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I am told that as a general rule each storey of a building is roughly 10 feet in height. Of course the first floor is often higher than 10 feet, but the rest of the building is usually pretty consistent. So a 20 storey building is about 200 feet off the level of the ground. And a 60 storey high rise is about the height of the Space Needle in Seattle. That height makes any structure susceptible to the effects of wind. Tall buildings sway, and at times quite violently. Usually there isn’t any real danger, but some people are quite sensible to that sensation of movement. So when the architects of the Citicorp Center in New York designed their 59 storey building, they used something to offset the swaying. They installed something called a Tuned Mass Damper. It is essentially a hundred ton block of concrete attached to huge springs, floating on a small lake of oil. When the wind blows the Citicorp Center, and it begins to move, the inertia of the concrete block works to offset that movement and keep the tenants’ stomachs from getting too queasy. My theme this evening is that our God has provided such a damper for His children.

I hope that you are all basically familiar with the contents of the Book of Judges. There are some marvelous stories of courage and victory in the 21 chapters of this book. But the overall history is constantly swaying back and forth. The spiritual condition of the nation during this book was very much like a tree in the wind. “There was no king in Israel and every man did that which was right in his own heart.” But the human “heart is deceitful and desperately wicked” by nature. So from chapter to chapter Israel was swinging from serving God to serving sin. In one chapter there were the multiplied blessings of God, and in the next there was His curse. And yet . . . throughout the book, there was a tuned mass damper, called “the Lord of Hosts.” “He is the Lord; He changes not, therefore the sons of Israel were never totally consumed.” Thankfully, the Lord is the “same yesterday, today and forever.”

In Judges chapter 6 once again we read – “And again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel:” So much so that the “children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds.” And still the Midianites encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites.” When their troubles began to overwhelm them, the children of Israel cried unto the LORD – verse 6. Back and forth went the nation of Israel in their economics and foreign relations – with everything contingent upon their fluctuating spiritual condition.

We could easily spend a month studying the man who delivered Israel from the Midianites. But I’d like us to think of just one aspect of this marvelous history. I’m thinking of Gideon’s reply to the Angel who visited him that first day.

“Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us?”

This Angel of the Lord keeps popping up throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes there is a definite article preceding the word “angel” THE Angel of the Lord” verse 12. Sometimes, as in the case of verse 11, there isn’t, and this confuses the matter just a little. But what makes Him so interesting is the authority that He has over God’s creation. And then there is the reaction which men had towards that authority. The Angel of the Lord said to Gideon “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” And then verse 14 says, “And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites; have not I sent thee?” I have no doubt that it was this Angel of the Lord who spoke the words of verse 14, and yet we are told that it was the Lord.

Here and in a couple dozen other scriptures, it is clear to me that this Angel of the Lord is more than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, every-day, common angel of God. It may be just an interesting play on words, but the first thing that this messenger from God said to Gideon was, “The Lord is with thee.” But Gideon couldn’t see anyone else there, and yet the Angel said, “The Lord is with thee.” When I turn to the New Testament and study the birth of the Lord Jesus, I find another angel who tells Joseph that Jesus’ surname should be Immanuel, which being interpreted is “God with us.” And the Lord had said through Isaiah, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” “God with us.” The Lord is with thee, Gideon – Immanuel – the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Angel of the Lord, who tells Gideon that the God is with him speaks with the authority of God Himself. The Angel of the Lord accepts the sacrifices and gifts of Gideon, as if He was God. I believe that this Angel of the Lord is the second person of the Trinity. I believe that He is the Lord Jesus Christ, visiting His creation prior to His incarnation in Bethlehem.

The Angel of the Lord said, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” What a privilege and a blessing to have the Lord come to the threshing floor of Joash. How special did that make the message which He gave, and yet . . . . . .at the same time, how sad. Verse 8 tells us that the Lord had already sent human prophets with the message Israel needed to hear. “Hey, you people of Israel, these maladies in your lives are the result of your sins against me. Ye have not obeyed my voice. Wake up and live. Fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell, rather fear ye the Lord.” There were probably a few people in Israel who had listened and were responding to that message. But at best, Israel’s obedience, as a nation was very weak and imperfect. And I speak respectfully, if Gideon was the best man in Israel, we begin to see how the nation had fallen.

So let’s consider him more closely.

He was a good man, but not without a few major flaws. He was religious and apparently thought about the spiritual condition of his nation. It might seem that he was somewhat cowardly as he winnowed his little pile of wheat in a wine-press rather than out in the open where the wind could help him. But it may have been a matter of practicality rather than fear. No sense inviting the Midianites to come and steal his family’s food by standing out in the open. The Lord is certainly not against common sense. And the Angel addressed him as “a man of valour” 56 times this Hebrew word is translated “army” and only 37 times “valour” It means that Gideon either was, or will be, a military man. I personally lean towards the future aspect. We also find that he will be an excellent diplomat: When the tribe of Ephraim criticized him for not inviting them to the battle. He handles a potentially difficult subject with a great deal of skill. So Gideon is intelligent, spiritually minded to some degree and has a some common sense. None of these things are necessarily flaws. It might be argued that the doubt displayed by Gideon’s fleece proved that he wasn’t strong in faith. But those tests can be interpreted a couple of different ways and don’t conclusively prove unbelief on his part.

But Gideon does have flaws which clearly reveal themselves after all the victories are won. First, he might have showed a little more graciousness towards a couple of Israelite communities which didn’t help him and his men, when they should have. Secondly, his family life was not exemplary, having a mistress a bunch of undisciplined children. But even more importantly, he took some of the spoils of the battle and made some unauthorized religious ornaments. And chapter 8 tells us that he made an ephod which eventually became a religious snare unto Israel. Nevertheless, overall, Gideon is a good man to study in more detail than we are giving him here.

It is his MISAPPLICATION about the plight of Israel that I’d like to address.

The Angel of the Lord said, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” And the man of valour replied, “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” Then he pointed toward the garrison of the Midianites and to the small pile of grain that he was hiding.

“If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” This is a question that is very frequently asked even today. If this is a Christian nation then why have we been attacked, and why doesn’t everyone love us? If the Lord be with us, why is there so much crime and terror surrounding us. If the Lord be with us, why has my home been destroyed in our recent wild fire?

Gideon’s question points out how confused people are about the Lord’s presence. God with us, doesn’t mean that we won’t have to struggle to get by in this world. God with us, doesn’t mean that we won’t have the troubles that come and go on mankind in general. God with us, doesn’t mean that we won’t be chastised for our sinful deeds. God with us, doesn’t mean that our lives will be filled with spectacular miracles. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that we are without hope.

Is Gideon trying to equate “God with us” with “religion?” I believe that most of the religion of the world is without God. I believe that religion has sent more people to hell than any bunch of sins. I believe that religion, more often than not, blinds men to the sight of the one true and living God. “Mr Angel, since we are a pluralistic religious nation, with more churches than Heintz has varieties, why isn’t life in our nation more pleasant and peaceful?” Because the presence of God is entirely different from mere religion.

Last week we considered the death of Uzzah which involved the return of the Ark from the Philistines. In the Ark was a copy of Moses’ law, Aaron’s famous budding rod, and a pot of the miraculous manna. And over the top of the Ark was the Mercy Seat where God met with His people on the Day of Atonement. Backslidden Israel had taken up the rotten theology of the heathen and bordered on the point of idolatrous worship of that Ark. Although the Ark was not God, it did represent the presence of the Lord. One day, after a terrible battle with the Philistines and the death of Israel’s highest acting priests, the Ark was captured and placed in the Heathen Temple of Dagon. Dagon, the fish god of the Philistines, was an idol which may have safely resided in that particular temple for decades, but when the symbol of the presence of the Lord was placed in the same room, Dagon was knocked to the floor on two successive nights. The presence of God will not tolerate the presence of sin. And that was the problem which Israel was facing while under the thumb of the Midianites. The Midianites were in Israel by the permission of God, in order to awaken the backslidden nation to their corrupted condition.

This does not mean to say that whenever bad things happen, it’s always because of some specific sin. It wasn’t any sin in Daniel that had him thrown to the lions. And it wasn’t sin in Joseph that caused his slavery in Egypt. Sometimes the Lord will use similar situations to teach dissimilar lessons.

But the thing to keep in mind is that when Daniel did spend the night with the lions, the Angel of the Lord was present with him. And even though there was the opportunity for fear, and there was the presence of life-threatening danger, that servant of God was perfectly safe. And even though Joseph lost several of the best years of his life to slavery inside an Egyptian prison the Lord was with him and had designed the situation for not only Joseph’s good, but for the good of his entire family and future nation of Israel. The presence of the Lord doesn’t mean that there won’t be trials and temptations in our lives.

The presence of the Lord doesn’t guarantee a constant succession of miracles for our joy and pleasure. The Lord has proscribed that by the sweat of our faces, husbands and fathers should provide food for the family table. A study of the Bible indicates that there were very few periods of miracles down through the years. And yet there is a sense in which every day is filled with the not so obvious miracles of God.

But also contained in the thought of the presence of the Lord is salvation. Israel was enslaved to their Midianite masters, sold into slavery through the effects of their sin. But when the Lord is near, deliverance is nearby as well. The instrument used to free the nation from the Midianites was Gideon. But deliverance from the sin that caused their national slavery was even more nearby than that.

Even when the world appears to be at its darkest, as long as we have life in our soul, we are in the presence of the Lord. And in that state, there is continued hope. But as we see in Israel, so very, very few are willing to listen and take advantage of that hope. Salvation and deliverance are in the outstretched hand of God, but most of our race spit on that hand and continue to winnow our wheat in the shadow of the winepress. We need the Lord for our souls, our lives, our families. There is no deliverance except through His mercy and grace.