234 men of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment were tasked with holding, at all costs, a rocky hill overlooking a strategic pass. These 234 men found themselves the target of nearly 10,000 Chinese soldiers who were intent on seizing their position. Despite being outnumbered by a staggering 40 to 1 odds and suffering 75% casualties, Fox Company stood firm and repelled every assault on the hill for four days and five nights.
As Bob Drury and Tom Clavin chronicled in their book: The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat, "No Marine unit, or any other unit fighting in Korea in 1950, held a more strategic piece of land against more crushing odds."
As amazing as that victory was it pales in comparison to the victory God provided for the people of Israel in Judges chapter 6. At the beginning of Judges 6 the nation of Israel was being bullied by the Midianties. At harvest season the Midianites would sweep through the countryside and take all of the crops that the Israelites had painstakingly planted and tended. They would strip the land like a swarm of locusts leaving nothing for the Israelites.
For the fifth time in the first six chapters of Judges, the people of Israel cried out to God. God heard their cries and raised up a man named Gideon, the fifth Judge over Israel. Through the life of Gideon we discover seven ways that God ministers to His people.
In Judges 6:11-18, Gideon is going about his work, threshing wheat. However, he’s not doing it out in open where you would normally thresh wheat so that the wind can blow away the chaff. Instead, he’s down in a wine press hiding from the Midianites. As he’s working an “angel of the Lord” appeared to him.
The message brought by the angel of Yahweh was, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” I kind of imagine Gideon looking around and thinking, “who me? I’m hiding down here! I’m no mighty man of valor.” Understandably, Gideon questions the stranger's statement by basically saying, “Hey, if God is with us, then why are we in this mess? If God is with us, then why am I hiding down here in a wine press threshing wheat???”
The angel of the Lord responded by basically saying, “that’s why I’m sending you to deliver your people.” Gideon then reveals his feelings of inadequacy and argues that he’s the least in his father’s household that comes from the weakest clan in the tribe of Manasseh. How in the world is little old Gideon supposed to deliver his nation from the oppression of the Midianites???
Like a gold nugget buried in the ground, we unearth the first way God ministers to us here in His response to Gideon. In Judges 6:16 the Lord said to Gideon, “but I will be with you.” The first way God ministers to us:
(1) God confronts our feelings of personal inadequacy.
Gideon was saying, “I’m inadequate" but the Lord said, “I’m adequate!”
God didn’t say, “it’s ok Gideon – you have the strength." God said, “I AM WITH YOU. Gideon, you are mighty because I MAKE YOU MIGHTY!”
The second way God ministers to us is found in Judges 6:25-27:
(2) God challenges us to fully commit to Him!
Before God will use Gideon He wants Gideon to go ALL IN, so he tells him to tear down the alter that his family and the others in his community use to worship their false god, Baal.
For Gideon to destroy an alter like this and change it into an alter to the LORD – would publicly declare that he is leaving his old way of life behind – there was no going back!
The third way God ministers to us is found in Judges 6:33-34:
(3) God empowers us for service with His Holy Spirit.
The tents of the enemy were pitched on one side of the Valley of Jezreel, but on the other side was a man "clothed" with Spirit of the Lord.
In the Old Testament God provided His Spirit on specific people for a specific period of time. Today every believer is given the Holy Spirit. What a privilege! May we not squander the power intrusted to us. We must rely on and live by the Spirit each moment of every day!
Still, we will have moments of doubt as Judges 6:36-40 reveals.
God could have said, “Come on Gideon! Wasn’t the fire coming up from the rock to consume the food enough for you???” But, He didn’t…. God performs these miraculous signs for Gideon and through this gracious interaction we learn the 4th way that God ministers to us:
(4) God exercises incredible patience with us.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden God could have said, “enough” and destroyed everything right there and then. Thankfully, He chose not to. Instead He chose to redeem us. He chose, before the foundation of the world, to send His Son to die for you and for me that those who believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life!
The apostle Peter would write in the New Testament that God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. Thank the Lord for His incredible patience with us!
The fifth way God ministers to us is found at the beginning of Judges 7:1-8:
(5) God sometimes removes our human support so we will trust Him fully.
God builds Gideon's faith in chapter 6; first by the fire consuming the food and then the miracles with the dew and the fleece. In chapter 7 God removes his human “securities” so that Gideon would trust in Him.
The Israelite army was already small – 32,000 soldiers. It may not sound small but in Judges 8 we learn that the Midianites had 135,000 troops, a 4:1 ratio!
After God whittles them down the 32,000 are now 300 men. 300 men facing 135,000 enemy troops! The odds have gone from a challenging 4:1 to an impossible 450:1.
The question is not what Gideon will do. The real question is: What will GOD do now? God has stripped Gideon of his human resources so that he would rely on Him!
Even when God removes our human support He does something else for us in Judges 7:9-14:
(6) God comforts our fears and strengthens our faith.
Gideon’s life was like a tennis ball being smacked back and forth from one side to the other because he was constantly vacillating between faith and fear. Living the life that God has called us to live means we constantly walk the line between faith and fear.
The last way that God ministers to us is found in Judges 7:15-25:
(7) God makes us victorious!
300 soldiers vs. 135,000 Midianites and the Lord says, attack!
God has given us the ultimate victory over sin and death through the work of Jesus.
Romans 8:35, 37-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?...37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Person of Interest series preached at Geist Community Church is available here.
