So, Judges chapter six, and we'll
read from verse 36 in a few minutes. The whole of this chapter really
is telling us about another of the judges that God raised up
as deliverers of the children of Israel. And this judge is
called Gideon. So after the death of Deborah
and Barak that we thought about last week, The opening of this
chapter now tells us that once again, Israel turned to idolatry. It seems to have been a regular
and frequent failing of these people, that as soon as a strong
hand of leadership was removed, the people immediately went back
to their idolatrous practices. And we discover that as a result
of these sins, that the Lord delivered Israel into the hand
of Midian. So the Midianites were a people
from the east of the River Jordan, and
they were a desert people, a nomadic people primarily. And they were
in the practice of spoiling the land of Canaan. They would enter
the land of Canaan, perhaps as raiding parties, perhaps in larger
groups. They would bring their animals,
they would bring their tents, and they would lay waste to the
countryside around about them. And this is what happened and
was happening over a series of years. For seven years, these
Midianites and a number of other nations with them, called the
Children of the East, they raided the land each year and robbed
the people of their goods and their crops. But once again,
when the people cried to the Lord, the Lord determined that
He would raise up a judge to deliver Israel as a picture for
them, even in those Old Testament days, even in those early days
of the judges. He would raise up these deliverers
pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ who would be the great judge
and deliverer, who would deliver his people from all their sins
and for all time. And so in the raising up of this
man Gideon, we find in verse 11 that the angel of the Lord
came to this man Gideon. Gideon was of the tribe of Manasseh,
came to this man Gideon as he was secretly threshing corn in
a wine press. in order to hide it from the
Midianites. So that's quite a picture that
we have here. Here is this man. and he's in
a wine press, so that's a place where grapes would be trodden
out, and he is threshing, which is not usually the way that you
prepare corn and separate the corn from the husks, but that's
what he was doing, and it was all intended to be as secret
as possible, because he knew that there were roaming Midianites,
that if they saw him with a crop, if they saw him with anything
valuable, they would come and take it from him. And so here
is this Gideon and he's in the winepress and he is secretly
threshing corn. And the angel of the Lord comes
and speaks to him. Now actually, what I think we
discover from this passage as well is that in verse 14, there
is a strong suggestion that this is not an ordinary angel. This is rather the uncreated
Lord Jesus himself, the Son of God in a pre-incarnation appearance. So that here is the Lord visiting. Although it says the angel of
the Lord, It is the Lord who looks upon Gideon and the Lord
who speaks to Gideon and therefore it's the Lord himself. We call
this a theophany. It's a bit of a complicated word
I suppose but it just tells us that this was God appearing as
a man. So this appears to be one of
those occasions in scripture where the Lord Jesus Christ came
before his birth in Bethlehem so many hundreds of years later,
the Lord Jesus sometimes met with his people in the Old Testament
and this is an example. And the purpose of the visit
was to draw out Gideon and encourage him to make a first act of local
resistance against the idol worship that was prevalent at that time
in Israel, that was taking place in his own city, and indeed,
in fact, we learn, was also performed in his own family home. Gideon was to take a stand against
that locally, but that was a precursor, that was just the beginning of
his work, because it was the purpose of the Lord, as it was
explained to Gideon, that he would lead an alliance of tribes
against the Midianite army, and the Lord promised that he would
be with Gideon and secure a victory for Israel. Now the angel of
the Lord engaged Gideon in conversation and it's clear from what... Gideon
replies to the angel that Gideon was a man of faith and he longed
for the past times when Israel had trusted and worshipped the
Lord. So not everyone in Israel was
an idol worshipper. There were those who were, as
at all times in the history of the church, a remnant people
that God preserved. But Gideon was at a loss to explain
how the nation could be recovered. He knew that there was a problem,
but he didn't know what the solution was. The Lord, thought Gideon,
had left Israel. He says to the angel of the Lord,
he says, the Lord hath forsaken us and delivered us into the
hands of the Midianites. So the Lord in turn gave Gideon
some promises. He says in verse 14, the Lord
looked upon him. There seems to have been something
powerful in that look. But the Lord looked upon him
and said, go in this thy might and thou shalt save Israel from
the hand of the Midianites. Have not I sent thee? And then the Lord goes on. Surely
I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as
one man. I imagine that Gideon looked
at the angel of the Lord when he said these things to him and
thought to himself, who is this? Who is this that is speaking
to me like this? Who is this that is telling me
that I am going to be the defeater, the deliverer of the children
of Israel and defeat the armies of the Midianites? And that was
a question that Gideon had. Who is this that is speaking
to me? And here we have the first occasion
when Gideon asked for a sign from the Lord. It was clear to
Gideon that this person to whom he spoke was an important person. But how could a poor man from
a poor family raise an army and fight such a mighty enemy? Gideon trusted the Lord. but
he also asked for a sign to confirm the power and the authority of
the person to whom he was speaking. For the sake of Gideon's doubt,
the Lord agreed to give him a sign. So Gideon went home, he cooked
some food for the angel of the Lord, and he returned with a
gift of a meal. for the Lord to eat. However, we discover that the
Lord did not eat the meal and instead he told Gideon to place
it at the top of a large rock where he touched it with the
end of his staff and there arose a fire out of the rock and consumed
the meal, consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. So Gideon had cooked meat, he
had baked cakes, he had covered it all in a broth so it was all
sodden and saturated and now it had been consumed in fire
as the angel of the Lord touched it with the tip of his staff. And this was Gideon's sign, an
offering accepted upon the rock. And that night he followed the
word of the Lord, and he did what the angel had commanded,
what the Lord had commanded. He cut down the grove of trees
where idol worship was made, and he destroyed the altar of
Baal, the idol god that the children of Israel were worshipping at
this time, and he offered a bullock from his own home, it was his
father's bullock, on a newly built altar in the proper manner
as the Lord had commanded. So that took place in the night
after this experience with the Lord near the winepress. But then the following morning
we discover that the men of the city were angry and they looked
for Gideon in order to kill him. But Gideon's father wisely stopped
them and he says to these men, You don't need to be fighting
Baal's battles. You don't need to be fighting
the battles of this god that we are worshipping. If Baal is
a real god, let Baal plead against him. Gideon, because he had thrown
down his altar." That was a wise approach by Gideon's father. Ordinarily, Gideon would expect
to be protected by his family, but the father was wise in the
way that he spoke here. He said, let Baal do his own
dirty work. You don't need to be fighting
Baal's cause. And then after that we're told
that the Midianites and their army gathered against Israel. And perhaps it was a show of
strength to collect the annual tribute and just make sure that
everybody was still afraid of them. Or maybe it was because
they had heard that there was unrest in the land. Either way,
this was the opportunity for Gideon to exercise the Lord's
command and we are told that the Spirit of the Lord came upon
him, he blew a trumpet and he sent messengers to nearby tribes
to gather up an army. and the men from Asher and Zebulun
and Naphtali joined together with men of Manasseh and assembled
with Gideon before the Lord. And then we discover that Gideon
asks for another sign. And perhaps it was to reconfirm
his own faith. But I think it's more likely
that it was a sign that he sought for those men who were gathering
with him to battle. a sign that would show them that
the Lord was with them and would deliver them as Gideon had said
he would. And the account of Gideon's fleece,
because that's what the sign was about, the sign of Gideon's
fleece, quite a famous part of the story of Gideon and that's
what we're going to read in verse 36. So, Georges chapter 6 and
verse 36 says this. And Gideon said unto God, If
thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, behold,
I will put a fleece of wool in the floor, and if the dew be
on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside,
then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as
thou hast said. And it was so, for he rose up
early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed
the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. And Gideon said
unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will
speak but this once. Let me prove, I pray thee, but
this once with the fleece. Let it now be dry only upon the
fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did
so that night, for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there
was dew on all the ground. So the Lord graciously and patiently
allowed Gideon these additional signs and in so doing he supplied
the encouragement that Gideon and his soldiers needed to face
the Midianites, confident in the Lord's help. Now, there are
going to be some other surprises still to come in the story of
Gideon, but we shall have to keep those for another day. Here's just a couple of applications
that I want to make for us today with respect to what we've learned
so far with regard to Gideon. And it's this, really. Gideon's
request for signs. on these different occasions
did not necessarily indicate his unbelief. Although, perhaps
we ought not to be too surprised if this man did harbour doubts
about what the Lord was asking him to do. Gideon was just a
young man, it appears that he still was in his youth or perhaps
early twenties at this time. And yet it was a great responsibility
for him to be seen as the leader of the Lord's people. We ought
rather to thank the Lord for his indulgence of Gideon's weaknesses
than criticise Gideon for a lack of faith. The question perhaps
that we all wonder is this, is it right for me to ask for signs
from the Lord if I have doubts and I don't know what to do? Well here's what I want to say
about that. Firstly this, today God speaks
to us through his word. He doesn't speak to us face to
face as he did with Gideon and had done with Moses and even
with the Apostle Paul. When the Lord speaks in the Bible,
he is to be believed and he is to be obeyed. And that is why
it is important for us to know what the scriptures say, to know
what the scriptures teach, and why reading the Bible and hearing
the gospel preached is an important and essential part of our learning
about God. And what about day-to-day decisions? Again, the Word of God is our
guide. The Word of God will either have
a direct answer or it will supply to us a principle about how we
should act in every situation of our life. As we learn about
the Lord, we will be wiser and we will be able to make good
decisions and plans about how we should act. what we do and
how we should live. I know that as young people,
we often have lots of questions, we often have doubts, we often
have uncertainties about what we should do. Actually, I'll
tell you, those doubts and uncertainties don't go away with age. We will
always have questions about how we should be living and what
we should be doing. But as we become familiar with
the Word of God, as we become aware of what the Lord would
have us do and how he would have us live, rather than asking for
signs, we should be asking for wisdom to properly discern what
is important and what we should weigh and how we should weigh
alternatives and options on the basis of God's teaching in his
word. And maybe you're wondering, should
I ever ask for a sign from God? Well, God does give us signs. He gives us signs in providence. He gives us signs in the way
in which he deals with us in the circumstances of life. And he gives us wisdom as we
understand his ways and his word. Signs in the Bible are given
to prove the authority and the power of the speaker. not to
make decisions by. And we already know the power
and authority of God. We know it from his coming into
this world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and we know
it from all the signs and wonders, the miracles that he performed
right up to his dying and rising again from the dead. There is
no question about the power and authority of God. It's not that
we're wondering who is this person and can he be trusted? We do not need personal signs
to prove God's power. And my advice is, if you don't
know what to do in a particular situation, take your doubts,
take your questions to the Lord in prayer, and ask for his help,
ask for his direction, ask for wisdom to make right decisions. and then wait on the Lord to
give you more light on the matter. And God will make his will clear
without us holding him to ransom by demanding a sign or saying
to him that we're going to do something anyway. Today the Lord
calls for faith. The Lord has shown himself to
us. He has done all that is necessary
for our salvation and he has promised to lead and to guide
and to direct and to supply all our needs if we will trust him
and wait on his timing. That's not always easy to do,
I know that. But we shouldn't rush and we
should not try to rush the Lord. It is better to wait upon the
Lord, better to wait on his timing than rush ahead when the will
of the Lord has not been made clear to us. Let us learn what
it is to have faith in Christ. Let us Know that trusting the
Lord is not simply a one-off decision, but an everyday experience
as we build our relationship of trust and confidence in our
Saviour. He has promised never to leave
us or to forsake us. And even if things appear unclear,
or even if they seem to be going wrong, We can trust in him, depend
on him and he will never let us down. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us today. Amen.