Scripture: Judges 6:1-27, 33-40
When I think back on my childhood, sometimes I think that the actor Scott Baio made my young life miserable. Scott Baio, you may recall, played “Chachi” on Happy Days—which, to children of my generation, was the greatest TV show ever! And Baio became a teen idol that all the girls in my fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade classes loved. And he was famous for a hairstyle that became very popular in my school. We called it “wings,” but I see online that it’s also called “feathers,” or “feathered hair,” “feathered wings,” whatever…
The idea is, you part your hair down the middle and then sweep it back on each side over your ears with a brush or comb—and then use a lot of hairspray—this was back in the late-’70s, after all—in order to hold it in place.
Five years later, the mullet would overtake feathered hair as the predominant hairstyle of “cool” classmates. You can take a look at my high school yearbooks to prove that fact! But in the late-’70s and early-’80s, feathered hair would be the most popular style. So thank you, Chachi! Because guess what? No matter how hard I tried, I could not style my hair like that. I could not have feathered hair. I could not have wings.
My hair, you see, is naturally curly. Not that anyone can tell now! Even today, I cut my hair like this as a protest. When I was a kid, my hair looked more like singer-songwriter Mac Davis, if you remember him. He had a popular variety show in the ’70s. His hair, like mine, was un-partable. Not that I didn’t try! But when I did, I ended up looking like the character from a movie twenty years ago called Napoleon Dynamite. Remember that guy?
And that was my life. None of my friends—no popular kids—had hair like mine. Yet I would go over to friends’ houses, and their mothers would fawn over my curly hair. “Oh, Brent, I would love to have hair like yours!” And I’m like, “You can have it! Because I hate my hair.”
Because, try as I might… I could never be Chachi! That was the reality.
All that to say this: when the angel of the Lord, in verse 12, calls Gideon a “mighty man of valor”—or a valiant warrior, or a mighty warrior, or a mighty hero—depending on the translation 1 —it seems no less ridiculous than it would seem if a popular girl in my fifth grade class came up to me and said, “I love your feathered hair, Brent! Your hair looks just like Scott Baio’s!” No girl ever said that!
But the angel’s words to Gideon seem no less preposterous! Because… by all outward appearances, Gideon is the opposite of what anyone would call a “mighty man of valor”!
After all, the angel finds Gideon hiding down in a winepress, winnowing wheat—that is, separating wheat from chaff. A winepress is a crazy place to do that! It’s below ground. You’re supposed to winnow wheat out in the open, preferably on top of a mountain, where you let the wind blow the chaff away.
Why was Gideon down in this winepress? Because he was afraid to be out in the open! Why? Because for seven long years at this point, Israel’s enemy, the Midianites, had been attacking Israel, raiding Israel, stealing produce and livestock, driving Israel out of their land, killing people. Making Israelites like Gideon afraid to do things like winnow grain out in the open. What if the Midianites saw him and attacked?
So Gideon was no mighty man of valor! Even as he’s having this conversation with the angel of the Lord, it’s easy to imagine him looking over his shoulder in fear. “Are the Midianites coming?”
Soon enough, Gideon realizes in talking to this angel, he’s really talking to God. Just like Abraham realized back in Genesis 18. But the fact that Gideon is talking to God doesn’t make him less afraid to carry out God’s mission for him!
In this way, Gideon is a lot like Moses back in Exodus chapter 3, when God called him. Remember all the objections Moses put forward when God called him to go to Egypt and confront the powerful Pharaoh? “But, Lord, what if my people don’t listen to me?” “But, Lord, I’ve never been able to speak eloquently; I have a stuttering problem.” “But, Lord, I don’t even know your name.” “But, Lord, please send someone else!” 2
Gideon, like Moses, also has plenty of excuses not to answer God’s call. See verse 15: “Please, Lord”—“Lord” here means “sir”—“Please, sir, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
Then, even after he realizes whom he’s speaking to—after the Lord gives Gideon the miraculous sign of fire in verse 21, which consumes the sacrifice on the altar—after Gideon successfully destroys his father’s idols and lives to tell the tale—after all this, he still asks God for another sign. See verse 36:
Then Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.”
Okay, the next morning, God performs this miracle. And then look at verse 39. This now becomes a comedy: Gideon asks for yet another sign.
Then Gideon said to God, “Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.”
How can Gideon have so little faith? Yet God performs that miracle, too! Like I said, Gideon is the opposite of a “mighty man of valor.”
So it’s hilarious how comically ill-suited this poor young man is to lead Israel in victory over its enemy!
My point is, if God is with Gideon it doesn’t matter that Gideon seems so unqualified. It’s not about who Gideon is; it’s about who Gideon’s with!
About 250 years before the events in today’s scripture, ancient Israel misunderstood this same truth. They let themselves get hung up on the way things seemed. It happened when Moses led Israelites to the border of the Promised Land. In Numbers chapter 13, the Lord tells Moses to send spies into Canaan to scout out the land that God has promised to give the Israelites. Most of the spies return from their trip deeply discouraged: “By all means,” they tell their fellow Israelites, “the land is wonderful… it’s flowing with milk and honey, just as God said it would be. But the cities… they’re like fortresses. And the people… they seem like giants compared to us! And we seem like grasshoppers compared to them!”
And look at Numbers 13:33: they use the word “seem” twice: “They seem… we seem.”
Only Caleb, one of the spies, had the boldness to speak up. He said, “Let us go up at once and occupy [the land], for we are well able to overcome it.” He’s saying, in so many words, “Who cares the way things seem. We know—or at least we ought to know—the way things really are. And here’s the way things really are: God is with us! God is on our side. God is for us. 3 Who can be against us? Certainly not these people who seem like giants! Big deal! They’re not giants as far as God is concerned!”
See… Caleb knew that God was the difference between the way things seemed and the way things are.
If God is with us, then it simply doesn’t matter the way things seem! It’s not about who the Israelites are; it’s about who the Israelites are with!
The Book of Acts gives us another great example of this truth.
In Acts chapter 23, Paul is under arrest and in Roman custody in Jerusalem. He’s been put on trial. His life literally hangs in the balance. His opponents have accused him of treason against Rome—because of his allegiance to Jesus. Verse 11 says this:
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”
Now, in the very next verses, Acts 23:12 and 13, it says this:
When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. There were more than forty who made this conspiracy.
And then Luke goes on to describe their plan… and the unlikely way that their plan was thwarted.
I want you to get the picture. The Lord Jesus comes to Paul in a vision: “You don’t have to be afraid of anything. Your life is not in danger. I’m going to send you to Rome, and you’re going to continue your mission to spread the gospel there.”
And then the very next morning some of Paul’s fiercest enemies—more than 40 of them, in fact—form a conspiracy to murder Paul while he’s still in Jerusalem, before he leaves for Rome.
It seems pretty bad, doesn’t it? These men—these killers, these co-conspirators… they seem clever, ruthless, strong, and highly motivated, don’t they?
Forty against one… Forty clever, ruthless, strong, and highly motivated enemies… who also have the element of surprise… against one unsuspecting man… Any gambler would put their money on the forty men, right?Paul, objectively speaking, is a sitting duck!
And yet, as always… it doesn’t matter who Paul is, it only matters who Paul’s with!
Because unbeknownst to these 40 clever, ruthless, strong, and highly motivated enemies of Paul, who have put into place a plan to kill him… unbeknownst to all of them… God has put into place… a different plan.
So you tell me… Whose plan do you think will succeed?
See… these 40 men can try their hardest, they can do their very worst… As pastor John Piper points out, Paul is immortal until he fulfills God’s purpose for him and goes to Rome, and accomplishes all the things that God has planned for him there!
Until Paul fulfills God’s purpose for his life, Paul is invincible… he is literally unkillable!
Paul’s life was never for a split second in the hands of mere men… or ruthless enemies…or bad luck or unfortunate circumstances… Paul’s life was only ever in the hands of almighty God! Because God was with Paul.
Even forty murderous men are no match for almighty God!
Paul didn’t know about this conspiracy to end his life. If he did, do you think he would have worried about it? Would he have thought, “I know the Lord told me last night I was going to Rome to fulfill his purpose for me there, but maybe, when the Lord told me that, he didn’t know about this conspiracy to kill me…”
No! That’s ridiculous. Paul would not have had that thought. He is, after all, the same man who wrote one of our church’s memory verses for this year—which all of you have memorized: Romans 8:31: “What then shall we say to all these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
“What then shall we say to forty men who’ve vowed to kill me? If God is for me, who can be against me?”
The very worst that these men can do will only be used by God for his glory and to fulfill God’s good plan and purpose for Paul’s life!
Because it’s not about who Paul is; it’s about who Paul’s with.
Of course… the problem with Gideon in today’s scripture is that he doubts that God is with him and his fellow Israelites. After all, Gideon can’t be with God, if God refuses to be with him.
See verse 13: “[I]f 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, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
If the Lord is with us, why… ? Why are things as bad as they are?
Gideon believes that if God were still with him and his fellow Israelites, he’d be doing all these miracles like in the good old days.
Where’d he get that idea?
I don’t know… Maybe there was some ancient equivalent of Creflo Dollar back in Gideon’s day… an ancient Israelite version of Benny Hinn… a twelfth-century B.C. predecessor of Kenneth Copeland… Someone who taught Gideon that if God was with someone, then that must mean a life of only prosperity, abundance, good health, and worldly success…
“That’s not happening,” Gideon thinks, “All these bad things are happening to us instead… to me instead…so… it seemslike God isn’t with us.”
And you know what? That’s precisely what people in Jerusalem, around A.D. 33 at Passover time, were thinking about Jesus… when they saw Jesus on that hill called Golgotha… on the cross. God is not on his side. God is not for Jesus. God is not with Jesus.
Luke 23, verse 35: “And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!’” And then verse 36 and 37: “The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’” Then in verse 39: “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’”
All of these people shared the same belief: To them it seemedlike—if Jesus were the Messiah, if he were the Son of God, if he were the Savior of the world—then surely he wouldn’t be suffering like this! Surely he would be able to use his miraculous power to save himself. Or he would be able to ask his Father to rescue him, and his Father would gladly do so. If God were with Jesus, he wouldn’t be dying on the cross. That’s what they all thought…
Except for one person… That other criminal on the cross… the one on the other side of Jesus… he repented… at the very last moment… and said, in verse 42, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Talk about your death bed conversions! We’re told in Mark 15:32, that this same man had earlier been mocking Jesus alongside the guy on the other side of Jesus! And although some gospels identify these men as thieves, keep in mind that the Romans wouldn’t be crucifying them for mere theft. Barabbas, the man whose place Jesus took on the center cross, remember… he’s identified as an insurrectionist… a terrorist… a murderer. It’s likely that these other two were in cahoots with him, or were terrorists just like him… in addition to being thieves. After all, the criminal who asked Jesus to “remember him” also acknowledged that he and the other man were receiving the “due reward” for their crimes. They were not mere thieves.
The point is, whatever they were, they were bad dudes. Nothing about their behavior merits Jesus’ forgiveness. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Are you kidding?” we might expect even a good man to respond. “Who do you think you are? Five minutes ago, you were joining your friend in mocking me! You’ve lived this life of murder and mayhem—reckless disregard for human life and property—and there’s nothing you can do now to make it right. There’s no way you can pay it back, or pay it forward, or redeem yourself in any way. Yet you want me to remember you? You want me to forgive you? It’s too late, brother. You had your chance and you blew it!”
Even a good man might have said that… out of fairness… out of simple justice… But not Jesus. For him it’s not about “fairness.” It’s not about “justice.” It’s about something far sweeter… It’s about something we need more than anything else… It’s about grace.
In a matter of moments, you see, Jesus was going to take care of that man’s sin problem. Jesus was going to pay for that man’s sin. Earlier when those religious leaders were saying, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” Oh yes he could! Jesus said in Matthew 26:53, he could “appeal to his Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels”!4 Twelve legions equals 72,000 angels. He could easily rescue himself from that cross if he wanted.
But he loved us too much for that. He wanted to “cancel the record of debt that stood against” this penitent criminal. In fact, he wanted to cancel the record of debt that stood against all of us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross!5 But he had to die first!
And this is also what the religious leaders, the onlookers, and that other criminal on the cross didn’t understand. When the other criminal said, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” Jesus might have responded, “You don’t get it: Because I am the Christ, I want to save you; and I want to save your co-conspirator on the other side; and I want to save Barabbas; and I want to save these Roman soldiers who drove the nails in my hands and feet, placed the crown of thorns on my head, spit on me, and mocked me; and I want to save the religious leaders who put on a sham trial in the middle of the night on trumped up charges; and I want to save these fickle crowds of followers whose opinions about me change directions like the wind; and I want to save unjust political leaders like Herod and Pilate—and all future unjust kings, potentates, presidents, and prime ministers; and I want to save sinners that everyone happily identifies as sinful; and I want to save hypocrites who no one thinks of as sinful but who are no less bound for hell; and I want to save future sinners like Brent White; and I want to save the future sinners at Toccoa First Methodist Church; and I want to save future sinners who live in Toccoa, Georgia; in fact I want to save everyone.
Therefore… I will not make a move… to call on my Father… to call on the angels… to rescue me… from this cross.
Because I want to save you…
I will not save myself.
My death is how I save you.
So on top of everything else, the sin of this penitent criminal is one reason Jesus is hanging on this cross right now. Add that to his list of sins before we consider how Jesus responds to this man.
And how does Jesus respond? Luke 23, verse 43: “And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”
The criminal on the cross proved once and for all, that it’s not about who you are, but who you’re with.