The Angel of the Lord and Gideon (Judges 6)

 

What is a situation like in which God does something unexpected? One answer to that question, and it is probably the only answer, is: ‘We have not a clue what it will be like.’ So far in our series we have seen several angelic visits to individuals, including those by the heavenly being called ‘the angel of the Lord’. One recurring feature of the visits is that there is a diversity of details regarding each visit. The same process is not followed in each encounter.

 

Sometimes, the visits occur at meal-times (as with Abraham) or at evening (as with Lot); at other times, they appear in visions and dreams (as with Jacob); at other times, they seem to speak from heaven (as with Abraham at Mount Moriah); at Bochim, the angel came there from Gilgal, but we don’t know if he walked along the road or if anyone saw him on the road until he appeared and delivered his message.

 

The occasion at Bochim is not the only occasion in the Book of Judges when an angel appears. A reference is made to a visit in the song of Deborah in Judges 5: ‘“Curse Meroz, says the angel of the Lord, curse its inhabitants thoroughly, because they did not come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty’ (Judg. 5:23). God did not need their help, but he had wanted to use them on his side. Meroz was a town or city whose residents refused to help other Israelites and were cursed for their refusal to do so. Do we find that divine response a bit disturbing? But then we can recall what Jesus said about Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum.

 

A second visit by the angel of the Lord is recorded in Judges 6 in connection with Gideon and, on this occasion, events occur that did not happen on earlier visits.

 

The times

The period in which the Angel appeared was a difficult one for the Israelites because they were in captivity to the Midianites and had been for seven years. It was a particularly cruel period, with Israelites having to flee to caves for protection. Yet there were signs of better times coming.

 

Two signs are mentioned in verses 6-10. One was that the Israelites were praying about their desperate situation and the other was that the Lord had sent an unnamed prophet to them to explain to them why they were in the mess they were in. The basic reason was that they had turned away from God, especially regarding idolatry. It is hard to believe that they chose to worship pagan gods, but they did and suffered for it. They had been given a taste of what life was like when living under the power of those who worship false gods.

 

Why is the order important? God was engaged in reviving his cause. The process initially involved the necessity of prayer and the provision of a preacher. Then power was sent through Gideon that resulted in deliverance. Is this not often how God works in difficult times? Earnest prayer in the hearts of a previously unconcerned people, prophetic preaching about sin, and then powerful deliverance when the Lord overthrows those who oppose him.

 

The arrival

In verse 11, the angel of the Lord arrived and sat under a tree. The author tells us the place and the time of the arrival. The place was where Gideon lived in the family inheritance and the time was when he was beating out wheat. No doubt, the question arises as to why the angel chose to sit there. Maybe this is not the reason, but I suspect that he wanted to observe, but not in the sense of discovering anything he did not already know. Rather, he had a spiritual interest in the man he was observing.

 

What do you make of Gideon beating out wheat in a winepress? Some suggest that he was doing it in such a ludicrous place because he was afraid of the Midianites. I am not sure about that suggestion. It looks to me that Gideon was innovative, choosing to perform the task in a place where the Midianites would not expect him to do it. It also seems that his action was one of faith because the angel commended him for it and gave him the assurance that the Lord was with him as his helper and his companion.

 

The angel of the Lord here is the same divine angel who has already appeared to others such as Abraham, Hagar, Jacob and Joshua. As has been suggested, he is the Son of God in a pre-incarnate form coming to help his people. Thinking about that may cause us to think of what Jesus did before calling Peter and Andrew to their role as apostles. He came to where they were and watched them at their work before informing them that he would make them into fishers of men. Go back to Gideon who is hard at work. The angel calls him, ‘A mighty man of valour.’ There is no evidence before this incident that Gideon had shown this quality. But the angel knows what he could cause Gideon to become, even as when later he knew what he would cause the fishermen of Bethsaida to become.

 

The problem

It seems to be the case that Gideon had been thinking about spiritual things because he was able to respond quickly to the words of the Angel. Probably he had been affected by the messages of the prophet that the Lord had sent to the people. Gideon knew what God had done in the past when delivering Israel from Egypt and he accepted that the current situation had occurred as part of divine providence. He had not imagined that he could do anything about it, so he was surprised when the Stranger informed him that he was the next deliverer of Israel because the Stranger had chosen to send him (v. 14).

 

Nevertheless, Gideon had thought of what he could have done in service to the Lord, but he had concluded that the weaknesses that abounded in his own life and in his family clan made such a contribution impossible to imagine. However, he was forced to rethink when the Stranger stated that he would be with him and enable him to experience victory over the Midianites. Therefore, he asked the Stranger for a confirming sign that all these announcements were real (v. 17). Desiring a sign was not a sign of unbelief. It was a request for confirmation of the guidance he had received.

 

This request reveals that Gideon was now aware that he was having a conversation with a divine person and that before anything else should occur he should make an offering to the Stranger. Gideon realised that if the Stranger was divine, he would make a suitable response to the offering. When he brought the offering, the Stranger gave instructions about how to make the offering, then used his staff to set the offering on fire, and then disappeared from Gideon’s sight.

 

Those three details are told so that readers can appreciate the dignity of the Stranger. His arranging of the process of worship points to divine authority, his setting the offering on fire points to his divine acceptance of the worship of Gideon the sinner, and his disappearance points to his divine abilities to do what is beyond human competence. Each of those details told Gideon that the Stranger was divine.

 

The promise

Gideon became apprehensive once he discovered who he had been speaking to. His response reveals that people were aware of the possibility of seeing the angel of the Lord, and that seeing him was fraught with possible dire consequences. Yet we do not assume that the invisibility of the Stranger meant his absence from the situation. It looks as if the invisible Angel continued to speak with him in response to his prayer to the Lord.

 

Instead of judgement, Gideon was told that divine peace would be his as he engaged in his role to which he had been called. Does this not remind us of the words of Jesus when he sent out the fishers of men that he had trained? There in the upper room, as he met with his frightened disciples on the eve of his resurrection day, he assured them of the ongoing presence of his peace as he informed them that he had roles for them to perform.

 

Gideon then did what many others before him did when they met God – he built an altar to the Lord and called it Yahweh Shalom. From one perspective it was a strange response, as Wiersbe points out when he says that ‘God had to give Gideon a message of peace to prepare him for fighting a war’. But is that not how we fight the Lord’s battles? We can do so because we have peace with God.

 

Lessons

The Lord can come to surprising people. Gideon may have had stirrings in his heart about what God could and could not do, but his family home was worse than he had described because verse 25 says that his father was a worshipper of Baal. The Son of God had selected an individual that no one else would have imagined as suitable for his service.

 

A second lesson is that the Son of God knew how to arrange a meeting with the man he intended to use in his service as a prominent leader. Gideon had no idea that the God of heaven was determined to meet with him, and that he knew the suitable time and place for the encounter. It is the case that the Lord will meet with us when we are alone, but he is also liable to meet with us when we are busy.

 

A third lesson is the importance of realism. Gideon was not a man who engaged in wishful thinking, pretending that things were not as bad as they were. There is a difference between reading providence and rebelling against providence. If someone had asked Gideon why things were the way they were, his answer was that God had acted in chastisement of his people but was now giving signs that blessing and restoration were coming.

 

A fourth lesson is that those who will do anything lasting for the Lord will think little of themselves. Gideon had an illustrious pedigree going back to one of the sons of Manasseh. He did not mention this connection when speaking to the Angel. The Angel appeared to Gideon when he realised his unimportance and weakness. When a person thinks a lot of themselves it is a sign that divine blessing is not on the way.

 

A fifth lesson is the importance of costly sacrifice. The timing of the Angel’s visit was in the middle of a period of deprivation, a time that could be described as a cost-of-living crisis. What would Gideon give to the Lord? He gave a great amount of bread and a goat (those items could be given when offering a peace or fellowship offering). They symbolised what Gideon thought of his Visitor, that he wanted to give his best to the Lord even in difficult days.

 

The final lesson is the beauty of divine patience seen in the way that the Angel was willing to wait while Gideon prepared his offering. It would have taken him at least an hour to prepare the food. Yet the preparation was part of the process. If the preparation had been slipshod, the result would not have been acceptable to God. The Angel watched for as long as Gideon took to prepare, and then showed his approval very quickly when he turned the offering into a burnt offering that was entirely consumed.