Let’s have some Elvis Presley trivia this morning. Which two songs were written by songwriter Mark James, that Elvis made huge hits out of? The answer is, “Suspicious Minds" and “Always on My Mind.”
Out of the two songs, “Suspicious Minds” hit the #1 spot in 1969. Mark James wrote the song in 1968 and released it that same year, but it never took off. So when Elvis began recording for his comeback album in the early part of 1969, James began urging producers to get Elvis to hear his song. The reason for this was because James thought Elvis needed a mature rock and role song. When James heard the initial recording, he thought it was too slow, but after the song was released, he said it blew him away.
The song itself came from James’ own life experience, where he was married to his first wife, but still had feelings for his childhood sweetheart. His wife became suspicious of the two, and out of that situation, James wrote the now famous song.
Mistrust and suspicion within a romantic relationship is one of the hardest things to overcome, because it can become a gnawing voice that finds the smallest of problems and builds animosity between two people.
This idea of mistrust is what brings us back to our study in Judges, where we’ll be picking it back up in chapter 6. And as we open up to Judges 6:1, let’s connect the dots of what we’ve studied so far in our summer series.
By connecting the dots from week one through last week we see a message start to develop. God wants humanity to know his deep love for them, and so even when they’re at their worst, God is there to return them to a right relationship with him. All that’s needed from us is to turn back to him and cry out for his saving work.
But God is seeking his people to stay in right relationship with him. They do this by being obedient, trusting in his plan, utilizing their gifts, and walking as the Spirit leads. When God’s people do these things, we experience the blessings of God in the way he intends for us to experience them. God’s desire is that his people be a part of his great work, and in this present time, that great work is the sharing of the Gospel.
When God’s people don’t do these things, we begin to see fractures, not just in our own lives, but it has a ripple effect out into society.
And it’s this breakdown that we started to see with Barak last week, which will continue into our fifth Judge, Gideon. So let’s start reading at the beginning of Gideon’s story, in Judges 6:1.
“1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. 2 And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. 3 For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. 4 They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. 5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. 6 And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.
“7 When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. 9 And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 And I said to 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 obeyed my voice.’
11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.’ 13 And 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, saying, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?” But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.’ 14 And the Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?’ 15 And he said to him, ‘Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.’ 16 And the Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’ 17 And he said to him, ‘If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. 18 Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.’ And he said, ‘I will stay till you return.’
“19 So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them. 20 And the angel of God said to him, ‘Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.’ And he did so. 21 Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. 22 Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. And Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.’ 23 But the Lord said to him, ‘Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.’ 24 Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it, The Lord Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.”
There are two parts to what we just read. The first is the set up to the cycle. In the past stories of the judges, we’ve been given basically the same introduction: Israel sins, they are conquered as a result of that sin, they cry out after a period of time, God raises up a judge and then we usually see how that plays out.
But here we get something a little different. Yes, we find out that Israel sins again, and yes we find out that they are conquered for that sin, but what happens next is unique. Instead of being told that Israel cries out to God, we’re told that Israel begins to hide from the their conquerers. They find caves, and make strongholds in the mountains to keep their food and cattle safe. It’s only after these things don’t work that they cry out to God. This is important to notice, because it shows us the mindset of Israel. They have a mindset that, they’re first response to a crisis is to do whatever they can to fix it.
It’s a mindset that we can easily fall into too. In fact there’s a religion (LDS) out there that teaches, “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do (2 Nephi 25:23).” That last part, “after all we can do” is exactly what Israel is thinking. It’s an attitude of, “I can fix this.” It’s an attitude of, “I don’t need God, until I choose to need God.” It’s an attitude of, “After I have exhausted every other avenue, that’s when I’ll turn to God.”
But what does that lead to? For the Israelites, it led to a complete decimation of their land by these conquerers. Their sin is compounding upon it’s self, and the consequences are getting worse, because they have a me first mentality. They have a, “I’m strong enough to accomplish this on my own” attitude. But that’s just pride, heaped upon the sin of idol worship that they’ve committed already.
And so, instead of God jumping right into the saving action that we’ve seen so far, he doesn’t send them a judge to free them, but rather he sends them a prophet. And the prophet does his job. The prophet points them back to how God has freed them from captivity in Egypt with the express purpose of not following the gods of the people of the land that they now live in, but that’s exactly what they are doing.
The implication is, why should God save you now, when you are not doing what he has already told you to do? It’s almost like Israel is thinking of their relationship with God as a method. It’s almost like their mindset is like this: “Once we’ve exhausted everything we can do in our own strength to overcome our situation, then we can call on God and he’ll save us without any change in us.”
A modern day equivalent of this mindset might be, “I’m saved, now I can do whatever I want.” Or, “God and I have an understanding.” No, God has his boundaries and when we do not follow those boundaries, what we’re saying is, “I don’t care what God wants, it’s about what I want.” It’s the first sin of, “Surely God didn’t mean…”
And yet, even in the unfaithfulness of the nation of Israel, we still see the faithfulness of God. We still see that, even when Israel’s heart just uses God as a method for their own wants, the overarching theme of Scripture that God is faithful even when humanity is not, still shines through in this moment. When any other person who has been cheated on and used and tossed away by another, would turn their back on that user, God keeps on being faithful.
So we see the second part of this introduction, the raising up of a new judge, Gideon.
But God doesn’t just call Gideon, he shows up to the man himself to direct this new judge. See before this, the angel of the Lord has shown up once. Back in chapter 2, the angel of the Lord, speaks to Israel about what he had done for the nation in bringing them out of Egyptian captivity and how they are now to enter the land and drive out the people.
Here in chapter 6, the angel of the Lord appears again, to commission a new judge in the midst of Israel’s unfaithfulness. And if you weren’t convinced that this angel of the Lord is God by this time in Scripture, we see in verse 14, where it states, “And the Lord turned to him.” That word Lord, is the English translation of Yahweh. So God is standing in front of Gideon and speaking.
But the conversation has a little tongue and cheek to it. This is how we know God has a sense of humor. When God shows up to speak with Gideon, he says to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor (v.12).” But Gideon is far from a man of valor at this point; he’s hiding away in a cave trying to avoid the Midianites, that’s not something a man of valor would be doing. Yet, what God is saying to him is two fold: first, you’re not a man of valor by the evidence that you’re hiding in this cave, and second, but if you follow me, you will be a man of valor. God is speaking to Gideon’s situation and his future. It’s the same call to courage that he gave to Joshua way back in the first chapter of his book. Following God is a call to courageous living, where lives are laid down for those who don’t deserve it.
But Gideon’s response is telling of his personal spiritual state. He accuses God of giving up on Israel in verse 13. Of doing great things in the past and doing nothing in the present. Sam Harris, a famous atheist speaker said the same in a debate he had with a Christian back in 2011, where he is quoted as saying, “If you lived 2000 years ago there was evidence galore, performing miracles, but apparently he (God) got tired of being so helpful.” This is the same attitude that Gideon has in his first encounter with God. God you might have worked back then, but you’re not working now. First, this is where we can see that Gideon is either willfully ignorant of what has happened recently with Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, and Barak, or he is just ignorant of those situations, either way, it shows how God can be working and people just don’t either want to see it, or can’t because they’re caught up in their own selves.
It’s here though, when God tells Gideon that he is sending him to do something today. And it’s here that Gideon gives excuses of being the least in a family which is the least of all the tribes of Israel.
But when excuses fail, Gideon turns to treating God as an idol. Gideon wants to provide food for God and so asks that the Lord stay while he goes and prepares it. You can almost here the exasperation in the voice of God when he says in verse 18, “I will stay till you return.”
When Gideon returns, God does something unexpected. Instead of receiving the food, he consumes it in fire. By doing so, God is sending a message to Gideon. He’s telling the newly commissioned judge, I’m holy and I’m not like these lifeless gods you worship, so get in line. And in a moment of clarity, Gideon becomes afraid. But if he really knew his God, he would know that the kind of fear he should be feeling is reverent understanding of who God is. But instead, the fear he’s experiencing is that of being scared.
That’s why God speaks one more time, and tells him, “Shalom,” “Peace.”
So what can we take way?
Israel’s state of suffering, is because of their sin and self trusting attitude, coupled with the mistrust of God that we see in Gideon’s life, all comes from lives that are mired in disobedience.
Scripture states in 1st Peter 2:20, “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.” What this tells us is that there’s a difference of suffering from sinful acts, and suffering from righteous acts. When we suffer from doing the good God calls us to, the blessings of being in God’s will follow. But suffering from sinful acts, just leads to suffering.
When we are disobedient, it’s easy to turn to God and accuse him of bringing suffering on us, but it’s us who have brought it on ourselves. When we do not love like we have been called to, when we engage in sexual lusts, when we gossip or back-bite, or slander, or indulge in addiction, we are walking straight into the suffering of our own design. And that suffering left alone, will lead to nothing but more suffering.
The cure for that is a repentant heart turning to God. Israel isn’t repentant, they’re just thinking God’s their last resort. But a truly repentant heart from a believer, always begins with God. God should be our first choice, not our last. He should be the first person we turn to, not the final one.
And when we get into the depression at the hurts that surround us, we should remember Jesus’ words in John 20:21, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
As we are called to obedience, we are also called to be in the peace of God. God desires us to rest and trust in him, and experience the peace in the middle of the world’s sin and destruction. But that is only accomplished when he is our first harbor from that destruction. That happens when we courageously walk in the call he has for us. And it only happens when we are obedient to his word, and seeking relationships that are based on passages like 1st Corinthians 13, where Paul states, “4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
And when we falter and when we fail, in our obedience, we must seek forgiveness and reconciliation, both between us and God and us and those who we have hurt. But it always starts with us. One of the things we try to instill in our children is this simple truth: The only person you can change is yourself, so to fix any problem I must begin with me. And real change only comes when I submit to God. People can be influenced by me, but unless they take it upon themselves to seek change in their own lives, I can’t fix them.
But it’s easy to try and fix ourselves by ourselves. Let us not look to ourselves in our own strength, but rather let us rely on the Lord for his, so that we might accomplish his work, for his glory.
My challenge for you this week is to read Judges 6:1-24 again and as you do ask the Lord, what relationships have you sent me into that I have not done well in showing the love you have for them. Then ask for forgiveness and to speak with that person to seek their forgiveness in that suffering. Knowing that I must seek God to change my life, and allow God to change their’s.
Let us all seek to live in the strength of our God, who calls us to his courageous life. Amen
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