God's Glory Church

Last time we started talking about how Christ came to announce judgment to the nations. But His mission was not only to proclaim judgment, HE came to bring victory to judgment! God has an answer to the iniquities that are happening around us. He wants believers to become judges of their land. And that is why I would like to figure out with you how to become God’s judge and is this even possible for us today?

The story we are looking at took place during the period when Israel was ruled by judges. Before Gideon, the judge-ruler was Deborah, a woman chosen by God, under whose reign “the earth rested forty years” (Judges 5:31). However, this peace could not last forever. Judges 6:1-6 says:

“The children of Israel [again] began to do evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years…”

After forty years of peace and quiet, Israel found itself under the yoke of the Midianites. As we can see from the text, the Midianites caused such damage to Israel that there was not “a sheep, an ox, or a donkey left for Israel to eat” (Judges 6:4). However, all these troubles did not befall Israel by accident.

It was precisely because of the unbearable oppression of their enemies that the Israelites cried out to the Lord. And, by the way, this has happened more than once. Very often they committed evil in the eyes of God by worshiping idols, but as soon as disaster befell them, they turned from evil and sought the true God. Very similar to us today, but unfortunately, this happens again and again, both at the level of nations and at the level of the average person.

In response to the prayers of the Israelites, God sent a prophet who brought to them His word, convicting them of what they had done. And His next action was to call a man named Gideon. Here’s what Judges 6:11-12 says:

“Then the angel of the Lord came and sat at Ophrah under an oak tree belonging to Joash, a descendant of Abiezer; His son Gideon was then beating wheat in a wine press to hide from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him: The Lord is with you, a mighty man!”

Let’s pay attention to how God, in the person of this angel, welcomes Gideon. He calls him “a strong man.” But Gideon was just a young guy, secretly thrashing wheat to hide it from the Midianites. And yet, in the eyes of God, he was a strong man, a man who, as we will see later, trusted God and followed Him, obediently carrying out all His instructions.

Therefore, the first thing I would like to draw your attention to is that for God it doesn’t matter who we are now, for Him it is much more important who we can become with Him!

Gideon, as you and I often did, questioned the fact that God was with Israel given all the troubles that befell them. And yetthe problem was not that God was not with them, but that THEY were not with God. In response to Gideon’s questions, God commanded him to act, promising that he would be the deliverer of Israel. “I am sending you,” God told him. Indeed, he was sent by God himself. Gideon could not decide on such a feat himself. He was busy beating wheat in a winepress and was only thinking about how the Midianites wouldn’t notice him! So often we are so busy with our daily “important” affairs that we have no time to seek God, much less do anything for Him.

God continued to speak to Gideon. Judges 6:25-27 says that God commanded Gideon to destroy his father’s altar of Baal and cut down the sacred tree that grew near it. The existence of this altar and sacred tree, and the anger of the people at their destruction, confirm the fact that the evil committed by Israel before the Lord was idolatry. But before he could become a judge for all Israel, Gideon had to become a judge for his own sin and the sin of his family. We cannot take responsibility for others if we do not first take responsibility for our lives and for the lives of those people whom God has placed in our environment. No one will follow us, and no one will trust us with their destinies if we cannot bring order to our lives.

This is precisely the second lesson from this story – God’s judge must become a judge, first of all, for himself, and only by dealing with sin in his life can he help others!

But the wonderful news is that all God needs is your desire and my desire to answer His call to become a judge for our generation. And the process of becoming itself is not difficult – it’s to trust God that He will be with us and begin to put things in order, first in our lives, and then, under God’s guidance, in the lives of those whom the Lord entrusts to us!