“You Shall Defeat Them As One Man”
Text: Judges 6:11–24, 7:2–9
12-22-2021
In the name of our great defender, dear friends in Christ. As you may recall from our first midweek service, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush. And that Angel of the Lord, we learned, was none other than the Son of God! Well, in our text for this evening He appears again, but this time in human form. The Angel of the Lord visited Gideon and, as you heard, called him a “mighty man of valor.” But at this point, Gideon didn’t look very mighty at all. He was hiding from the Midianites, who were oppressing the people of Israel. These foreigners would invade Israel and swoop in like locusts on the land to steal and destroy Israel’s crops and animals (Judges 6:1–10). As a result, many of the Israelites were forced to make dens and strongholds for themselves in the mountains and caves. What little wheat Gideon was able to gather he had to thresh in secret, in a winepress. On top of all that, his clan was the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh, and he himself was least in his father’s house.
So, we can understand Gideon’s apprehensive response to the Angel’s greeting: “the Lord is with you.” Gideon said to Him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us? . . . But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
There are times when the people of God today feel like Gideon. Perhaps there have been moments in the darkening days of this Adventtide when you yourself have asked questions similar to his. If God is with us, if He really is Immanuel, why is the Christian Church struggling or mistreated? If God is with me, then why are things such a mess? Why do I feel so alone? Why am I sick and suffering? Where’s the power of God that we hear about in the Bible?
Like Gideon, we too may sometimes feel forsaken. And yet, we also know, deep down, that the messes we experience are sometimes of our own making. That’s how it was in Gideon’s day. The reason God allowed Israel to be overrun by the Midianites is because the Israelites had done evil in His sight. This happens repeatedly in the Book of Judges. The Israelites forsake the Lord to run after other gods that they think will give them more of what they want. God’s anger is stirred up against His rebellious people, and He allows their enemies to overtake them. Then, in their distress, they cry out to the Lord for help. And the Lord responds by raising up a judge, that is, a “deliverer,” to rescue them from the power of their enemies. The land eventually has rest, and everything goes well for a while. But then the judge dies, the people become spiritually lazy and apathetic, and they forsake the Lord again. And sadly, that causes the whole process to start all over.
This is a warning for us. When everything is going well, we too can get complacent in our faith, forgetting the Lord and forsaking Him for the things of this world. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, if the Lord allows hardship to come upon us. He does it so that we can see this awful thing we’ve done. But the Lord is also doing this for our good. He’s seeking to work penitence in our hearts so that in faith we might call upon His name again and with greater fervency. He chastens us like a son whom He loves. With the Law, He turns us away from our idols, and by the Gospel He draws us back and restores us to Himself. Through Christ, our deliverer, we have true rest.
Gideon is a shadow of Jesus. He was the one chosen by God to deliver Israel in that day and to bring them rest. Even though he was weakest and least, he was the Lord’s man for the job. This is a consistent theme even all the way to the end of the Gideon narrative. Instead of defeating the Midianites with a massive army the Lord insists that Gideon reduce his army down from 32,000 to only 300 men. This was so that the victory wouldn’t be won by human strength, giving them an opportunity to boast, but solely by the wisdom and strength of the Lord.
The power of God being hidden beneath seeming powerlessness points us to a fulfillment in Jesus. Gideon is a living prophecy of the victory over sin and death and the devil, which the Lord brings to us at Christmas. It is the way of God: the last shall be first and the humble shall be exalted. Jesus embodies this. He is the mighty and eternal Son of God, yet it doesn’t appear that way. He was laid in a manger for a crib. His birth took place almost secretly. He appeared to be nothing more than a poor peasant boy. He was born in Bethlehem, which Scripture says is little among the clans of Judah. As an infant, His life was threatened by King Herod and He was hidden away in Egypt for a while.
Jesus, our mighty man of valor, appeared to be vulnerable and helpless—not only in His birth but also in His death. Nevertheless, He brought about the fulfillment of His own words, which He had spoken to Gideon, “I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.” Gideon and his tiny army of 300men would defeat the countless Midianites as one man because the Lord was with them. The Lord Jesus defeats all of our enemies, quite literally, as one man. By His incarnation, He has taken our humanity into Himself, and by His death and resurrection, He has destroyed sin, death, and the devil once for all. Romans 5:19 says, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Jesus is an army of one, the only one who can deliver us from our enemies. The one man, Jesus, defeated our powerful enemies through weakness because He is the Lord in human flesh. Out of lowly Bethlehem came the One to be the ruler and deliverer of Israel. The Midianites, in their confusion, would end up turning on and killing one another in their camp. In the same way, Jesus turned death and Satan against themselves on the cross, delivering us forever from their power and the sin that oppresses us. The one man Jesus assumed the humanity of all people in His conception and birth. And so, this one man’s victory counts for all people in His death and resurrection. The name Gideon means “one who breaks or cuts down.” Jesus, our Gideon, has broken and cut down all false gods and the devil himself by the wood of the cross.
The Angel of the Lord first appeared to Gideon when he was threshing out wheat for bread in a winepress, and He departed from sight after Gideon offered up bread and meat on the rock. All of this points us to the Sacrament of the Altar, where the Lord fulfills His promise to be with us in the flesh—where His body and blood, offered up on the rock of Golgotha, are given to us under the bread and wine. Jesus has now departed from our sight, but He is still present with us as true man so that we might also share with Him in His divine glory. And so, we say with Mary in her Magnificat, “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.”
When the Angel of the Lord departed from Gideon, he perceived that he had been in the very presence of God. Gideon thought he would die for having seen the Angel of the Lord face-to-face. But he was given a word of peace. So, also, we are given peace, an invitation to come into the Lord’s presence without fear, through faith in Christ Jesus. By His true humanity, we are saved from judgment and reconciled to God. The Son of God comforts us also by saying, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.” For the Lord Jesus is both the Mighty God and the Prince of Peace.
So, as we finish this Advent season, let’s look to Jesus as our Gideon, whose mighty power is hidden in lowliness. With repentant hearts, let’s put our hope in Him who is born to be our eternal Deliverer and Savior. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!