Freedom from Oppression

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Transcript:

This morning we’re going to be in Judges chapter 6, chapter 7, and chapter 8. I promise we’re not going to go through every verse. There won’t be time.

I will just warn you up front, it’s not that I think any parts of the story are unimportant or that I’m trying to hide any of the text from you. There’s just not time to go through all of it. So there will be some summarizing this morning.

But this is the last message in the series that I’ve been doing on freedom, as we’ve been in the month of July. And this one was kind of a hard one. Up to now, I’ve talked about spiritual freedom.

I’ve talked about the freedom from sin, freedom from consequences of sin, freedom from condemnation, I should say, the eternal consequences of sin, freedom to serve other people. This morning, I want to talk to you about freedom from oppression. and you may wonder why we’re talking about this.

It’s an aspect of freedom. I maybe could have started with this one since the 4th of July was at the beginning of the month but really I wanted to start with the spiritual freedoms because that’s where all freedom comes from. We’re only truly free if we’re free in Christ and so as much as I cherish our political freedoms it wouldn’t matter to us all that much in the great scheme of things if we didn’t have Jesus Christ, if we weren’t free in Christ. we would end up a bunch of free people on our way to hell.

And so we start with the spiritual freedom, but it leads to outward freedom. And we can look at this and say, but we’re a free country. Why do we need to talk about this?

And I don’t know if anybody else felt this way or not, or if it was just me, but I have always been pretty patriotic, as far back as I can remember. You know, growing up, even today, I hear the Star Spangled Banner and it brings tears to my eyes and the fireworks. And, you know, it was nothing unusual for me to get choked up at the 4th of July.

This year I didn’t. And it’s the first time I remember not being choked up at the 4th of July. And it’s not because I love our country any less than I used to, but I feel like something has changed in the last few years.

and it seems to me that we’re just not quite as free as we used to be. And I know we could stand here and point fingers, point blame. We could say it was Obama.

Well, you know, looking back, some of it started under Bush too and probably earlier than that. It’s the Democrats. It’s the Republicans.

It’s all of them. We’re losing our freedoms a little bit at a time. And you don’t believe me that we’re not as free as we used to be.

Go to some parts of the country and try to stand on a street corner on a little soapbox and preach the gospel. There are people who are arrested in this country for speaking because people don’t like what they have to say. We’re just not quite as free as we used to be.

And I fear that, you know, and I promise you this whole message is not on politics. It’s on freedom and that God, I think, desires for us to be free and how we can avoid losing that and how we can get it back if we do lose it. It’ll be, you know what, it’s easier to keep it than it is to get it back.

but how we can adhere to godly principles and get it back if we do lose it. Because I’ve said the last few years, I fear that we are, and you know what, both parties are to blame, but I fear we’re slipping into a dictatorship. And folks, God doesn’t intend for it to be that way.

I’ve told you for weeks that people say, well, you can use the Bible to say anything. No, you can misuse the Bible to say anything. The Bible has a definite meaning to the words.

It’s only if we ignore the meanings of the words we can make the Bible say anything. And I read back and see where people tried to go back to the Bible and justify slavery back in the 1800s. The Bible does not justify slavery, certainly not in the way we had it in this country.

They did have slavery in the Old Testament. It was sort of a situation where God said, okay, if you’re going to do this anyway, you’re not going to mistreat them. There are going to be rules about how you can.

But it doesn’t mean God looked on it and said, yay, slavery. God created man to be free and to walk with him. And I believe that’s been God’s desire for us all along.

That’s why so much of the Bible is about our spiritual freedom and really the freedom that flows from that. You can’t read through the pages of the Old Testament without coming across story after story after story where God’s people were oppressed and he set them free because God desired them to be free and to walk with him. So we’re going to talk this morning about freedom from oppression.

I believe it is God’s desire that people should be free. I have real trouble with the idea that God, as good as he is and as strong and powerful, those words don’t even begin to cover it, God, if he wanted to, could force us to do the right thing. And yet he doesn’t.

And that tells me that God values freedom. Now, I know that God wants everybody to do the right thing. God wants everybody to love him and walk with him.

But it tells me that God wants us to do those things freely, to choose those things freely. And I want to look this morning at an instance in Judges chapter 6 where things got out of hand and the people became oppressed because they forgot God. And again, I’m not going to read through everything.

I may read through all of chapter 6, but we’re not going to read through all of chapter 7 and 8 because there’s just too much of it. But it says, starting in Judges chapter 6, verse 1, And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And this evil that they did, it wasn’t just that they were sinning and God said, okay, you know, you told one lie too many, or somebody took some bread that didn’t belong to them.

The sin he’s talking about here is idolatry. And so it wasn’t just that they had sinned, it’s that they had committed really what I’ve come to the conclusion is the root of all sin, which is worshiping something else ahead of God. Anytime we sin, it’s because we put our desires and our values ahead of God’s.

And in a sense, we’re worshiping self ahead of God. So I really believe idolatry is at the root of all of this. You know, Jesus even said money is the root of, I’m sorry, the love of money.

That’s, you know what, that’s one of the most misquoted verses of the Bible. And I know better. And just from hearing it, I almost did the same thing.

It’s not that money is the root of all evil. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Well, if we’re loving our money and treasuring it, we’re worshiping it.

It’s that idolatry that is at the heart of everything else. And when he says the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian, it means the Israelites who just not even that long ago, I don’t know the exact date here, but I want to say it can’t have been more than 300 years. And I know that sounds like a long time, but we’re talking about the history of the Israelites going back 4,000 years.

300 years is not that long. We look at the history of America and say, well, we’re 200 and something years old. Yeah, I wanted to double check.

I believe 238. Had to check my math there for a second. We are not even 250 years old, and that sounds like a long time, though.

But really, when we’re talking about other countries and civilizations like the Chinese have been there for thousands of years, and you go back to Britain, and my goodness, it’s a short time. So just within short, relatively recent memory, the Israelites who have just been brought out of Egypt, just been brought out of Egypt within the last couple hundred years, should have remembered, it should have in the national memory been fresh, that God had set them free from the Israelites, from the Egyptians, that God had sustained them in the wilderness, that God had punished them by making them go through the wilderness in the first place because they had not obeyed him. And they should have realized that it was God who brought them into the land that they lived in and God who set them up there.

And you would think, we would think, that they should have had their eyes squarely fixed on God and yet they did this evil, they did this idolatry, they began to worship other gods and it was so prevalent. Brother Shank made the statement in Sunday school this morning that when you go to the Bible and it seems like there’s something new in there every time. I have read the story of Gideon, I don’t know how many times.

I have preached on Gideon, not about freedom, but about other things. Preached on Gideon numerous times. And going back and rereading the story this week, I saw things in there that either I had not seen before or that I had forgotten were in there.

It was like I was reading it for the first time all over again. One of the points that’s going to come out along those lines, the reason I say that, I was reading it again last night and thought, I had forgotten that Gideon’s own father was involved in this idolatry. Gideon had to go clean house at his house.

before he went and dealt with the nation of Israel. You know, it was so widespread. It wasn’t just a few people who were practicing idolatry and brought the whole nation down.

I read this and it looks like Gideon’s the only one who wasn’t. And that’s got to be a very lonely existence to feel like you’re the only one who’s still serving the Lord. And that is what brought the nation of Israel to ruin.

God said, fine, you want to forget me? I’m going to remind you that you’re totally dependent on me. God didn’t deliver them to the Midianites to be cruel.

but they needed a wake up call. It’s like sometimes with our children. I don’t know about you, I do not enjoy spanking my children but sometimes it’s necessary.

You know, and never in anger, never in excess. But sometimes you’ve got to get their little attention because whatever they’re doing is going to hurt them worse than the swat. And so God in a sense said, okay, we’re going to have to swat the Israelites here.

And so he allowed the Midianites who, if you know, if you’ve heard mention of the Bedouin tribes in Arabia, that’s who they were. That was who they were at this time. Sent them up and let them conquer the Israelites.

That’s pretty good for a group of nomads to be able to come in and conquer the Israelites. That tells me, you know, they don’t have fortifications. They don’t have cities, really.

They travel around with tents and camels. And they were able to come in and conquer the Israelites. That tells me that it was God’s hand that allowed them to conquer Israel.

See why we’re not going verse by verse through all three chapters. We’re still on verse one. And it says, this cave.

And so you’ve got some people that are running to the hills, some that are running to the caves, some that are taking refuge in forts. Life as they knew it had stopped in Israel because of the Midianites these seven years. And so it was, verse 3, when Israel had sown that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them, and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, until thou come into Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor donkey.

Okay, so the Israelites, even though they’re hiding in the hills and the mountains from the Midianites who would kill them, who would oppress them, do what, you know, use your imagination. We know how badly people treat one another, and you can use your imagination about the sorts of things that were done to the Israelites. So the Israelites have fled into the hills, they’re living up in the hills and the caves, but still they’ve got to come down and do some farming, they’ve got to grow some crops, they’ve got to raise some sheep and some things so that they’ll be able to eat and survive.

But what happened, it was so bad that the Midianites would come up and when the Israelites had planted the food, they would come and when it was ready to harvest, they would take it all. And they would collect all the sheep and they would collect all the cattle. And this was a bad deal for the Israelites.

What is there left to live on at that point? You know, there are some countries we look at in history and say how bloodthirsty, how awful they were. The Mongols, for example, under Genghis Khan, how vicious they were.

And I’ve read some of the stories about how they would go in and wipe out a whole city just so the other cities would know, don’t resist, just let us take you over. But the Mongols, for as vicious as they were, for the most part, if you would pay them taxes, they didn’t really care about occupying your city. They didn’t care about, you know, kicking you out of your home and all that sort of thing.

You just let us come through once a year and collect taxes and we’ll get along just fine, as long as you don’t try to resist. That was not the case here with the Midianites. They were controlling every aspect of the Israelites’ lives, up to and including the point taking everything that they had to eat. So these are dire times in Israel.

The people are going to be starving. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, in verse 5, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude. For both they and their camels were without number, and they entered into the land to destroy it.

Now this will be important later. He doesn’t give us an exact number of how many Midianites there were. It basically says there were so many you couldn’t even count them.

I know a few years in recent memory we’ve had grasshoppers really bad here in this part of the country where you couldn’t walk for just grasshoppers flying into the air like a dust storm, like a storm of grasshoppers coming at you. It’s awful. I don’t remember that until the last few years.

And people would tell Bible stories about the locusts and things, and I’d think, oh, that sounds bad. It really is when you see it. I’m just glad not to be a farmer.

You know, it doesn’t make me much difference, but when your life depends on the things that these grasshoppers are eating and devouring, it makes a huge difference. And he’s saying they were just like these grasshoppers. They were so numerous.

They covered everything. they were everywhere and they ate up everything in sight. And Israel, in verse 6, and Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

See, it worked here. It worked. What needed to happen worked.

God wasn’t allowing them to go through this in order to be cruel. There was some punishment in there, but I look at it mainly as God trying to get their attention and saying, you really do need me. I understand you think you don’t and you can be okay with Baal and Asherah and all these other false gods you want to worship, but you do need me, and I’m still here.

And so they go through the oppression of the Midianites. They go through this absolute tyranny, this robbery, this torture, everything the Midianites put them through. And as a result, the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

That’s exactly what needed to happen. It says, And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites, that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage, And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all that oppressed you and draved them out from before you and gave you their land. And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God.

Fear not the God of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but ye have not obeyed my voice. So God lets them know as they’re crying out and saying, God, where are you? Why is this happening to us?

He reminds them, I’m God. I have done all of these things for you. And yet you would not listen to me.

Your hearts were far from me. So he makes sure they understand exactly why this is happening. And there came an angel of the Lord, in verse 11, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, not Ophrah, but Ophrah, and pertained to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

So Gideon was a righteous man. He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t a military commander.

Really nothing special according to his own view. And the way I’ve heard it explained, He’s down there threshing by the wine press, and we could read over that easily. But the way I’ve heard it explained is that they normally, to thresh wheat, I’m surprised he was able to get his hands on any wheat because the Midianites were taking everything.

But nevertheless, he had. My understanding is when they would thresh wheat, they would go and put it on some kind of cloth and take it up to a high place where there was wind blowing across and toss it up and down on this cloth so that the wind would catch hold of the chaff, which was much lighter, and carry it away and just leave the kernels of wheat to fall back. But you’d be up in the high places where they could see you, the Midianites could see you, and come take your grain.

So he’s down here hiding, and I’m sure having to work extra hard because the wind probably is not blowing the way it would otherwise. He’s just down here trying to keep his family alive. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.

Who, me? Mighty man of valor? I mean, Gideon doesn’t agree with this statement.

Mighty man of valor. He later tells him, I’m nobody. And Gideon says unto him, O my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?

And where be his miracles, which our fathers told us of, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? I’m sorry, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt, but now the Lord hath forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. And so Gideon’s asking a reasonable question that we might ask, even if not out loud, we probably think in our minds, okay, where is the God who did all of these things?

Gideon sees this angel, and probably, I’m guessing, not with the wings and everything that we would think of. But Gideon sees this messenger from the Lord, and you know Gideon is already thinking about the Lord in contrast to everyone else in Israel at this point, because that’s where his question lies. That’s where his first question comes from.

He doesn’t ask, so are you with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Are you with Baal? Who do you represent?

He says, where’s the Lord who brought us out of Egypt? He’s been thinking about this. Why has God allowed this to happen?

Where are his miracles? Why has this happened? Where are all the things that were done by the God who brought our fathers out of Egypt and now has turned his back on us?

And I don’t get from Gideon here an angry questioning because we see here Gideon doesn’t doubt the miracles that God did. Gideon doesn’t show a hatred for God or a disbelief in God. He accepts that the miracle stories are true.

He accepts that God parted the Red Sea for their forefathers to cross and escape from Egypt. He accepts the stories of the plagues that led to them being able to go. He accepts the story of God preparing a way through the wilderness and of God providing for their needs through there, bringing them into the land.

Gideon accepts all of that. He says, basically, I believe that that’s who God is and that’s what he does. But my question is, where is he now?

Why are we not seeing these things? And the Lord looked upon him and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent thee?

And he said unto him, O my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. So the answer he receives is essentially, God has not forsaken you.

God has sent you to deal with the problem. God has called you. God will equip you.

It’s not that God has forsaken. God is here now. I’m telling you that this is about to come to an end.

And Gideon’s response is, how am I supposed to be the one who does this? He mentions being from the tribe of Manasseh, which is not one of the more prominent tribes. Usually you see people from Judah or from Benjamin in some sort of leadership role in the country.

He says, I’m from Manasseh. My family is poor in Manasseh. We’re nobodies in my family.

And in my family, I’m sort of the least of the least. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. God says, I’m going to go with you. And when you come to fight against the Midianites, even though they’re out there and they’re numerous like the grasshoppers, You’re going to knock them out as though you’re fighting one person.

And we’ll go from there and just sort of summarize the rest of the story for you. But Gideon, not really doubting God, I think, but doubting his experience. Am I seeing this right?

Am I hearing this right? I believe God exists. I believe God speaks to us.

But I have to tell you, if I walked out of this building today and saw an angel sitting on the hood of my car with a message, I would think, okay, is it heat stroke? Do I need to go back in and have a glass of water? I need to make sure I’m really seeing what I think I’m seeing.

Not because I doubt God, but I’m really having some questions about these eyes in my head right now. And so Gideon says, wait right here, don’t leave. And he goes in and prepares a sacrifice and brings it back out, and the angel of the Lord consumes it and then leaves.

Because he says, you know, I want some kind of sign that I’m really seeing you, that you’re really here, and that you really do speak for God. And then the sacrifice is just consumed. And Gideon still says, okay, that was an angel from the Lord.

But I want to make sure that I’m understanding the message correctly. God, you want me to go raise up an army. This is where we get the term hanging out the fleece that people used to say.

Okay, God, what I understand here is you want me to raise an army and you want me to go take on the Midianites. Does not sound reasonable. So I want to make sure I understand this.

Could you just, you know, I’ll leave a fleece out here overnight and in the morning, can you just send me a sign? And if this is really what you want me to do, God, can you make sure just the fleece is wet and not the ground around it? Make sure just the fleece is wet from the dew and not the ground around it.

So he gets up the next morning and the fleece is wet and the ground is not. And I really feel a kindred spirit with Gideon here because I would be thinking, okay, God, really? Maybe that was too easy because I could see it would be easy for the, you know, stuff stays wet.

You put it in the dryer, you have to run it through three times. I know they didn’t have dryers, but I’m talking as myself today. You have to run a comforter there three times.

It’s easy to believe that a big thing of fleece, a fabric, would stay wet even after the dew has burnt off the grass. That was too easy. God, just one more time, please don’t, and he says to God, please don’t be angry with me.

I don’t think it’s here at all that he doubts God. I think he doubts his own understanding. He says, okay, God, can we do this one more time?

Please don’t be angry with me, but let’s do this one more time. And I’m going to leave the fleece out again, only in the morning, if I’m understanding correctly and this is really what you want me to do, let the ground around it be wet and the fleece be dry. That’s a little trickier.

Any of you who have ever done laundry, and I’m really bad at it, but any of you who have ever done laundry, Now that’s a little trickier, that the ground would be wet and yet that big water foward would be dry. And yet he gets up the next morning and that’s exactly what has come to pass. The fleece is dry and the ground is wet and Gideon at that point says, okay, whatever you tell me to do.

So he sends out the call to the people of Israel and says, we’re going to put together a militia and we’re going to go get rid of the Midianites. God’s called me to lead this. and to his surprise, 32,000 men show up.

32,000 men show up to help kick the Midianites out of the country. And I’m sure Gideon’s thinking, this is great, this is going to work perfectly. And God says, no, this is not going to work perfectly.

God says, you’ve got too many men. Too many men to go up against the people that are like grasshoppers. They’re everywhere.

We need all the people we can get. And really reading through it, I think God’s reasoning, as he did at other times in the Old Testament, was to make sure it was so unlikely, that the victory that was had was so unlikely that everybody would look at it and say, that had to be God, because there’s no way that you people could do this otherwise. And I left out an important part.

One of the first things Gideon did after dealing with God was he went down and tore down the altar that his dad had made to Baal and cut down the trees that his dad was worshiping for the goddess of Shira. And that’s what led me to the conclusion, Gideon is all alone here. And Gideon’s risking his life the next morning.

The people of the town get up and they want Gideon dead for cutting down these trees. And his dad, who was an idol worshiper, said, No, I think he realized at that point we’ve been wrong. According to God’s law, we’re the ones who are worthy of death.

So he says to him, You all want to kill Gideon? The one who will lay hands on him, let him be put to death. And said, If Baal, who we’ve been worshiping, is real, let him take care of himself.

Let him avenge himself. And so throughout more of the book of Judges, they call Gideon Jerubal, which means let Baal strive with him. So after all of this happens and Gideon has torn down the pagan altars, he gets the people on his side and says, God really wants to set us free and God wants us to follow him and God has told me to raise up a militia.

32,000 men show up. And so God tells Gideon, that is too many men. And so Gideon says, if any of you are scared, you can turn back.

You can leave. And I’m trying to remember the numbers here. There’s 10,000 and there’s 22,000.

I believe it’s the 10,000 who stayed and the 22,000 who went home. These men responded to the call maybe out of a sense of obligation, out of a sense of guilt, but I’m sure they had to be scared. The Midianites were like grasshoppers and there were 32,000 of them.

So when Gideon says, okay, God says we have too many men, who’s scared? 22,000 men raise their hands, put down their swords, and go back home. So Gideon’s left with 10,000 men.

And I’m sure if I was him, I’m thinking, how are we going to deal with the Midianites in this situation? They are tough people. 10,000 is still pretty good, but I sure would rather have had the 32,000.

And God says, no, that’s not still good. You’ve got too many men. You’ve still got too many men.

And so God tells him, take the men down to the river and tell them to get a drink, because it’s hot in Israel. Go down and get a drink. And they went down to get a drink.

And God told him, those who bowed their knees to get a drink, you tell to go home. Those who lapped up water like a dog, they’re the ones you want in your army. And I’ve always had trouble understanding this, because it seems to me the ones who are on their knees are also lapping water like a dog.

You know, the dog, I’m guessing some of y’all have dogs too. I’m sure it’s not just mine. They stick their whole face in the water and they slurp it up.

And it’s the worst noise. But it’s that noise that he’s talking about. The ones who brought it up in the hollow of their hands and slurped the water, those are the ones you want.

Most of them had gotten down on their hands and knees and put their faces in the water and just drank as much as they wanted. But he said the ones who brought the water up to them, those are the ones you want. And it ended up there were 300 who had done that.

And so God told Gideon, go take those 300 and do battle. Now, I think any of us would be torn between, okay, I trust God, I know he knows how this is going to go, but really? I’m supposed to go up against the Midianites with 300 men?

And this is one of those places where I’ve read it before, and I guess I had forgotten the story, because I was rereading it again this week and went, I’d forgotten that. That is so cool that this is what happened. God spoke to Gideon and Gideon spoke to his men and Gideon told them, each of you basically grab a trumpet and a torch, the 300 men.

And just before dawn, we’re going to go surround the Midianite camp. And every man had a trumpet and every man had a torch. Now, generally, when armies were marching, not everybody got a trumpet and not everybody got a torch.

You may have one trumpet for every group of 100 men or every group of 1,000 men. So when everybody’s got a trumpet and a torch, it’s going to make the army sound and look a lot bigger than it really is. They were to surround the camp, and you notice that they’ve got a trumpet and they’ve got a torch.

They don’t have another hand to carry a sword. Now, they might have had the sword on their person, but they didn’t have it drawn. They go and surround the Midianite camp, and he said, we’re going to blow the trumpets, and then I want you to shout the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

And they do it. They go and surround the camp, and they’ve got their torches. So it looks like the Midianites are completely surrounded by a massive army.

They blow the trumpets and they scream, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. And the Midianites were startled awake. Now, y’all have probably been startled awake too.

It happens to me. And I always, I got a phone call yesterday morning at 6 a. m.

You call me at 6 o’clock in the morning. Somebody better be dead or dying. And they weren’t.

And they weren’t. But after I took the phone call, I went back to sleep, or went back to bed, never did go back to sleep, went back to bed and laid there for probably 30 minutes, just the adrenaline of it, my heart was racing because I thought, oh no, what’s wrong? Or sometimes I’ll be asleep and B