Mighty Warrior (With Right Understanding)
- This is taking place during the time period of Judges, before Israel had cried out for a king.
Chap 6:1 The Israelites have again done evil in the eyes of the Lord.
Verse 6 After seven years of this, they finally cry to God for help.
Verse 8-10 A Prophet begins to tell them, and us, what this evil was they have been doing for the last seven years.
- First, they have forgotten what God has done for them in the past.
- Second, they failed to live out God’s one primary command. Don’t worship the gods of the people around you.
Verse 12 Gideon is hiding in his wine press to try and protect his wheat, not a very courageous or warrior like act, and yet the angel of the Lord appears to him and calls him “mighty warrior.”
- Why? because of something Gideon did? No! because the Lord is with him.
Verse 13 Gideon tries to claim that they remember what God has done, but it’s clear they didn’t gain right understanding of who God is from those events.
- They saw the miracles for miracles sake, they didn’t learn what they meant about God.
- They didn’t lead to right understanding.
Verse 14 I love this statement, “Go in the strength you have.” ESV “Go in this might of yours”
- The angel, now referred to as “the Lord,” ignores Gideon’s comments and simply tells Gideon to go
- Remember he is still hiding in his wine press, living in a cave.
- The strength you have is enough if God is with you.
- If God sends you, or calls you to it, then you have enough strength.
Verse 16 The Lord again just repeats the promise that He will be with them and that will be enough.
Verse 25-26 Before the Lord can deliver Israel, their sin and the sin of the land has to be atoned for.
- Baal was obviously a foreign god of the Midianites and other nations.
- The Asherah pole was an object of worship of yet another foreign god Asherah
- These two represent the idols the 2nd Commandment prohibited.
The evil: This is the evil that God referred to in the first verse.
- This is called syncretism, the blending of different beliefs and gods.
- They had lost sight of the one true God, they had taken on the beliefs and worship of the foreign gods.
- We are not immune to this today. We live in a land filled with many false gods and other beliefs systems.
Removal: Part of this atonement process that the angel is leading Gideon through required both the sacrifice of the animal, but also removing and tearing down these objects of worship. The same holds true for us.
- Finding those things in our belief system that aren’t based on right understanding of who God is.
- We need to get before the Lord and ask Him to show us, “what do I believe about you that is not true of you.”
Verse 30 Wow, to what an extent they have forgotten the command not to worship others gods.
- And, where is this kind of zeal for the one true God.
Verse 31 This is a brilliant statement by Joash. If these gods are real, let them defend themselves.
- We are all mighty Warriors when we have right understanding of who God is.