Sermons

To escape the oppression of Midian, the people of Israel hid in the mountains. Gideon was threshing wheat in secret in a winepress, as though he were stealing it, when the angel of Yahweh came to him and called out, “Yahweh is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Yet even after hearing those words, Gideon argues back that all this has happened because God has abandoned them.

This is the picture of turning away from God to serve idols in times of peace, and then, when hardship comes, blaming God for not helping. God does not rebuke Gideon. He bears patiently with Gideon as he tries to excuse himself by saying he is not up to it, and promises again and again to raise him up as a judge. Even when Gideon insolently demanded a sign, the angel did not leave but waited for him, and only after the offering was accepted did Gideon realize that the one he had met was Yahweh.

At the place where the angel of Yahweh had left him, Gideon built an altar and called it ‘Yahweh Shalom.’ Gideon said he had neither resources nor wisdom, but a mighty man of valor is not someone who is strong. He is someone God is with. The faith with which one lives each day adds up to God’s reward or rebuke, so one must always keep oneself clean and ready.

Though he had been commanded to go and defeat King Jabin in battle, Barak refused to go unless Deborah went with him. As it turned out, the battle ended without difficulty, and the credit for killing the enemy commander fell to Jael, a frail woman.

Barak obeyed at once when the word promised blessing, yet faced with a command he had no confidence in, he tried to hide behind Deborah’s faith. Deborah, by contrast, led the way though she carried her own fear. When war broke out, she marked out, tribe by tribe, those who came to help and those who turned away to protect what was theirs, and preserved it all in her song.

Victory and defeat alike are God’s doing, but whether to obey or to draw back before him is each person’s own part. The portion of those who gave up what was their own to stand with the others is not the same as the portion of those who merely looked on.

Deborah brings God’s command to Barak, and with it a promise: if he leads ten thousand men to Mount Tabor, God will give Sisera and his nine hundred iron chariots into his hand. Yet Barak is afraid to go alone, and he says he will not go unless Deborah goes with him.

Deborah tells Barak that because he has not obeyed fully, the glory of this battle will go not to him but to a woman. As Barak comes down from Mount Tabor, God sends a heavy rain that floods the Kishon River and overthrows the iron chariots. Sisera flees and is killed in the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. The enemy Barak had searched for so hard is one he finds only lying dead on the ground.

God’s commands are not weighed by human judgment. Ability without resolve lets the reward prepared for someone pass to another. Obedience means stepping out without hesitation once God has answered.

When Israel cast God out of their hearts, he sold them into the hand of the king of Mesopotamia. After eight years of servitude the people cried out, and God raised up Othniel as judge to deliver them, giving them forty years of peace.

God gave Israel judges because human beings cannot save themselves. Whenever peace lasted long, Israel forgot to give thanks and fell back into sin, again and again, and each time God took up a rod such as Moab or the Philistines to turn them back. In calling those the world overlooks, like the left-handed Ehud and Shamgar, who drove back the Philistines with nothing more than an ox goad, God shows that he works not by human qualifications but by his own power.

To seek God only in times of need and cast him aside once satisfied is no different from the Israel we see here. Even so, God heard their cry and answered. Faith must be recognized not by how much or how little one owns, nor by worldly standing, but by a life lived according to the Word.

When all the elders who had served alongside Joshua had died, the people did not drive out the Canaanites but settled among them. God used the nations that remained as instruments to train Israel, and Israel took their daughters as wives, served their gods, and slowly crumbled.

It was a rod that would never have been needed had they driven those nations out from the beginning, as they were commanded. God tested his people because, watching them do what was right in their own eyes, he longed for them to turn back. Daniel passed through the same test. Knowing he would be thrown into the lions’ den, he still opened his windows toward Jerusalem and prayed, and God shut the lions’ mouths and spared his life.

Even the temple and long years of faith can be shaken when the test comes. Yet had they obeyed from the start, grace and rest would have been theirs, and God is with those who endure to the end. Daniel’s confession, “If I perish, I perish,” must become the confession of those who believe today.

Though Israel had been delivered out of Egypt, the people looked at how well the Canaanites lived, mingled with them and served their idols. When the people complained that there was no water and took up stones against Moses, he could not master his feelings and struck the rock twice, even though God had said that he himself would stand on the rock.

Just as the landowner paid a denarius even to those who came to work late, before God no sin weighs more or less, whether between those who labored early and those who labored late, or between leaders and the people. It was not so much a sense of having given more of himself as despair at a people who would not change that kept Moses from displaying God’s holiness. Grace and miracles cannot transform anyone who does not receive them with a sincere heart.

Because of the promise he himself made, and a love that would save even one soul, God remains patient through betrayal, wrath and forgiveness, over and over again. Moses died without entering Canaan, yet he later appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, his faith acknowledged. Only by persevering until the moment they meet God, and giving themselves up to the very last, will God’s people be spared a bitter end.

The angel of Yahweh comes up from Gilgal to Bochim and speaks to Israel. He says that it was he who brought them out of Egypt, he who gave them the land he swore to their fathers, and he who said he would never break his covenant. Then he rebukes them because they made a covenant with the people of Canaan and did not break down their altars. When the people hear this word, they weep aloud and offer sacrifices.

God speaks of the past again and again because his heart is heavy as he looks at his people now. If the hedge of protection is taken away, they will live among thorns and snares just like the people of the world. Yet the tears the people shed were not tears of sorrow for their sin. They wept because they were afraid of losing the blessings they had enjoyed. So even after offering sacrifices, before long they do evil again.

Peter and Judas Iscariot both betrayed Jesus, and both repented, but the outcomes were as different as heaven and earth. True humility is recognizing sin, not committing it again, and living by the word for God. God still longs for Joshua, who obeyed, and he is waiting for even one person to return with a sincere heart.

The tribes of Judah and Simeon go up together and win a great victory, driving out the people of the hill country. Yet when they see that those living in the valley have iron chariots, they hold back of their own accord.

They fail to drive them out not for lack of strength; they could have done it, and they did not. The truth that God was with them had not changed in the least, but the moment they measured themselves against an enemy who looked stronger, fear brought them to their knees. Later, even when they had grown strong, they put those peoples to forced labor rather than driving them out, bending the command to suit their own comfort.

When what can be seen looms larger than God, faith gives way at that very point. God’s word allows no compromise, and only in obedience does the soul live. God’s people must live out the confession that it is God who gives and God who takes away.

When Joshua died, Israel was left without a leader. Everyone began to do what was right in his own eyes, and in the end the people turned away from God and fell into sin, crying out to him only once foreign nations had oppressed them.

A faith that a leader lives out on the people’s behalf is not true faith. God did not raise up a new leader after Joshua because he wanted his people to remember the word they had been taught and to walk with him by a faith of their own. Sin is like a sheer wall of ice that cannot be scaled in one’s own strength; without Jesus Christ as the rope, no one can stand on the summit.

After Joshua’s death, when Israel came to God of their own accord and inquired of him, God raised up Judah and gave a great victory in the battle against Adoni-Bezek. To a people who pray to him directly and obey him even without a leader, God grants victory in the face of any power.