We'll turn to Judges chapter 6. I'm going to start reading in verse 11. But just a quick little background, because it's been a while since I've been here. Remember that in chapter 6, the writer of Judges introduces the Midians as the ones that are coming and stealing food from the sons of Israel in Canaan. So then the location, this particular location of this judge, Judge Gideon, is along the river, it was the land that was given, granted to Manasseh, which was one of the sons of Joseph. But anyway, it's like called the bread box of Israel. All right, what does that mean, right? That means like in the Midwest, where they grow all the wheat in America, it's like we feed the world almost. America does, because they have so much acreage of fertile land. That's what that means. Bread box is the place where Israel was fed, they got their wheat, got much of their produce out of that area. So now you have to imagine now, this is where the Midianites have been sent to steal food from them. Later in between verse 1 of chapter 6, the Lord sends a prophet or a preacher to preach to them and he preaches that message of remember the Lord God has delivered us out of Egypt and The Lord God it's in these final words apparently in the sermon in verse 10 are I am the Lord your God you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites the ones who were Stealing the food you should not fear them in whose land you live, but you have not obeyed me so it's a word of sort of condemnation a judgment a word of judgment that the Prophet brings and And that brings us to verse 11. So that's the background. Here we come to verse 11, and we'll start reading there. We'll read that, and I'm going to pray. Then the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak that was in Ophira, which belonged to Joash the Abazerite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress in order to save it from the Midianites. Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior. Then Gideon said to him, O my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord looked at him and said, go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you? And Gideon said to him, oh Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh and I am the youngest in my father's house. Verse 16, but the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat Midian as one man. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would, we know that all scripture is inspired and profitable for the people of God, and so we pray now as we examine this passage that you would help us to understand what it is that you would have us understand this evening. And I pray that the words that are preached here would be encouraging, enlightening, perhaps even convicting. I pray that you'd be with the one who comes to preach as well. He needs help. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So before we get back into this, let's talk about Christopher Columbus. Does anybody remember what year he took off to go to discover America? What year was that? Come on. What? 1492. Sailed the ocean blue and all that. You memorized that thing. All right. Now, We celebrate him as the first European to find America aside from the Vikings. Let's just put that aside. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. And aside from the fact that he's been deconstructed by recent historians into being the emblem of European, I guess, destruction. There's another word for it. I can't think what it is now. He's turned out to be a bad guy. By the new historians, he's turned out to be a bad guy. But let's forget all that and just think about him as just the tome of the explorer, right? In the 13th century, he was the explorer. He was tenacious. He convinced three shiploads of people to sail off to the west to find the orient, a world of riches and all that, and he convinced the king and queen to finance all this stuff, so he was pretty tenacious. He sailed for over two months to find The Bahamas? Now, you might not know much about the Bahamas, but the Bahamas is very dry. There's no topsoil because it gets blown off every hurricane season. The topsoil gets blown off. There's nothing there. It's desolate. So imagine his disappointment as landing in America. I mean, we look back and think, oh, wow, we discovered America. But he found the Bahamas. Bahamas is great if you like beaches. But Spain has beaches. They've got nice beaches. So he had to be pretty disappointed. And so we can sort of identify with that as our own, as we are in our own lives. We have had expectations in our lives as well that have been dashed or we felt disappointed in not discovering a new continent. I get that, but... But still, I mean, from the ridiculous to the so powerful, I've thought about we have some people that are just big sports fans. They're like really into a particular sport, and there's nothing wrong or sinful about that. But they have children. and they think, oh, man, I can't wait until this little kid grows up to be the great football player and he makes a lot of money and he's like, or an athlete, an Olympic athlete, and from the cradle, they have pictures of pole vaulting or whatever, silly, whatever thing it is, whatever, soccer, whatever. When the kid grows up, what happens if he turns out sort of like me or somebody that's not athletic at all? That's a little bit of a disappointment. That's sort of, eh, that's sort of silly. But what if you have a church and you have a man that's just a guy that loves everybody, and you feel like you're really important around him, and he leaves the elders meeting and gets killed? What does that do? There's a huge amount of expectations about the future in that situation, and it's all of a sudden, boom, it's gone. And there's other situations where you think of some expectation in your life, and when you're a teenager you think, you're going to get a job and make a lot of money, and you get in reality and find out you have to work 9 to 5 for a little bit of money. There's a lot of expectations we have in life that it doesn't live up to. So what I want to talk about tonight is the point is that we often misinterpret the providence that the Lord brings into our life just like Gideon did in this case. Clearly his words here are a little bit outrageous. If this is in fact an angel that appears to him and if he recognized that as an angel to say these words If the Lord's with us, why then has all this happened to us? Clearly he had expectations about how his life was going to go. And this isn't the way it is. He's hiding, he's threshing wheat in a hidden place which is very difficult to do because he's afraid that people will steal his food. So let's go back into the particulars about this particular passage here. We'll start with talking a little bit about Gideon, because we need to know a little background about him. Because we already read, he says, I'm the least in Manasseth. I'm the youngest in my father's house. He sort of puts himself down a bit. But actually, he was a very wealthy. He came from a very wealthy family. He had 10 servants, later in this passage, not what I read today, but a little bit further, he had 10 servants, so no way he's a poor, small person, but he's of an influential family. He was raised in mostly a pagan family also. If we look down at verse 25, we'll see that his father was the sponsor of a bail, is it? Baal, a Baal worshipper, right? His father must have been very influential and wealthy enough to be the sponsor of just about a temple, a fairly place where people come to worship this god. So he's a wealthy man, influential. He has enough money to do this. He has these servants. And he's also, but interesting enough, Gideon must have been raised in this family that, and I thought there's at least two possibilities here, most likely because the rest of the book of Judges talks about Israel worshipping Jehovah as the national God, which is to protect us from enemies foreign, but then there's the local gods that help us to make sure our gardens produce food and the rain comes, right, and bales of rain. So he's probably worshipping both these things. So he's raising a family that would say the words of Jehovah and would maybe even read the the scriptures of Moses, but also would go and worship Baal. This should be a little bit familiar to us because the vast majority of Christians, at least in America, do the same thing. Now, we don't worship Baal, but there's other things that become more important on a Lord's Day than being here to hear the word preached. So we have our own idols today. Or there's a possibility that he was raised and his father was just totally into Baal. He might have just gone, Jehovah's done nothing for us, I'm just going to worship the local gods, they're the ones that are important. There's two possibilities. But still, we look at this and he says, of Gideon's pretty much quoting the scriptures here. How did he find this out? If the father worshipped Jehovah and Baal, then maybe he'd been sent to catechism class and learned the right things, but there was no Holy Spirit conversion. I mean, the father would have known these things, too. That's a possibility. And that's always something we should consider, that our children, it's good to get the catechism. We should do that, no doubt. But without the Holy Spirit's action. So we pray for our children as we go through the catechisms. That's a possibility, right? Does that make sense? He was catechized, so he knew this. But he was looking around, interpreting providence, not by what the scripture said, but by what he was observing. Pretty simple. Or, I think even this is an intriguing thought, is that maybe it was totally pagan, he didn't hear anything about it all, but he was present in verse 8, 9, and 10. Gideon was there to hear this sermon from this previous preacher. The Lord sent a prophet to the sons of Israel, verse 8, and he said to them, thus says the Lord God. So maybe Gideon was there and heard that. What would be your reaction if you heard that and you were a total pagan, didn't know anything about the Lord at all? You might be in And by the Holy Spirit's power, you may be interested in finding out, what are these words? Maybe I should find out about this. Somebody's got to have the words of Moses, the scriptures. Somebody's got to have them. Maybe he looked them up and he said, OK, well, here it is. But it still doesn't quite match because it says this. But this is my experience in life right now. So he had those questions. Why are my dreams failed? He was the son of a successful businessman. Now he's digging around trying to get wheat in a wine press. Very difficult to do. And where he should be sitting back in his little chair while the servants do all the work. Something's not right. That's the kind of questions he was asking, I think. Now, verse 11, let's go back to that. Let's talk about the angel. Angel of the Lord, there's different thoughts about that. I think it probably is the Son in a physical form that came, but it could just be simply an angel that was speaking for the Lord. 14, it says, the Lord looked at him, so it makes me wonder. But it really doesn't matter. These are the words. He's speaking the words of the Lord to Gideon. Dale Ralph Davis seems to think that when it says, the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak, there was an ophira, that the angel had been there a while. He'd just been sitting there watching Gideon threshing. And for some reason, Gideon didn't notice this, which is sort of an intriguing thought. And so that thought, well, the way he responds, he probably doesn't even know this is an angel. Why would you say that to an angel, right? I think maybe Gideon didn't know it was an angel. He might have assumed that this was just another preacher or prophet. that had come to give some more words. So I'm thinking Gideon was just responding to another preacher, which sort of indicates maybe that little bit of a disrespect there, or sarcasm even. You wouldn't be sarcastic to an angel or disrespectful. Most narrations of men encountering angels are where you fall on the ground and go, don't kill, don't strike me dead. There's usually fear associated with meeting an angel, initially anyway. So we don't see that here. The angel says in verse 12, the Lord is with you, O valiant warrior. All right, well, some have interpreted that as being a sarcastic remark about Gideon because Gideon's sort of doing a poor man's job trying to get his own food. And he's not showing himself to be particularly brave. But I don't think that. I think it's more like just a recognition that sort of a salutation of honor. I'm not sure that it really needs to be seen as a sarcastic remark. But it is a greeting. Verse 13, Gideon just totally ignores that. He doesn't say, well, thank you. I mean, thank you, I appreciate that, calling me that, but why would you call me that? He goes right into his tirade about Oh my Lord, if the Lord's with us, then why has all this happened to us? And where is miracles, which fathers told us about? And he goes right into that without even a hesitation or even recognizing that this guy has just talked to me. Of course, he might have been startled. That's possible. another possibility which springs up is that it's possible that the narrator sort of put that exchange in to develop some interest from the reader, which is part of what The writer of Judges does several times. He puts stuff in there. It's like a little twist in there to give you interest. Because when you read that, after you read it, and you go back and read it again, that's sort of a joke. The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior. Might it sort of keep your mind up to go, hmm, that's interesting. Why would he call him that? So Gideon's response, he ignores that flattering statement, O valiant warrior, and gives his false view, again, of God's providence. The Lord's abandoned Israel. The Lord has delivered the nation into the Midianites' hands. Cynical response to a sincere greeting, I think. So again, I think that he's probably, Gideon's aware of the previous promises of God, but he just came to the wrong conclusion. And I think that's what we often do as well. You know, we use our own understanding to interpret providence. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, most of us who memorize that, trust in the Lord with all your strength, with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. That's a pretty common thing we should remember to do. We, of course, in all ways, we should wait for the Lord to interpret his own footsteps. Then, as it goes down, after his statement, what does the angel say? Does the angel say, I can't believe you said that. lightning bolts for you being a disbelieving fool. No, the angel just ignores everything that Gideon says and looks at him and says, go this in your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you? Another reason why I think that probably was the angel of the Lord here is the son pre-incarnate before he comes as a person, but in the appearance of a person. Just totally ignored. The Lord looks at him and says, go in your own strength. That gives him all the authority he needs, really, at that point to liberate Israel from the oppression of the Midianites. But the statement, go in your own strength, that's sort of ambiguous. You can sort of read that as referring to a man's natural ability, right? Is Gideon actually a powerful warrior on his own? He doesn't need help? Is that what the Lord is saying? I think you can look further down into verse 34 of Judges 6, and here's a more typical charge that the Lord gives to his judges. He says, so the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. So it's not Gideon's self-will power, I'm going to get this done, it's the Lord's Spirit came upon him. That's a clarification of this phrase, I believe. Gideon was endowed with the courage and the power by the commission of God. And that's the basis for that commission. All of the Judges and the Book of Judges are commissioned by God in a similar way in very familiar phrases. It's because the Lord has sent them that these great deeds were done. There's no denying that Gideon was empowered by God. But, like us, There is some physical effort involved, right? We're not fatalists that just wait for the Lord to do everything, right? We do have to actually get up in the morning and go to work and do what we need to do. We're not wanting to apply that at all. We have to do our own thing, according with God's commission. And Gideon's response to that? In verse 15, he said, then he, again, he said to him, then Gideon said to him, O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least of men. I said, again, I don't think he recognizes that it's an angel yet. I think he's still thinking this is just a preacher that's speaking for the Lord, which that had happened before in history. Then the Lord says, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat Midian as one man. lack of understanding there, but that is enough of an authorization that Gideon really needs at that point. He does ask for a sign, but that's another sermon. I just can't go there right now. It will take me Gideon and Samson are the two largest sections of the Book of Judges, and it just takes multiple sermons, although I'd love to just keep on going. What time is it? But I won't. I'm just going to sort of leave it there. I have a couple of conclusions or observations, if you wish. First, of course, let's leave interpretation, which seems obvious, and we've just sung a hymn about that, is we need to leave interpreting circumstances that surround us to the Lord. We see doom, gloom, we see disappointment and suffering, but we can press forward knowing the Lord is sovereign. He's working all things. That's one of my favorite verses, and I know you maybe get tired of hearing it. I hope not. The Lord is working all things for His glory and for the good of His people. That should be very encouraging. The Lord in his everlasting covenant for us, for his people, then and now does not abandon them, but purposely, in this case, purposely sent the Midianites for the purpose of corrective discipline, to bring the nation back to him. He's not going to allow, if the father was worshiping Yahweh and Baal, the Lord will not have that. We can't be divided. We worship Him alone. He will not share His glory with anyone. He'll do whatever it takes to bring us back. To bring them back, He did this amazing thing. He brought the Midianites to take their food away from them. What more could you do? And He'll do, He isn't the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He sent the Midianites to the Israelites for the purpose of corrective discipline, to bring them back to spiritual health, really, and covenant fellowship with Him. And so, in the same way, the things that are painful, that seem painful, or, well, they are painful, there's no way around it, or even the things that seem meaningless, are sent, divinely sent before us to purify and lead us to a deeper reliance on Him. And that's really everything. Now, not everything's sent to punish us for things that we've done wrong. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that he uses all things for the good of his people. That doesn't mean he has to explain, nowhere here did the angel of the Lord explain to Gideon, this is why we're doing this. He just said, go in your strength. Deliver Israel from the hand of Gideon. He doesn't owe us an explanation for providence. We're just asked to obey. We walk by faith that the Lord is strong, strong and sovereign enough to protect and provide what his people need. And we trust the Lord looks kindly on us because of what Christ has done. He looks kindly on his people. We are a people brought by the life, death, and resurrection of the Son, Jesus Christ. The other, well, two more. The Lord doesn't need to respond. to our silly and unrelenting questions. Gideon kept asking these questions and he didn't really answer those questions. He didn't owe us an explanation either. In fact, we are in so much better position than Gideon because we have his word, Old and New Testament. He's given us all we need in his word. The angel just said, go, have I not sent you? The Lord doesn't need to explain to us his purposes. He's the king. We're the subject of his kingdom. We have his word. We do not need an angel or a special sign to reveal God's will for our life. And remember, we have been sent as lights in a dark and lost world. We haven't been sent as prophets or judges, but we've been sent as lights in a dark and lost world, to simply live lives that glorify God in the way that we live and the deeds that we do. Those are the means we are to obey all that Christ has commanded us. The Church has been commanded to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that's our commission. That's our commission in the New Covenant. Don't take the sword. The world is trying to associate the Christian church with this movement in Charlottesville, I think it is. That's not the Christian way. We need to disavow all of that nastiness of white supremacy and that garbage. That's wrong. That's not how the kingdom's coming. But the Lord hasn't told us the end. The Lord told Gideon, gave him a blessing by saying, you know, this is what you're going to be doing. You're going to bring, you know, bring or destroy the Midianites or chase them out of the country and restore the kingdom, but he doesn't owe that to us. He's already given it to us. And remember, as far as Providence is concerned, probably the worst thing in all of history is the fact that Christ was, when he was on the earth as a man, he was judged, condemned, and crucified. The disciples surely must have felt the same feelings. And we read that in Psalm 22. Oh my God, why have you forsaken us? And that's a common thing for Christians. I don't think that's necessarily an unusual thing. But just think about the disciples at that moment. Christ is on the cross, he's dying. How they must have felt. The darkest providence ever. But look what happened from that. The greatest blessing that's ever been. Christ saved his people. So we can be optimistic even in our suffering. Because again, we know that it comes from the Lord. It is from His blessed hand. Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for your word, for this encouragement, for knowing that you do love us more than we even love ourselves. We don't even know what love is without you. You loved us before when we were unlovely. You sent your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to live a life of perfect obedience to the law, the things we could not do. Condemned, crucified, dead and buried. Rose again from the dead as a guarantee of our resurrection also and our salvation. So we do thank you for that. We thank you for this lesson in Gideon. We thank you that you did send your people and that you will not let your people wander forever in the desert in sin. Again, we pray that you be with us throughout this week as well as we think about these things. And I pray that we would be encouraged. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.