Gideon Pt. 1: “The God of Peace Declares War”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Reading: Judges 6:1-24
Book of Judges. Whose idea was that? You should get rid of that guy. The series we're doing is called “There Are No Heroes” and we thought it would be a good idea to do a deep dive into a book of the Bible that we don't really look at very often. Partly because if we didn't, you wouldn't know the truth that's within it. And partly because Jason and I kind of have this thing where if there's something really difficult in the Bible, we like to dive into it headfirst. So, it was no surprise when a couple of weeks ago, somebody said to me, “You know, that was a great sermon today, but I really didn't like the reading. I really think if today we were to make a new canon of the Bible, I'm not sure we'd include the book of Judges. I mean, it's kind of a dark book of the Bible, isn't it?”
Sometimes I say that Game of Thrones has nothing on the Book of Judges. It's a book so dark that Hollywood wouldn't even touch it. If they made a series on it, it'd be canceled straight away. Just too much going on in there. And yet, it's in our canon of scripture. It's part of what's supposed to inform us about the nature of God, the nature of humanity, and why we so badly need Christ. Because in here we find out that all people, even God's people, end up in these cycles, don't we? We sin against God, we cry out to God, God delivers us, we live in the blessings of God, and then after a while we kind of get forgetful, and we go back into that cycle of sin again.
It's true for Israel, it's true for the church. It's true for anyone who knows that God exists. But this specific story begins the story of Gideon and is a bit of a turning point in the life of Israel. He's a really important judge. He's so important that they give him four chapters in the Book of Judges. And the reason why he's so important is that within his story, they settle a beef with their cousin, the Midianites. We know something about beefs in the Middle East, don't we?
There's one going on right now that's really hard to track how far back it's gone. Did it begin on October 7th? Well, no, not really. Did it begin in 1948? No, not really. Did it begin in AD 70? No, not really. In fact, if you read this story, you'll find that the Holy Land has been disputed territory for thousands of years, not hundreds. And God's people have had to figure out how to be faithful to God amongst others who don't necessarily want to serve him, at least in the same way. So, what happens when God's people are doing evil in the sight of the Lord?
This beef with the Midianites goes all the way back to the Book of Numbers. When the people of Israel were on their way into the land of Canaan, they brought with them their friends. Moses was married to a Midianite woman. Jethro, one of Moses' greatest advisors, was himself a Midianite. It was in his time with the Midianites that he saw the burning bush and was called to lead the people of Israel out of slavery.
Yet, over time that relationship soured for reasons that are not quite clear, and some people started to move away from the covenant that they had made with God and began worshiping other gods. We would call it an interfaith marriage. The Book of Numbers calls it being “yoked to the Baal of Peor”, but it caused difficulties among the people. So, God told the people of Israel to wipe out that entire community. They killed all the men, all the boys, all the women that they thought had lain with an Israelite man and left only the virgins of Midian. Dark, dark story.
If we read something like that, you think what on earth could be in here that's redemptive? What on earth could possibly be in here for us to learn from, to make us better people, never mind even better Christians? Well, Paul tells us that in the new covenant, in the new creation, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this age, against forces of spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. So, if there's anything we can get out of this, it's not that it's never okay to destroy a people, to annihilate people who believe differently than you or live their lives differently than you. It's that we have to live lives of zero tolerance, not for people, but for anything that gets between us and God.
We take these stories in a spiritual sense. As Jesus said, “If your eye offends you, pluck it out. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” We are to be ruthless, not with those around us, but with the ideas, the notions, the things that lead us away from what God calls us to be. A spiritual warfare is how we need to read these texts.
When you look and you hear stories of people like the Amalekites and the Midianites who had to be destroyed in this land, I want you to think not of people, but of issues in your life that need to go. What are the things that have you bound? What are the things that have you oppressed? What are the things you're struggling to turn away from and are getting in the way of your relationship with God? How can you continue serving God when you live in a world that is so against him?
When you think about it in this way, you realize that the story makes much more sense. Because when you live in a world that is hostile to the gospel, you find yourself doing exactly what the people of Israel did. You hide your faith, don't you? The scriptures say here that the children of Israel made for themselves dens and caves and strongholds in the mountains. They didn't stop being who they were, but they had to find a hidden way of doing it because nobody wanted to hear about the God they served.
That's a temptation for us in the modern church as Christians today, isn't it — that we need to keep our faith really private. The two things we know we can't talk about in public are politics and religion. You never want to tell anybody about the Christ you serve because they might be offended by it. If somebody brings a problem to you, you want to tell them that you're thinking of them, not that you're praying for them because maybe they don't want you to pray. Your faith in Christ, your relationship with God, your chosenness by God becomes something that you hide in a den, in a cave, in a mountain, in a certain space, because you're trying to live amongst the people who are hostile to him. But when we do that, we find that in our desire to live amongst others, we end up worshipping the gods of a culture. And the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, when we do that, we are controlled by whatever we worship.
If you bow down to social media, you will be oppressed by the need for attention. If you bow down to your desire to need something to make you feel better every time, you'll found yourself bound and oppressed by a substance or by a habit. Whatever you bow down to, whatever you worship, will have dominion and control over you.
Paul even finds this in the New Testament when he's talking about his relationship with God. He says in Romans seven, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin who dwells in me.”
All of us who follow God have to deal with this struggle. The things that we bow to, the things that we spend our time and our resources on seem to have a bind on us. And so, Israel cries out to God, “God, we need you to save us!” But this time God doesn't immediately send a deliverer. The first time he sent Ehud, The next time he sent Deborah, but this time he sends an unnamed prophet. The messenger comes not with a guarantee that God is going to set them free, no. The messenger comes with a warning. He says:
I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. I delivered you out of the house of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all who oppressed you. I drove them out before you, and gave you their land. Also, I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God. Do not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ You have not obeyed my voice. Do not fear the gods of this world. Do not fear that thing that looks like it has oppression over you. Do not fear that thing that binds you and causes you to feel like you can't follow God the way you've been called to follow him. Obey God's voice is the word of the Lord today.
While all this is going on, there's a man called Gideon threshing out wheat in a wine press. It's a strange place to do that really. Traditionally, when you're threshing out wheat, you would do it out in public, out where everyone could see it. But he’s trying to hide their goods from the Midianites in a place of obscurity. He's in a winepress, hiding, trying to conserve the resources they have left so that he can give to the people of God. It's in that place of obscurity, that place where nobody sees him serving, that the Angel of the Lord appears to Gideon. He says, “God is with you, O mighty man of valour.”
Now, Gideon completely misses the point when the angel says, “God is with you,” he turns and says, “If God is with us,” and that's an easy mistake to make in English. In English, we only have one word for you. It's you. But in most languages, there are two. There's one for the singular and there's one for the plural, and when the angel of the Lord spoke to Gideon, he said, “God is with you (singular), O mighty man of valour!”
In other words, what God's about to do in this situation is he's going to bless the universal by using the particular. God has a way of choosing one to bless the many. God singles out Gideon saying, “You mighty man of valour, I am with you and I want to use you to bless Israel.”
My word for you today, friends, is that God sees you in your place of obscurity. The one who's doing things that nobody sees you doing. Maybe you think God can't use me because I don't know how to share the gospel with anyone, but you can sit down at a meal and share kindness with somebody who otherwise would have been alone. Maybe you're saying, I don't know how to say grandiose prayers in public. But when you're at home by your bedside, you can kneel down and offers up prayers for the world, for God's people, for this church, for that one who you know needs help.
Maybe you're not a great singer or a great artist, but you can share the beauty of what God has done in your life with somebody else. Maybe you think nobody notices the little things you're doing to try to make the world a better place. But God sees you, mighty champion. When you greet people at the front door, God sees you, mighty champion. When you shine our silver crosses and get ready for communion, God sees you, mighty champion. When you sit on a committee, when you greet your friends with love, when you open up your home to people who need somewhere to be. When you do the thing, you think nobody notices, when you're doing the next right thing that you can, God sees you, O mighty champion.
When we hear that, the first thing we think is, how can this possibly be for me? How can God have chosen me? How can it be? I can understand if God was with us. I can understand if God was with the church. I can understand if God is with our country. But you want me to believe that God is with me? That Jesus died for me? That God before the foundation of the world knew who I was going to be and selected me personally? Yes, my friends, that's exactly what I'm saying to you today, because God is the God of all peoples who will believe, but all peoples who will believe, believe individually.
There's a sense in which you have to start thinking about God's salvation as something that is for you personally. Yes, Jesus came for the world, but he also came for you, specifically you, and has a plan for your life that can touch every single person around you. Everything you have experienced, everything you've done, everything you've felt has brought you to this place where the Angel of the Lord can guide you into God's mission for your life.
So, Gideon finds it hard to accept this news that God is somehow going to use him to do something mighty. Because after all, as many of us feel sometimes in our lives, he realizes that he's not that incredible a person really, is he? He says, “My family is the weakest clan in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” Gideon is the lowest of the lowest of the lowest, but we serve a God who takes pleasure in using the useless.
God absolutely revels in seeking out the insignificant. Those who you never think could do anything special and using them for His glory. Why? Because if God used someone who was great, it wouldn't be so obvious it was God, would it? God hasn't chosen you because you're so amazing. God hasn't chosen you because you're so talented. God hasn't even chosen you because of your great faith. God has chosen you because he felt like it, because he looked at you and said, wouldn't it be cool if I took that one and use them to bless the world?
And because of that unmerited favour, because it's nothing that we have done and nothing that we are that earns the grace of God, we have absolutely no reason to boast when God calls us to be mighty champions. This is what Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter two and verse eight. He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
What does that mean? That means your faith in God, your decision to turn and follow Jesus has nothing to do with you. The fact that you believe Jesus died for your sins and rose again and you want to follow Jesus, that is nothing to do with you. That is a gift of faith that God gave to you out of his good pleasure. Paul also said in 2 Corinthians that that grace, that unmerited favour is sufficient for you. So, no matter what it is that has you bound, no matter what it is that makes you feel like you're unworthy or unable to do what God has called you to do, you are in good company today, my friends, because Paul had to deal with exactly the same thing. He said, “Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’”
Weakness: God's strength is made perfect by the fact that you can't do it. God's strength is made perfect by the very fact that you are inadequate. God's strength is made perfect by everything that you think might separate you from God. His grace is sufficient for you and by his good pleasure, he points at you in your insignificant space, in your obscurity, in the place where nobody sees you at all and says, “You specifically, I am with you, O mighty champion.”
What do we do with that? If God has chosen us and called us out for a specific purpose, if God pours out his love upon us, even though we don't deserve it and wants to use us for his good pleasure, then how do we react? How do we take victory over the gods that threaten to separate us from him? Well, we do the same thing that Gideon does. We bring to God our gifts. We bring to God that which we have, and we say, “God, if I have found favour in your sight, God, if it's true that you've poured out your grace upon me, God, if it's true that you've chosen me to do something in this world, then give me a sign.”
Isn't that what we all want today, friends? We want God to show us something. We want God to make it clear what he wants us to do and show us the way so that we can perform it. But now we don't always get signs in the same way that Gideon did. It would be really nice if we could go home and after we got up from our knees an angel would appear in our room and take an offering, and it would go up in smoke and then we'd know exactly what we had to do.
But God has given us a sign, my friend. He came in the person of Jesus Christ and his body was broken for our healing. His blood was shed for our redemption. So that we might know that he has given his grace to us, his grace that none of us deserve, so that we could see God's love poured out in front of all of us. He gave himself on that cross. And then, just in case we'd stay in a cycle where we keep forgetting about the grace of God, He left us a sign. He invited us to a table where He showed us His body as bread and His blood as wine.
He wants you to know today, that this is your bread for the journey. That this is your strength for the battle that is to come. That whatever it is you're trying to deal with in your life that you feel might separate you from God, God wants you to be reminded today of the unmerited favour - of the grace that he has poured out specifically for you. And so, I invite you today to the table so you can feast on his body, so that you can drink of his blood, and so that you can be strengthened, be nourished, be refreshed, and be reminded that the Lord is with you, mighty champion. Thanks be to God. Amen.