Why do I feel alone? Why am I sick and suffering? And our list goes on.
Like Gideon, we, too, find ourselves feeling forsaken. And, like Gideon, sometimes the messes are of our own making. That’s how it was in Gideon’s day. God allowed Israel to be overrun by the Midianites because the Israelites had done evil in His sight. That’s the pattern of the Book of Judges. The Israelites would forsake the Lord and run after other gods thinking they’ll give them more of what they want. God’s anger is roused against His rebellious people, and He allows their enemies to overtake them. Then, in their distress, they cry out to the Lord for help. And the Lord raises up a judge, a deliverer, to rescue them from the power of their enemies. The land has rest, and everything goes well for a period of time. But then, the judge dies, the people become spiritually complacent and apathetic, and they forsake the Lord again, and the whole process starts all over.
There’s a warning for us here. When everything is going well, we, too, can be tempted to become complacent in our faith’ and forget the Lord and forsake Him for the things of this world. And yet even in the midst of suffering, some of which we experience as a result of sin against us, and some as a result of our own sin, and some because we live in a fallen broken world – our Lord uses to point us back to him, just as he did for Gideon and Israel.
The Lord works repentance in our hearts so in faith, we might call upon His name. And yes, at times, he disciples us like a son whom He loves in order to turn us away from our idols. And then by his Gospel, draw us back and restores us to Himself. To Christ, our Deliverer and Savior.
In Gideon, we also have a picture of Jesus. Gideon was the one chosen by God to deliver Israel in that day and to bring them rest again. Even though he was weakest and least, he was the Lord’s man for the job. This is a consistent theme throughout the Gideon narrative. Instead of defeating the Midianites with a massive army, the Lord reduces Gideon’s army down from thirty-two thousand to a mere three hundred men. Why? So that Israel and Gideon, and we, would see that victory is not won by human strength, so that Israel and Gideon, and we, would see that our boasting is not in ourselves, but in the Lord. So that Israel and Gideon, and we, would rely solely on the grace and wisdom and strength of the Lord.
His grace and wisdom and strength that comes to us hidden beneath the lowliness and weakness and seeming powerlessness of God incarnate.
The victory God gave Gideon foreshadows the greater victory over sin and death and the devil, which the Lord brings to us at Christmas. Jesus who is first becomes last for you. Jesus who is highly exalted humbles himself on the cross for you. Jesus is the almighty and eternal Son of God, and yet how does he come to us? In weakness and humility. Laid in a cattle trough for a crib. Born in Bethlehem, which was little among the clans of Judah.
Jesus, God incarnate, may not look like a mighty man of valor at first. He appeared vulnerable and helpless—not only in His birth but also in His death. And yet, He fulfills His own words spoken to Gideon, “I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man”.
Gideon and his mere three hundred would defeat the countless Midianites as one man because the Lord was with them. The Lord Jesus defeats the greatest enemies of sin, death, and the devil, quite literally, as one man. By His incarnation, He has taken our humanity into Himself, and by His death and resurrection, He has destroyed sin, death, and the devil once for all. “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19).
Jesus is an army of one, who delivers us from our enemies. And he does it through his weakness, for the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of men. Out of lowly Bethlehem came the One to be the ruler and deliverer of Israel. The Midianites, in their confusion, would end up turning on and killing one another in their camp. So too, Jesus turned death and Satan against themselves on the cross, delivering us forever from their power and the sin that oppresses us. The one man Jesus assumed the humanity of all people in His conception and birth. And so this one man’s victory also counts for all people in His death and resurrection. The name Gideon means “one who breaks or cuts down.” Jesus is our Gideon; he has broken and cut down all false gods and the devil himself by the wood of the manger and the wood of the cross.
The Angel of the Lord first appeared to Gideon when he was threshing out wheat for bread in a winepress, and He departed from sight after Gideon offered up bread and meat on the rock. It’s a marvelous picture of the Sacrament of the Altar, where the Lord fulfills His promise to be with us in the flesh—where His body and blood, offered up on the rock of Golgotha, are given to us in bread and wine.
Finally, when the Angel of the Lord departed from Gideon, he perceived fully that he had been in the very presence of God. Gideon thought he would die for having seen the Angel of the Lord face-to-face. But Gideon is given a word of peace. And so are you.
“Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.” For the Lord Jesus is both the Mighty God and the Prince of Peace. The Mighty God-Man of valor, and a humble Savior born to save you.
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