Gooding, David: 14 - Contending for the Faith

Of the fourth oppression that afflicted Israel in the time of the Judges, gentlemen, is described for us in chapter six and its early verses. It says that the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel, and because of Midian, the children of Israel made them dens which are in the mountains and the caves and the stronghold. And so it was when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites and the children of the east, they came up against them, they encamped against them and destroyed the increase of the earth till thou come unto Gaza, left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor ass, for they came up with their cattle and their tents. They came in as locusts for multitude. Both they and their camels were without number, and they came into the land to destroy it. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord. The historians tell us that the Midianites were nomads. That does not mean that they were not a powerful people. They were both powerful and numerous, as the text reminds us, exceedingly numerous. But being nomads, they would in any case be a great trial to other cultures who were trying to settle down. Indeed, some of them had been settled down for some centuries into a city way of life. The particular fact that is recorded about the Midianites is their habit of waiting until the Israelites had sown their crops and were about to reap them. And then these Midianites, who had done nothing to contribute to the labor of planting and sowing and cultivating, would swoop down in their great numbers with their tents and their camels, and simply raid the land and wipe it clean of all its produce. And because of the great numbers of the Midianites, as they came in to do that, the local settled farmers and towns dwellers found themselves unable to do anything much about it. It is also pointed out to us in chapter eight twenty four that the leaders, at least, of the Midianites were Ishmaelites. Eight twenty four and the end of the verse. They had golden earrings because they were Ishmaelites. We may care to remember what the angel of the Lord told Hagar in Genesis chapter sixteen when he sent her back with her unborn child into Abram's family. He said that the child that would be born to Hagar would become a great nation. They would dwell in the midst of their brethren. That is, they themselves would not be permanently set- permanently settled in any one place. They would be constantly living in and around the settlements of their brethren. Their hand would be against every man, and every man's hand against them. He shall be a wild ass of a man, said the angel to Hagar. Wild asses, not knowing an owner, not knowing any discipline, wondering exactly where the pleasure takes them at any time. A very fit description, once more, of nomad cultures, who may have internal organization, but have no respect whatever for the cultures and organizations of settled communities. And therefore it leads to endless strife when they come in with their hordes, their hands against every man, as they seek to rob the co- crops of the towns and the country people who are settled farmers, and of course, every man's hand against them, as the settled townsfolk and settled farmers try to repel them. A ripe recipe for all kinds of strife and fisticuffs. As you will imagine, when a farmer has seen all the corn and crops that he has labored so on for so long and his settled farm now being attacked and carried off by nomads, you will imagine the fist- fisticuffs and the arguments and the swear words, uh, uh, that went on on such occasions. The result of these nomad raids was, of course, devastating. It wasn't so much that the nomads came in to set up some political organization that should lord it over the settled Israelites. But the effect was no less distressing. For if, when harvest was due, the Midianites came and captured the lot and took it off, then the settled farmers and the town peoples faced a very bleak winter indeed, and would be nearly starved out of existence. That then was the nature of the trouble. The text then goes on to explain to us, through the lips of a prophet of the Lord, why the Lord had allowed this plague of nomads constantly at this period to descend on Israel and thus rob them. He said unto them, thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you forth out of the house of bondage, and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all that they oppressed you, and I drave them out from before you and gave you their land, and I said unto you, I am the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but you have not hearkened unto my voice. The logic is clear and irrefutable. You once were slaves, living on your pittances in the land of Egypt. I delivered you from bondage. I brought you here. I delivered you out of the hand of those that oppressed you. I gave you their land. I said unto you, as I had every right to say unto you. I had done the redeeming, I had done the delivering, I had given you the land. Did I not have every right to say unto you, I am the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but you have not hearkened unto my gods. Persuaded, but I don't, by I don't know what kind of fantasy logic. They supposed they could neglect and reject the God who had given them the benefits of their inheritance and still go on enjoying the benefits of their inheritance. Isn't that? That is the kind of mistake that even Christian people fall into sometimes, isn't it? They want the benefits of God's redemption, of God's salvation. They want the benefits of the inheritance and all the glories of heaven, and they think they can neglect the God who redeemed them and gave them the benefits and still hold on to the benefits. It cannot be, gentlemen. And so we may trace it to sheer disobedience and neglect of the Lord and disloyalty to him and going after other gods, and inevitably the Lord removed from them the benefits and enjoyments of their inheritance. No longer could they, in the words of Leviticus twenty three, when you come into the land of your inheritance and reap the harvest of it. Well, they were in the land of their inheritance, but for a number of years there was no harvest to reap because the Midianites had taken it away. Ironic, wasn't it? It was nice to be out of Egypt and in the promised land, but at this time it didn't seem to make a lot of difference. They were promised a land flowing with milk and honey. While they were in the land, their disobedience and disloyalty to the Lord had reduced the land of milk and honey almost to a barren wilderness. It can happen, can it not? Even in Christian communities. When as with God's redeemed people, not only personally and privately, but corporately, as we meet in churches of God's people, and the church should be a land flowing with milk and honey, of all the blessings, the spiritual blessings, where weary people and hungry people can come and be fed. And how glorious it is when a church functions thus. It can happen, gentlemen, and I've known it to happen, when instead of the church being a place flowing with milk and honey, it has become a scorched, barren wilderness, and it's a pain even to attend. The great temptation is not to attend it because of all the unhappy strife and division and lack of spiritual food within it. We... So now we turn in the text to the beginnings of those movements that led eventually to Israel's deliverance. And our attention is focused on Gideon, the deliverer, whom the Lord raised up to deliver his people. We shall be considering now his preliminary tactics. First, let us go back and notice the false tactics of the Israelites. When the Midianites invaded, it says in first two that the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. I suppose that was a natural reaction. They were not going to be clobbered. They were not to going to be hurt. They were going to protect themselves and their lives from these Midianites. They ran off and got into the cave. But it was a kind of defeatism, was it not, gentlemen? Because you'll see they left the field open for the Midianites to steal the corn, didn't they? And when they came back out of their caves, there was nothing to eat. And if all the Israelites had gone on like that forever, they soon must have perished completely. So now we come to Gideon and his tactics, and you'll say, what will the man do? Well, he'll sit down and analyze the situation spiritually, and he'll say to himself, now where did all this trouble start? Ah, listen to the prophet. Started with Israel's disobedience. They did not listen to the voice of the Lord, and they went and served other gods. So the first prime thing to do is to go to the root of the trouble. Are there any old altars around here dedicated to these false gods? The first thing to do is to go with your sledgehammer and crowbar and heave the things over. That will be the thing to do, get at the root of the trouble. Gideon did not attempt to do that first. He did it later, considerably later. He didn't attempt to do it first. And why not? Because he was a master tactician. Yes, surely idolatry had been the root of the trouble and disobedience to the Lord. But see what the effect of it had been. It had to bring up the Midianites whose set purpose was to come into the land to destroy its harvest, to take them off and leave Israel famished. Very good. If things went on much longer like that, Israel would disappear. Then you could have left the old idolatrous altars in their place. It wouldn't have made a lot of difference, would it? If Israel were ever to survive and be saved, the first thing you had to do, in light of the enemy's tactics, was at all costs to maintain the food supply, wasn't it? And when the angel of the Lord came and sat unto the oak which was in Ophrah that pertained to Joash the Abiezrite. He found that man's son, Gideon, beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites. It was vital for his own survival, for his family's survival, eventually for the nation's survival, that he kept the food supply going in spite of the Midianites and their declared policy of taking all Israel's food and destroying the land. And I think, gentlemen, the same could be true in some situations in our own day. Behind all the strife and the aridity and the famine conditions that you can find in some assemblies stands his satanic majesty. He will bring in this disobedience and that disobedience and the other disobedience, and his ultimate aim is not simply to get God's people to s- to disobey the Lord, his aim is to starve them out. Putting the old disobedience right can in itself cause a lot more trouble. It was so with Gideon. When Gideon eventually was commanded by the Lord and overturned the old false altar and idol in front of his father's house, then the men of the township came clement and loud in their demand that Gideon be dealt with and put to death for daring to assault this altar. And his father said to them, will you plead for Baal? That is how Gideon got the nickname Yerub Baal. Let Baal plead. It caused a lot of strife. For Gideon was commissioned to turn the altar down and thus entail even more strife amongst God's people. He first was moved to see to it that the food supply was maintained. If you should ever find yourself in a church that is near famine condition spiritually because of all kinds of strife and disagreement and disobedience and worldliness in it, gentlemen, pray remember, it might be the wisdom of God for you too, to make as your first objective the maintenance of the food supply. Notice the second thing. When the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, the angel of the Lord began to talk to him. Thou art a mighty man of valor. Thou mighty man of valor. The angel of the Lord recognized in Gideon's tactic the actions of a mighty man of valor. Scared he may have been of the Midianites, but he wasn't hiding up in a cave in the mountains doing nothing, just protecting his own skin. He was hiding the food from the Midianites in this unlikely place, a wine press, by taking the risk that the Midianites might find him and slaughter him. Mighty man of valor, said the angel of the Lord. And you know, it proved to be a critical tactic, didn't it? Let's leap forward a little while in the history. Just before the great battle that settled the issue, Gideon was feeling a bit nervous, so the Lord told him, in order to encourage him, to go down with a s- a a a Judea trooper, to go down to the perimeter of the enemy camp by night. So they stole down there quietly, and when they arrived at the, uh, borders of the camp, they heard a couple of Midianite soldiers talking. And one said to the other, I had a curious dream, he said. I dreamed there was a big barley cake rolling down, and lo and behold, it rolled into the camp and overturned all the tents. No, that is, said his pal, being an expert in interpreting dreams. That can only be one thing, that that's old Gideon, that is. Barley cake Gideon. Proving the undoing of the Midianites. Yes, indeed. The dream isn't difficult to interpret, is- is it? That initial tactic of maintaining the food supply in spite of everything that Midian could do, was the final undoing, well, the beginning and the final undoing of the Midianites. Oh, if you can maintain the food supply, gentlemen, in a church, you've gone a long way to defeating his satanic majesty. Then the angel said to Gideon, verse twelve, the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor." The next verses treat us to the conversation that Gideon had with the angel of the Lord. Indeed, a kind of argument he had with him. And that is a very nice touch, isn't it? Later on, Gideon would have to face his fellow citizens, rebellious and disobedient to God, and reprove them for their idolatry, it would stir up a lot of strife among them as they demanded his execution. But before Gideon started arguing with his brethren, as it would become necessary for him to do, he learned first to argue with the Lord on behalf of his brethren. I fancy none of us is fit to argue with our brethren, unless we first learn to argue for them, with the Lord. The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor, said the angel of the Lord. And I don't know whether Gideon deliberately chose to misunderstand it, but he said, oh my Lord, if the Lord be with not me, but us. The angel of the Lord said, the Lord is with thee, singular, Gideon. But Gideon won't have it. He says, oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, all of us, why is this befallen us? And where be all his wondrous works which our fathers told us of, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath cast us off and delivered us into the hand of Midian. Here was Gideon showing the same attitude as Moses once showed, when God offered that, uh, he would destroy the rest of the nation and start with Moses and make of him the nation. And Moses says, no, sorry. If you destroy the nation, you destroy me. I refuse to be separated from my people. So was Gideon. No good saying the Lord is with you, with with me, he says. No, no. You're not with us. That's pretty obvious. If you were with us, where are all those marvelous stories of revival and wonderful meetings that our fathers talked to us off when we were kids? We don't have them now, do we? No, no good. You're not with us. And the Lord looked upon him, delighted, of course, with the line the argument was taking. And the Lord looked on him and said, go in this thy might. That's no use of Gideon either. He was a bold boy, wasn't he? Talking to the angel of the Lord like that. Go in this thy might and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have not I sent thee? And Gideon said, Lord, you know better than that. Wherewith shall I save Israel? I haven't got any might. Behold, my family is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. Ah, here is the turning of the tide, isn't it? For the Lord had forsaken them, it tells us earlier. But the Lord is now with Gideon, and for the sake of Gideon, God will return and be with his people. All my brothers, if you have to do a lot of arguing against your brethren because of their false ways, first remember to argue with the Lord for them. And the third incident that now comes, and gentlemen, you may be getting impatient. When are we going to get to the battle? When are we going to get to the root of this matter? Is not our preacher developed into a kind of a go easy on the Canaanite boys, you know, that we so would condemn? I mean, when is he going to face reality and denounce the disobedience and start throwing over the old idolatrous altar. Pussyfooting around. Wait, oh, wait a minute. There are bigger things even than pushing over altars, you know, idolatrous altars. Gideon said to him, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a sign that that i- that it is thou that talkest with me. And make sure this was the voice of God and not his own imagination. Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee and bring forth my present and lay it before thee. And he said, I will tarry until thou come. And Gideon went in and made ready a kid and unleavened cakes of an ether of meal. The flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and he brought it out unto him under the oak and presented it. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes and lay them upon this rock and pour out the broth, and he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and there went up fire out of the rock and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. Gideon saw that he was the angel of the Lord, and Gideon said, Alas, O Lord God, for as much as I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. And the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee, fear not, thou shalt not die. Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord and called it Jehovah Shalom. Unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abie Israel. So when the Lord himself, for that was he, wasn't it? The angel of the Lord was the incarnate, the pre-incarnate Lord himself. When the Lord himself visited Gideon, it was, uh, what a great mercy, wasn't it, that Gideon had a bit of food that he could offer his divine guest. He had enough food to maintain a bullock all through the seven years of famine, so that when the Lord visited him, he could entertain the Lord by offering him the cake, the broth, the flesh of the victim. And as he did, what an amazing experience of God he had. A new revelation to his heart of Jehovah, but not now you see Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord my righteousness, but Jehovah Shalom. Shalom is a delightful word of many connotations. It means, of course, peace, the absence of strife and hostility, but not only peace, peace and plenty, peace and well-being, peace and wholeness. There in the midst of famine-struck Israel, Gideon had an experience of God as the God of peace and And plenty. plenty. Gentlemen, one of the sad things about famine in the church is not merely that the people of God don't get fed, that God doesn't get fed either. There's a little phrase in the book of Numbers where God says, my food, the food of my sacrifice you shall not, you shall not suffer to be absent. God has to be fed, you know. You say that's a very primitive notion. Surely God doesn't have to be fed. Oh, yes, he does. Our Lord has to be, doesn't he? He says, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice to open the door, I will come in, and I will take dinner with him, and he with me. Gentlemen, if the Blessed Lord knocked on the door of your life tonight and sought to be fed by you, have you any got anything in your spiritual larder that you could feed him with. One of the sad results of withering disobedience and strife in a church is that it not only impoverishes the believers, but when they would come to worship the Lord, they've got very little to give the Lord. And, gentlemen, am I not right in saying this, that while it's important to turn over our old idolatrous idols, it's even a matter of more urgency to feed the Lord. If we would cure disobedience and its consequent strife and its withering famine, we shall need a soul and a heart that has been nourished by the Lord himself. A sense of Jehovah, shalom. You'll see the same principle at work in two Corinthians, in Paul's letter, or letters, as you may call them, to that difficult church in Corinth. He was their spiritual father. He had founded the church. But Corinth was a church full of disobedience, and in consequence, a church of spiritual impoverishment. Oh, they had many gifts, but gifts is not the same as well-being, spiritual well-being. It was a church full of strife, criticism, arguments, cliques. The criticism didn't stop short of criticizing Paul himself. They said he was a wretched speaker and nothing of a personality, not fit to go for them on TV. And, uh, Dulce, uh, uh, uh, they didn't like his doctrine either, and they questioned his motives, and they said he was putting his hand in the church funds and taking what wasn't his, and all sorts of things they said. And they were felt so impoverished and poor. They lived, of course, in a very wealthy city, but when Paul called upon them to make a collection of money to give to the s- uh, the saints in Jerusalem, they dragged their heels, you know, and they weren't ready with the money. Well, the stock markets were against them, and uh, employment had been difficult, and uh, you can't expect, uh, you know, constant people to be constantly giving, and they had couldn't afford it. Whereas the Macedonians up north, as chur- as poor as proverbial church mice, had had the money collected months ago. They felt they were wealthy, these, uh, Macedonians. And what makes the difference between whether you feel wealthy or whether you feel hard up? Amidst all that babble of criticizing voices and hard sayings in the church at Corinth against Paul. How did Paul himself survive? My gentlemen, he says, you, you should know the God I know. Marvelous knowing God, isn't it? You know, if he, if he lets you get through a little tribulation on times, then he abounds in his comfort towards you, you'll see. So marvelous. In fact, God is able to make all grace abound to you in all things, that you having always sufficiency. Yes, that's right. Paul knew God as Jehovah, Shalom, God of peace and overwhelming plenty. Only thus was Paul's own heart sustained and able to go through the withering criticism of Corinth and help them to a better frame of mind. So Gideon built his altar to Jehovah Shalom. It is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites to this day. And in its way, it's lovely, isn't it? The altar on Mount Moriah, relic of Abram's great success, by this altar standing, built in the days of Israel's depths of abysmal famine, and yet standing there as a witness to God, Jehovah Shalom, a vision of God made real in the life of one man, Gideon, that proved the turning point in the campaign. The moment had to come, of course, for which we've all been waiting. Where, like a man, he faced the trouble. But notice how and at what terms he faced it. It came to pass the same night that the Lord said unto him, Take thy father's bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the Asherah that is by it, and build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the top of this stronghold in the orderly manner, and take the second bullock and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which thou shalt cut down. Then Gideon took many of his servants and did as the Lord had spoken unto him. Eventually he came to the root of the trouble, the disobedience and going after other gods, and cut overthrew this altar and cut down the Asherah. But notice how and with what motivation. His action now was not a negative one, but a positive one, wasn't it? He didn't just cut down the old false altar. Indeed, the reason why he cut down the false altar was because he had a different positive command to fulfill, said the Lord to him, now you must build me an altar, Gideon. I have to be worshipped, you know. And so, Gideon, please, I would like you to, um, build an altar and, uh, take your father's bullock and, uh, uh, offer this bullock as a, as a sacrifice of worship to me on the altar that you are to build. It just so happens, Gideon, I wa- I want my altar where this other altar happens to be, so I'll have to, um, push that down to make way for mine, you'll see, because mine obviously has to take priesthood so that. And so you'll, you'll push the old bad one down so you can positively put mine in its place. Well, that's the way to attack false things, isn't it? It's so easy to be negative and proceed on a negative vector, when the better thing is to proceed on the positive. Well, we must obey the Lord. Who want to tell us we mustn't obey the Lord? Yes. That is true in church things. It's always good to be positive, isn't it? So, I've got to obey the Lord. If I can't obey him here, I shall have to obey him somewhere else because, well, I must obey the Lord. And if obeying the Lord and setting up an altar according to his word means getting rid of something that stands in the way, well, too bad for the something that stands in the way then. Well, you must obey the Lord. Oh, gentlemen, do be positive. When it comes to the way we run our churches and what should be done there and what should not be done. Let's see that we put the predominant emphasis on the being positive. We've got to do this, for this is the Lord's command. And the next morning, you'll say there was a bit of trouble. I have to confess, I have a great, uh, sort of sympathy with Gideon because, uh, he was a bit cowardly, you know, and there isn't a bigger coward in the world than the man sitting before you. He feared to do this by day, so he did it by night. Ha! And when the townspeople rose in the morning, it was done. Good old boy. He had to face the music then, of course. But... rather than face it head on, he did it at night, did it, there it was. He had taken the positive step. And the townspeople, if they were going to object, had now to get up on their hind legs and plead for bail. How would they do that? Well, if they were utterly unredeemable pagans, they might still do it. If they were utterly unredeemable apostates, they might still do it. But if there had been a shred of genuine faith in their hearts, they won't now get up on their hind legs and plead for bail against the Lord, will they? Will there be found true believers that will tell you you mustn't carry out the Lord's command? Because it conflicts with some other unscriptural notion? Well, if they do, they take a terrible responsibility upon their shoulders, don't they? What? Will you plead for Baal, said Gideon's father, or against the Lord? We do well in the matters of the church. To adopt this positive attitude, we must do what the Lord said. If folks come along and say, no, what are you doing and why are you changing things? Well, let them stand up and plead for Baal if they will. But it puts them in a very difficult position, does it not? So, uh, Gideon turned the altar over, going to the root of the problem, and established his position. And immediately the text says, verse 33, then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east assembled themselves together. They passed over and pitched in the valley of Jezreel. Now the battle will at last have to be joined. It wasn't a waste of time for Gideon to spend on those preliminary tactics and not bring on the battle prematurely. And it could be our wisdom in similar situations not to rush into battle, but to see to it that we maintain the food supply for God's people and for ourselves, maintain the food for God and his worship, and by God's grace, nourish in our hearts a sense of the Lord and his enriching as Jehovah Shalom before we induce what must be a very sharp battle. It might be then a convenient place to interrupt our study and give ourselves a small break.