In the winepress with Dale Carnegie
The Lord is with you, you gutless wimp!" Or, "The Lord is with you, you skulking coward." That we would have understood under the circumstances because he was threshing his wheat in a winepress, hiding from the Midianite bandits, afraid that they would take his crop! Maybe, "The Lord is with you, you fearful little man." But no! "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."
Half of forever ago (or was it last week?) I was made to go to one of the courses that had to do with raising one’s confidence, generating optimism and that sort of thing. One of the requirements of the course was that everyday we had to jump up on a chair and yell enthusiastically, "Boy, do I feel good!" It didn’t matter how you felt and if for perfectly good reasons you felt terrible there was still the chair.
Is this what happened in Judges 6:12? Gideon looked up and saw this stranger lounging under the tree close by and heard him call him a mighty warrior. Was the Angel of the Lord acting out a Dale Carnegie ruse? I’m sure I don’t know for sure but I’m sure there was nothing of the Dale Carnegie programme here. Humanly speaking, one man couldn’t take on the vast host of Amalek and Midian (6:5) but this one was doing something! He was defying the oppressor’s thieving power. ("I won’t let them have it!" you can hear him grunt with every stroke of the flail.) He was doing what he could. There’s something heroic about that. [A Glasgow, Scotland tomb inscription says, "She did what she could." Another in some place says, "He had something to give, he gave it and went away." A lovely woman who couldn’t keep Jesus from being abused and murdered anointed him with her personal store of perfume and Christ, loving her gift, said to his disciples, "She has done what she could."]
When Gideon’s exalted visitor said the Lord is with you the hider-in-the- winepress took issue with him, expressing his doubts about Yahweh’s faithfulness (6:13). Whatever else it shows it suggests he isn’t a "yes" man. The visitor who spoke as and for the Lord persists in expressing the commission. "The Lord is with you!" But what’s the punchline? The Lord is with you mighty warrior! Yes, but what’s the punchline? "Go in this strength of yours to save Israel from Midian" (following the REB and the Jewish Publication Version). That’s what the Lord was with him to do.
The Angel of the Lord persists in addressing him as a man of valor. He saw in this man who was doing all he was able to do—saw in him the courage to do more if the opportunity was there. Christ had a way of doing this, didn’t he? "You are Simon," he said to the somewhat unstable fisherman, "you will be Peter!" And to selfish, bickering disciples he said on the night he was betrayed, "You are the ones that have stood by me in all my trials" (Luke 22:28). He credits loyalty to them, claiming they had shared with him his troubles. How can he do that? Weren’t they vacillating and shifty? Wouldn’t they before the week was done desert him? How then can he speak of them this way? Because he knew they were doing all they could. What they had, however little, they had given to him and he knew that if they had been able to do better they would have; if they had been able to give more he would have got it! And did Gideon go? And did the apostles of Christ give more? The Angel saw it in him and Christ saw it in them because the Lord was with them.
And what if you’re doing the best you can right now—meager though it might be, meager compared with those who seem to be "making a difference" in the world, meager compared with the girl who sits in the pew three rows down from you, meager compared with the man that can hardly sleep at night thinking of the hungry of the world? What would the angel of the Lord think of the something you’re doing? What would Christ say of you as he faced his awful trial and you gave him not much but all you had? If he said you were one that stood by him would you blush and feel certain he was mistaken? Do you not think that the apostles later, reflecting back on their years with him—do you not think they too would blush warm and red and maybe weep at his generosity? But he’s no fool and he doesn’t tell lies. Maybe you should take him at his word. And if the Angel of the Lord called you brave would you not think maybe he knew something about you that you were not yet aware of? Do what you can! Do it! And imagine yourself threshing in a winepress all alone or in an upper room, one of the squabblers and imagine...
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.