Not too weak (or whiny) for God

Last week, my devotional presented an odd passage from Judges 6. I say odd only because I don't venture off to read Judges much. Zepheniah might be less read, but only just.

But I have been totally captivated by this little interchange.

The set up is this: Moses walked the people of the Israel around the wilderness for 40 years; Joshua leads them in victory to the promised land flowing with milk and honey. But after Joshua dies, generations pass, and no one remembers what God has done and they start doing their own thing. So during this time of the judges, the people of God run amok; God sends them a judge to deliver them; they run amok; God sends them a judge to deliver them. Rinse and repeat OVER and OVER. Here we're reading the calling of the next judge, Gideon.

12 When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
13 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
14 The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
15 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
16 The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.” ~Judges 6

I love that in 13, after the angel calls him a "mighty warrior", Gideon starts off with a "pardon me". I don't know if this is what the translators intended, but I'm picturing a 17 year old, sunk-chested nerd.  In other words, not a mighty warrior.

But what I could hug him for is the next line, "...but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?" It's stuff like this that makes the Bible stand out as literature over the millennia. I had an old teacher who liked to quote Ezra Pound saying, "Great literature is news that stays news." Through the ages, who hasn't felt this way in times of trouble?

Gideon, if you read the opening of the chapter, is threshing wheat. But instead of doing it in the open, he's hiding in a wine press. The bad guys, the Midianites, have taken over the land to the extent that crops are being destroyed and people of God are living in caves. Gideon can be forgiven for his incredulity. Everything in his experience points to being abandoned by God. Wherever God is, He's not with them.

And the response is equally awesome. We find out a few verses later that Gideon's own dad has set up altars for several other (non)gods. The one, true God could have played His own abandonment card. It's not like His people were being faithful to him. Instead, Gideon is commissioned and affirmed in 14.

But nerd boy won't have any of it. God says, "Go in the strength you have...," and Gideon answers, "What strength?" Gideon has a very clear picture of his circumstances--he is personally weak, his family is weak, his nation is weak. There is no defeating Midian; it's not happening.

The reality of Gideon's circumstance does not, however, phase God. The God equation in 16 is "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive." It's as if it would take a thousand pounds to crush Midian, and Gideon's got a toy hammer. But God does not care because He's going to bring a monster truck to the party.  All Gideon has to do is get in the cab and put the hammer in the glove box.

I love this story of what I imagine to be a pimply, weakling having a very unheroic discussion with God. We live in a culture at-large and a church culture of strength and success. But weakness is common, and here we see that it isn't off-putting to God.