A Man of Valor?

We gather every week around the cross and the empty tomb of our Savior Jesus. And we remember that God himself came down and broke into hell for you. And in his holiness, in his grace, he says, "You, you're my type. I'm with you. I'm for you. I can use you. I am so with you." This is who we have in the personal Christ.

And what Gideon can only imagine, and he's got to ask for a sign to understand—you who stand two thousand years on this side of the cross can see in 2020 vision. Focus. This is the ultimate display of God's goodness for you in Jesus.

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Good to see you all this morning. I love watching you greet one another. I love hearing your voices when you sing together. There's something that happens when we gather together in a place that can happen no other place. You can podcast sermons. You can stream services, but there's nothing like being present with God's people.

And what you do when you greet one another is so important. There are people who come here every Sunday who never get touched in their life. And so for you to shake a hand, to hug people, to remember someone's name—it is so vitally important and speaks of God's welcome. So thank you for doing that.

I also wanted to give a nod. I really am grateful. Somebody who listened well to the sermon last week got me a "JL Biblical Womanhood" t-shirt. If you know, you know. I'm wearing that to Presbytery this Saturday. So thank you, Emmett.

Reading the Scripture

We're gonna turn our attention to Judges. We're in the book of Judges. That's a reference to last week's sermon in Judges, chapter six. And I'm gonna read for us because it's a long passage. All these narrative sections are long, but I hope you'll follow along on the screen behind me—Judges 6:1–32. This is the beginning of the story of Gideon.

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. When the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and the people of the East came and attacked them. They camped 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, oxen, or donkeys. For the Midianites came with their cattle and their tents like swarms of locusts. They and their camels were without number, and they entered the land to lay waste to it. So Israel became poverty stricken because of Midian, and the Israelites cried out to the Lord.

When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, the Lord sent a prophet to them. He said to them, "This is what the Lord God of Israel says: I brought you out of Egypt and out of the place of slavery. I rescued you from the power of Egypt and the power of all who oppress you. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, 'I am the Lord your God. Do not fear the gods of the Amorites whose land you live in,' but you did not obey me.

The angel of the Lord came and he sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abierite. His son, Gideon, was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, "The Lord is with you, valiant warrior."

Gideon said to him, "Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors 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."

The Lord turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the grasp of Midian. I am sending you."

He said to him, "Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh and I'm the youngest in my father's family."

"But I will be with you," the Lord said to him. "You will strike Midian down as if it were one man."

Then he said to him, "If I have found favor with you, give me a sign that you're speaking with me. Please do not leave this place until I return to you. Let me bring my gift and set it before you."

And he said, "I will stay until you return."

So Gideon went and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from a half bushel of flour. He placed the meat in a basket and broth in a pot. He brought them out and offered them to him under the oak. The angel of the Lord said to him, "Take the meat with the unleavened bread, put it on the stone, and pour the broth on it." So he did that. The angel of the Lord extended the tip of his staff that was in his hand to touch the meat and the unleavened bread, and fire came up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. — Judges 6:1–32

Then the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. When Gideon realized that he was the angel of the Lord, he said, "Oh, no, Lord God, I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face." But the Lord said to him, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid, for you will not die."

So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it "The Lord is Peace." It is still at Ophrah of the Abiezrites today.

On that very night, the Lord said to him, "Take your father's young bull and a second bull seven years old. Then tear down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Build a well-constructed altar to the Lord your God on top of this mound. Take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah pole you cut down."

So Gideon took ten of his male servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his father's family and the men of the city to do it in the daytime, he did it at night.

When the men of the city got up in the morning, they found Baal's altar torn down, the Asherah pole cut down beside it, and the second bull offered up on the altar that had been built. They said to each other, "Who did this?"

After they'd made a thorough investigation, they said, "Gideon son of Joash did this." Then the men of the city said to Joash, "Bring out your son. He must die because he tore down Baal's altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it."

But Joash said to all who stood against him, "Would you plead Baal's case for him? Would you save him? Whoever pleads his case will be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him plead his own case because someone tore down his altar."

And that day, Gideon was called Jerubbaal because Joash said, "Let Baal contend with him because he tore down his altar."

This is the word of the Lord. Amen.

An Unlikely Backup

I don't know how many Carolina Hurricanes fans there are in the house. There's a story from several years ago and a name that you, if you're a true Carolina Hurricanes fan, may know. It's a man named David Ayres.

David Ayres is not, and has never been on the Hurricanes roster. But in 2020, this man who is a resident of Toronto helped the Canes in a clutch win, 6-3 over the Toronto Maple Leafs. He made eight saves as a goalie that day.

Now, how did he get to be on the ice if he's not on the team? Well, it's because David Ayres is an E-bug. You might have heard of an E-bug. It stands for emergency backup goalie. The NHL has a clause in it where professional teams carry two goalies—and only two goalies—on their team because goalies very seldom get hurt. It's very unlikely both would get hurt or ejected from a game. But when they do, every city has a backup goalie who comes to every game and sits in the stands and watches. And if needed, he can fill in for either side.

So David Ayres, back in 2020, filled in for the Hurricanes. And here's what's remarkable about Ayres: at the time, he was 42 years old. He was waiting for a kidney transplant. He's a Zamboni driver for the Toronto Marlies, the American Hockey League team. And he had two bouts of skin cancer he was waiting to get fixed. Not an all-star. Not somebody that you would think of stepping in such a clutch role.

He describes getting the call. He's there at every game, sitting in the stands like he always is, and suddenly his phone just lights up—text messages: "Get in there. We need you. Hey, you better get dressed." And he was shocked. He said, "I hadn't played in forever."

This is what God's doing with Gideon. Gideon is an E-bug, if there ever was an E-bug in the Bible. A backup to the backup to the backup. And this is the man that God calls into service.

I'm really interested this morning as we look at this passage, as we think about God's word and God's call on your life and God's call on my life—how that comes about. Because in this passage, God reminds Gideon of three really important things. I'm going to put these up on the screen. These are my points for this morning:

God is for you. God is with you. And God can use you.

These are really significant for us as we step into this passage today.

Before I go on, I want to give credit. I did listen to a sermon by a pastor out of Knoxville, Tennessee in our denomination. Really helpful for points one and two.

The Context

Here's the context: The people of God had enjoyed forty years of peace after Barak and Deborah, which we read about last week. And God raises up the Midianites against them because, again, after forty years, they begin to abandon God and go after worship of these two deities—local Phoenician deities that were responsible for fertility and harvest: Baal and Asherah. And they begin to, again, worship them throughout this passage.

So God raises up the Midianites, who are different from any other group we've read about before. In every other scenario, God raises up a nation that comes and conquers them and exacts tribute from them.

But the Amalekites are described as raiders. They have a fleet of camels, and they come in right at harvest time. Now if you ever saw the Pixar movie Bugs Life, where Hopper the grasshopper and his gang of grasshoppers come in like a biker gang, and they come in at harvest time, and they just smash and grab. They take everything from the harvest. That's the oppression of Midian. That's what they were doing. We read that they ravished the land. They came in and destroyed.

God Is For You Despite Your Sin

And the first thing I want you to see from this passage is that in spite of your sin, God is for you. This is verses one through 13. So the people cry out to God. They cry out to God, but they don't cry out in repentance. They cry out when things are difficult, and God sends them a preacher—an unnamed preacher in this passage. Can you imagine the disappointment? Every other story, God sends a warlord, somebody John Wick. You know, he sends somebody in who's going to beat up the bad guys.

Can you imagine going to the dentist this week and you have a toothache and you're coming in, in tons of pain. You finally get into the chair and the dentist is like, "We have a surprise for you today. Your pastor is here," and I come out with my Bible and my iPad. Now, you might be very polite to me. But most likely, you don't want a word. You want somebody to fix the pain. You want a fixer in that moment. Somebody who's going to make the pain go away. But God sends a prophet.

Why does God send them a prophet? When God sends this prophet, the prophet tells them two things: something about them and something about God—something about what they've been doing and what God has done.

So what has God done? Let's start with that. He says:

I brought you up out of Egypt. I delivered you from slavery. I rescued you from the hands of the Egyptians. I delivered your hand from all the oppressors who've been before you. I said to you, "I am the Lord your God. Don't worship the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live."

In other words, I love you. I'm so for you. I've done everything needed for you. I have continued to be your God, and I am so about you and your thriving.

The reason that this prophet says these things is because their problem is not a Midianite problem. It's a God problem. It's a belief problem. It's a faith problem. They've abandoned the God who loves them, who's for them, who keeps showing up, who keeps pursuing.

That's the second point in the prophet's message. Here's what God has said. Here's what you've done, but you have abandoned me. You've walked away. You haven't listened to me.

The Kindness of Consequences

And God does something really hard here. God lets them feel the consequences of their decisions. The word consequences—anybody hate that word? If you've grown up, if you are growing up, you probably don't like the word consequences. But we live in a world where God designed for our world to work in such a way that our choices have consequences. They can be forgiven, but they have things that bear out in response to them.

And God allows his people to feel the consequences, and it's his kindness to do so. You have freedom to ignore God. You have all the freedom to disobey God. You have freedom to rebel against God and pretend like God doesn't exist, and people do it all the time. We do it all the time. We in this room do it all the time.

And yet, God in his kindness allows us in many cases to feel the consequences of our decisions because he knows by allowing you to experience a little bit of the pain, it saves you from the death that comes from sin. It's his kindness to let sin hurt you before it kills you.

This is why kind, responsible parents say to their kids this phrase: "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." What they're saying is, "I am going to let you feel this. I'm going to let you feel the consequences, and this is painful to me." And no child ever believes that—whether it's taking away the phone, the car, the prom, the camp, whatever it is. No child believes that.

And yet God, in all of this, even though he allows us to feel the consequences of our actions, it never means that he's no longer for us. It never means that his love has gone anywhere. He's instead allowing us to feel the hurt so we don't feel the death of sin.

So often we experience suffering in our lives, especially the suffering that comes from our own decision making. We turn to God with all these questions. You can hear that in this passage.

Gideon has this confrontation with the angel of the Lord, and he asks these questions that sound like my questions, and I bet they sound like your questions of God too. Why is all this bad stuff happening to us? Where are all the wonders that God has done? God has abandoned us. You see how Gideon has made his North Star, the fixed point of reference, his own experiences, and he's evaluating everything that rotates around that one fixed point. My circumstances are painful, and I don't understand what's going on. Therefore, God must have moved. Something's off here. God has abandoned us. God's character has changed.

You know, there are two kinds of ways to feel sad about our sin, and they both kind of look the same on the outside. One is regret, and the other is repentance. Regret is feeling bad about the consequences of your sin, how things impact you, the discomfort you experience, the relationship damage, the disruption to your life. Things are not working out. And regret is like, ugh, I hate this. Repentance is, I hate the sin that resulted in that. Regret is about self. Repentance is about God. You know, sorrow for the way that sin affects our relationship with God. Sorrow for the way it doesn't reflect God's goodness and his holiness—and sin instead undercuts the whole thing. Repentance is disgust with our sin and hatred of our sin and grieving our sin even apart from the consequences. Repentance is all about God.

This is why God sends a preacher, not John Wick. This is why God wants their hearts. He wants them to turn toward him. You know, I want you to notice that God is always both more holy and more gracious than we are. Always both. He responds to their cry for help to send a prophet to them, to explain why they're in the mess that they're in, and yet he also rescues them. But he sends this prophet because it's like someone walking along the edge of a slippery riverbank, and they're right up by the edge and you keep warning them, you keep falling in, maybe you should step back from the edge. That's why the prophet comes first in the story.

Question for you this morning. Is there a place in your life right now that you're asking God to fix? You're asking God to show up and fix this for you, where God is actually trying to communicate something to you, where you need to look beyond the consequence to the good God behind that. Is there a place like that for you?

In spite of your weakness, God is with you

So first point, in spite of your sin, God is for you. Second point, in spite of your weakness, God is with you. God in his kindness raises up this deliverer before his people repent. They don't ever turn back to him. We can tell in this passage and go like, oh, yes. We are so sorry. But God sends a deliverer before they repent. This is the way of God. God's kindness leads us toward repentance, not vice versa.

What a deliverer, though. As I said at the beginning of the sermon, what this is an e-bug if there ever was one. You know, Gideon and God comes and finds Gideon, but he's threshing grain in a very strange location. Now I know most of you were threshing grain last weekend or you're planning on doing next weekend, so you don't need much of a reminder about this. But in case you've forgotten, this is how they did it back then. You take a gigantic rake. You take a pile of cut wheat, and you would take it and sling it way up in the air out in the open on a windy day. You'd have a sheet on the ground, and the wind would do the work for you. Because the wind would separate the lighter stuff that's on the outside of the grain, what's called the chaff, from the heavier stuff that you really want, which is the kernel. Just like your popcorn kernels. It's the stuff on the inside that you want, and that would fall to the ground on your sheet. You'd gather it up, and then you'd go grind it up into flour. And so that's the normal way of doing this.

Instead, here's where the angel of the Lord finds Gideon. He is in a wine press. It is the opposite of an open place. We have a picture of one that was unveiled in 2021 in Southern Israel. That's a wine press. Big hole in the ground. The opposite of out in the open. The opposite of a place where this actual system would work very well. Why? Because he's afraid of the Midianites. Right? He's afraid they're going to come in and smash and grab. And so he's terrified, and God, the angel comes to him and says,

The Lord is with you, valiant warrior

which is the opposite, of course, of what Gideon's displaying in his actions. But what follows is really revealing because as the Lord tells him, go in the strength you have. I'm going to use you to deliver Israel. He's like, that can't be. And he begins to talk about himself and his family. He says his family, he says, I'm the least of the least. The tribe of Manasseh is one of two half tribes. The two really small ones.

And I'm of the least family in the least tribe, and I'm the youngest. I am the runt of the litter. I am David Ayers. I drive a Zamboni for crying out loud. I got skin cancer problems, and I'm waiting for a kidney transplant, and I'm 42 years old. I can't be the guy you're looking for that God is going to use to deliver Israel. And what does God say to him here over and over again? I will be with you. I will be with you.

Isn't this the pattern of God throughout your Bible? I will be with you, and this is what God shows us, that he always seems to gravitate toward the lowest and least. Right? I love the foolish, not the wise. I love the barren woman, the younger brother, the powerless, the poor. I favor the fatherless and the orphan and the widow and the stranger. I love to work in the overwhelmed, the stressed out, the third string, the little engine that couldn't.

You know, it's funny about the church. Let me just say this, and this is not very nice. The church loves worker bees. God loves the last and the least. We like power and success. We're just like the rest of the world in so many ways. God loves the last and the least. And God says, like, Gideon, if that's you, you're my type. You're the kind that I—you're my type. That's who I like to work with.

Of course, you know this is also the profile of our savior who comes as the last and the least, not as a conquering king, not with paparazzi in tow, but with paupers in extreme poverty, in unattractiveness, not in beauty and charisma. When he appears at his birth, he comes to the shepherds, not the kings. Can you hear this? You need to hear this this morning. You who are here and uncomfortable this morning, you who feel like you don't have a place in this kind of church, you're God's type. He loves to be identified with you. I'm with you despite your weakness.

A Step Forward in Fear

Finally, in spite of your fear, God can use you. This is the last part of this passage. At the end of the story, Gideon is, if not bold, bolder. The angel of the Lord tells him, "So here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go and tear down the altars—the altars to Baal and Asherah, these idols, these false gods of the surrounding nations. And I want you to build another altar, make it really finely crafted because you're like an NC State student. And then sacrifice a bull on that, tear down the others."

And notice whose idols, whose altars these belong to. Gideon's own family. Now I want you to think about that because I think this is really true for me, and maybe it's true for you. Who are the hardest people for you to challenge and confront and go against? It's usually not strangers. It's usually your own people, your own family. So many of us are bold in all kinds of areas of life, but when it comes to our own families, we're timid.

So Gideon does what I think most of us would do. He's like, "I will do it, but we're gonna go at night." So he gets 10 of his men. They creep out under cover of darkness. They tear down the Asherah pole. They tear down the altar. They finally craft the altar. They sacrifice a bull on it. And why does he do that? Because he's filled with fear. He's terrified of his family.

He does it, and the next day, the people realize what's happened. And they're incensed. They're hopping mad, and they threaten death to whoever does this. It's fascinating. The word gets around. It was Gideon, the least of the least, the E-bug. Gideon was the one who did this. And so they go to Gideon's family's home, and they say, "Send him out. He's gotta die."

And it's fascinating because his father, who owned the altars, is convicted in some way by Gideon's act and says, "No. You know what? Let Baal contend for himself if he's a god." And that day, Gideon earns the nickname Jerubbaal, which means "let Baal contend with him," because Gideon tore down the altar.

Now I love this story so much because it is not a light switch story. Christians, we sort of want to believe light switch stories. Flip the switch and everything's changed. No. Here's Gideon who was fearful before and is maybe a marginal little bit less so now. He doesn't turn into Captain America. He's just still Gideon, but he takes a fearful step forward in obedience. And there's this little incremental change on the inside of Gideon that causes him to step forward and begin to step into the name that the angel gave to him: "The Lord is with you, valiant warrior."

I want to remind you of this. In spite of your fear, God can use you. In spite of your fear, Gideon—incremental change—and yet God uses this. But what happens? Why does Gideon suddenly take this step forward? I think it's because of this encounter he has with the angel of the Lord. He asked for a sign. He says, "How do I know this is going to happen?"

So the angel says, "Go prepare some food," and he takes it and touches the end of his staff to it, and it bursts into flames and is consumed. And Gideon in a moment realizes: I have come face to face with the living God and I have lived. I've been confronted with the holiness of God, and yet God's grace to me. I'm still alive. God is still with me even after that encounter, and something shifts inside of him.

He names the place where this happens: Yahweh is peace. Yahweh shalom. Yahweh is peace. That encounter shifted something on the inside of Gideon. It shifted some of the doubts he had about God's character, the doubts about God's ability to use him. Something changes. It's like the old Grinch cartoon—we have a picture of this too. You remember in the original Grinch, his heart grew how many sizes that day? Three times that day. Something happens inside of Gideon in this engagement with the angel of the Lord, coming face to face with the holiness of God and also the grace of God.

I don't have an angel of the Lord to bring out for you this morning, but we have something better. We gather every week around the cross and the empty tomb of our Savior Jesus. And we remember that God himself came down and broke into hell for you. And in his holiness, in his grace, he says, "You, you're my type. I'm with you. I'm for you. I can use you. I am so with you." This is who we have in the person of Christ. And what Gideon can only imagine, he's got to ask for a sign to understand, you who stand two thousand years on this side of the cross can see in 2020 vision, in focus. This is the ultimate display of God's goodness for you in Jesus.

Vitold Pilecki: A Story of Bravery

A few years ago, NPR did a story on this man. This is Vitold Pilecki. A name not really known until about 2020 when some research was done on some of the lesser known heroes of World War Two.

In the first several years of the war, very little was known about what was happening in the town of Auschwitz in Germany. And the Polish resistance movement, operating underground because of oppression, had this man as part of their ranks. He volunteered to break into Auschwitz on behalf of the resistance.

In Warsaw, there was a roundup on September 19, 1940, and he fell in with a group of Jews and was rounded up and carted off to Auschwitz where he spent years hauling rocks in a wheelbarrow. Eventually he got transferred into the laundry unit. The laundry unit was responsible for taking the laundry into town for the German officers and bringing it back. He used that to smuggle messages over and over out to the allied troops.

Part of the intelligence that Pilecki gathered is what led the allied forces after landing on the beaches of Normandy to target this town. "We've got to go here. Something bad is happening here." They didn't know the scope, but they knew something was going on.

What kind of a person breaks into Auschwitz? Can you imagine the bravery? All the stories I've ever heard about concentration camps are stories of people trying to get out, not trying to get in. And yet this man, Wittold Pilecki, broke in. He broke into hell on behalf of the Jewish people.

Isn't this what Jesus did for us at the cross? He joins this plot with the Father and the Holy Spirit to collaborate together for him to go suffer and to break into hell to free us who, because of the wages of sin being death, have a death sentence upon us. He comes to rescue us. And for your freedom, for your liberation, over your life can be written this banner just like Gideon wrote: Yahweh shalom. God is my peace, and you have peace with God forever.

An Invitation to Let the Story Wash Over You

Brothers and sisters, can you just let Gideon and his story wash over you this morning? I just want you to sit in this story. I don't have a whole lot of application of things to do. In your frustration with the ways of God, with what God is up to, when you're asking, "What has happened? Has God turned against us? Where are all the wonders?"—can you look at the cross this morning and allow this story to wash over you?

God is with you. God is for you. God can use you. And in your weakness, when you're convinced that you have nothing to offer and you even show up to church and your suspicions are confirmed—"This place, they're all about the strong people, they're all about the wise people, they're all about the people who have it together"—can you remember this story? Can you let this wash over you today? God can use you. You're his type. He loves people like you.

And can you let this wash over you today in your fear? We are fearful people. We are people who battle fear all the time, trying to keep it at bay.

Can you allow this to change you? That Yahweh Shalom is with you, for you. Even when you're up against your family, when people who should love you and should get you and they don't, people who feel like a betrayal—he is with you. He is for you. He can use you.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. We thank you for the way, Lord, that you use it to crack open the hard places in our hearts. And, Lord, we confess to you that we're filled with unbelief and fear today. There's so many areas of our lives that feel hopeless to us, feel beyond your reach, that cause us to ask questions about your character and your presence.

Father, meet us, encourage us, build strength into us as we draw near to the cross. Lord, we want to be people who are so filled up with your Spirit and your power, not ours. Lord, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song together. Would you stand with me?

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