From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Cowardly Warrior

Sermon in a Sentence: Actually, I didn’t have one going in . . . but more on that later.

Text(s): Judges 6-7

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 12 out of 10,This was one of my toughest nights in youth ministry ever.  The game took a little extra prep, getting audio clips ready for “Name that Tune.”  That  alone would have made it a 7 out of 10.  But what knocked this one out of the park difficulty-wise was an incredible headache, intensified exponentially by our stage lights.  After struggling through the game and music, I had to go to house lights for the teaching time and even then the headache was so bad I couldn’t think straight.  We made it through the night, but I know my teaching was adversely affected.

Message Summary:

We’re in week four of our Heroes series for Junior High. We’re working our way through the Old Testament book of Judges, seeing what we can learn from the people God chose to change their world.  As always we started with a “where we left off” review.  I was impressed at how well my students remembered the heroes from the first three weeks of the series; they even remembered Othaniel, a guy who played only a minor part in week one of the series.

From there I made sure everyone had a copy of the two chapters from Judges that we’d be dealing with, and then we talked about the story of Gideon.

We talked about Israel’s rebellion: the way that, like so many times before, Israel returned to their idolatrous ways and forgot the God who delivered them from Egypt and called them into the promised land.

We talked about the retribution the faced.  I always have a hard time with that word, retribution. It sounds as if God is punishing his people in order to get even with them for turning their backs on him.  (The word, literally, means “pay back” after all.)  What Israel faced was not retribution in this sense for a couple of reasons.  First, this is not a wronged God lashing out at his people.  Rather he is exposing them to the consequences that he warned them about before they embarked on the journey from Sinai to Canaan.  He told them up front this would happen if they abandoned him, and he’s allowing it according to his word.  Secondly, God’s purpose in this retribution is not revenge, but redemption.  His plan is for their suffering to bring his people to a place of repentance.  Hardly retribution in the normal sense of the word.

However, the people did suffer because of their rebellion.  This time their suffering came at the hands of the people of Midian.  Occupants of the northern part of the Sinai peninsula, the Midianites traced their ancestry to Abraham.  Yes, that Abraham.  We normally think of Abraham as the father of Isaac, an only child.  Maybe, if we really know our Old Testament, we remember that before Isaac, Abraham “begat”  Ishmael, a son by his wife’s maidservant, Hagar.  What even fewer remember is that after Sarah’s death, Abraham remarried, and his new wife, Keturah, gave him six more sons.  The fourth of those sons was Midian.

Unlike Eglon and the Moabites (Judges 3), the Midianites did not capture and occupy Israelite territory.  Instead their oppression came in the form of raiding parties who would invade the land, stealing what they wanted from the Israelite farms and ruining what crops they didn’t take with their camps and grazing herds.   For seven years Israel suffered at the hands of the Midianites.

That’s when they were finally brought to repentance.  After suffering so long, Israel cried out to God for help.

And God raised up a redeemer to rescue his people.

This time his chosen redeemer was a man named Gideon.  We first meet Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress.  Yeah, a winepress.  Surely this was more difficult than the normal way of threshing wheat.  Why would Gideon be doing it this way instead of the normal way?  Too frightened of the Midianites?  Clever enough to find away to shelter his crops from their raiding parties?

When God shows up to reveal his calling to this farmer hiding in a winepress, he greets him in a surprising way.  “”The LORD is with you, mighty warrior (Judges 6:12, NIV).”

Gideon is surprised by this greeting, especially the part about God being with him.  “If God’s with us,” he asks, “why are we suffering so much at the hands of the Midianites?”

God answers the question by calling Gideon to action.  “”Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you (Judges 6:14, NIV)?”

This time Gideon has a problem with the “strength that you have” part.  “I’m the weakest member of the weakest clan in my tribe,” he says. “What strength are you talking about?”

God replies, “”I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together (Judges 6:16, NIV).”

But Gideon wants proof.  “Wait here,” he says, “while I go get a sacrifice.”  Despite the famine caused by the Midianite oppression, he returns with a goat, a loaf of bread made from an ephah of flour (that’s almost 6 gallons of flour!), and broth from the meat.  He places the bread and meat on a rock in front of the stranger, pours the broth over it, and then stands back. The visitor touches the sacrifice with his staff, fire springs up from the rock and consumes the meal.

Obviously he’s in the presence of God, and now Gideon’s really afraid.  No one sees God and lives.  But God says “Peace” and reassures Gideon that he has nothing to fear.  When God leaves, Gideon calls the place “The Lord is my Peace.”

After returning home, Gideon begins the work of ridding Israel of it’s idolatry, tearing down the Asherah poles and burning the altars to Baal.  He earns himself a new nickname, a few enemies, and a reputation.

Then God sends word that the time has come to lead Israel against Midian.  Gideon, even though he’s sure it’s God, wants to be sure this is God’s plan.  So a second time he asks for proof.  “I’ll set a fleece outside, and if in the morning the fleece is wet with dew, while the grass all around it is dry, I’ll know this is of you.”

And in the morning, the fleece is wet, the ground dry.  But Gideon still wants more proof.  “One last test.  Same thing.  Fleece outside, but this time, make the fleece dry and the grass wet.”

Proof provided, issue settled, Gideon musters Israel for battle.  Some 32,000 men show up to fight.  And God says
“That’s too many.”  For seven years the combined strength of Israel has been insufficient to throw off the yoke of Israelite oppression.  But God says they have too many men.  “Tell anyone who is scared they’re allowed to go home.”

Gideon obeys and 22,000 men head home. Gideon’s army has gone from 32,000 to 10,000 before the first battle has begun.

“Nope, still too many.  March them to the river, and I’ll sort them out there.”  When they arrive at the river, the men prepare to drink.  God instructs Gideon to watch.  “Those who put their face down to the water and drink from the river, send those men home.  Keep only those who use their hands to lift the water from the river to their mouths and drink from their hands.”

Gideon obeys and the size of his army falls to a mere 300 men.

“That’s about right” says God.

We can only wonder what Gideon thought.  That morning he had over 32,000 men and wasn’t sure that would be enough.  Now he’s down to just 300.  He was obvioulsy a little nervous.  So God says, “If you’re nervous, sneak into your enemy’s camp and listen, just listen.”  Gideon sneaks into the Midianite camp along with a servant.  He arrives just in time to hear one of the Midianites telling a fellow soldier about a dream he had that seems to portend doom for the Midianite army.  What’s more, the friend has already heard of Gideon, Israel’s mighty warrior, who is surely on the verge of victory.

Emboldened, Gideon returns to his troops, all 300 of them, and gives them some surprising instructions.

“Take a trumpet in one hand and clay jars with torches inside in the other hand, and do what I do.”

“Umm, boss, what about our swords?  Our shields?  Our hands are full of trumpets and torches.  This is no way to march into battle!”

“Don’t worry.  Trust me. Trumpet in one hand, torch in the other, do what I do. When I give the sign, blow your trumpet and shout ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”

Gideon and his troops surround the Midianites in the middle of the night.  When everyone is in place, Gideon breaks open his jar so the torch is visible and then blows his trumpet.  The men follow his lead, and shout “For the Lord and for Gideon!”

The Midianites, looking up, seeing all the lights and assuming they are surrounded by even more soldiers, panic.  In the confusion they can’t tell the difference between friend and foe, and before long they are killing their fellow soldiers in an attempt to flee.  In the end, they pose no threat to Gideon and his soldiers who drive them from the Promised Land.

Having told the story of Gideon, we did something different.  Rather than me telling students what the point of the story was, I gave them to opportunity to write their own sermons.  Not long speeches, but simple sentences which revealed the “moral of the story.”

Among the sermons in a sentence that they came up with were:

1. You can do anything if you trust God.
2. God can use anyone to accomplish his purpose.
3. When God looks at you, he sees your potential, not just who you are right now.
4. Victory comes when we depend on God’s strength and not our own.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Our Hero game this week was a Hero-themed game of “Name that Tune.”  I collected the theme songs from several cartoon hero TV shows (Batman Brave and the Bold, Clone Wars, Codename: Kids Next Door, Powerpuff Girls, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Superman, Justice League, Spiderman, and two more I’m not remembering right now.) Two contestants faced off and bid on how many seconds they would need to figure it out.  It was an auction-type bid where one student gave a time, and the other student had a chance to bid lower.  If one student felt they couldn’t do it any faster, the person with the lowest bid got to go first.  If they got the show right, they earned some money and got to stay to face the next challenger.  If they didn’t the other student got a chance to do it in the time they bid. (e.g. student #1 bids four seconds, student #2 bids three seconds, student #1 decides not to bid lower.  If student #2 can’t get it in three seconds, student #1 tries it with four.)  If neither student got it right in their bid time, we played the entire clip and the first person to yell out the right answer got money and a chance to face the next challenger.

Worship Set: Sing Sing Sing, O Praise Him, Hosanna, Revelation Song

Favorite Moment: On a night I was struggling so much with a headache, it was hard to pick out anything as a favorite moment, but I think the band sounded better than usual.  We had a lot of fun with the music last night.