For seven years the Midianites have oppressed the
Israelites. They have raided their crops
and forced them into hiding in the caves and mountains. The people cry out to the Lord and He sends a
prophet who recounts all the Lord has done for them and then uses that little
contraction that makes all the difference in the world, "but", you
have not obeyed my voice. If they are to
enjoy the covenant promises of protection from their enemies, they will need to
turn back, repent, and obey the voice of the Lord, get rid of their other
gods. As Gideon is threshing wheat in
the wine press the angel of the Lord hails him as a mighty man of valor, an
ironic statement to be sure given the situation, but it is similar to the word
of the Lord to Joshua to be strong and courageous, it isn't his strength that
matters, it is his faith and the promise of God to go with him. Gideon also has his Jacob moment here, seeing
the Lord face to face and living. Now he
is more interested in what this angel has to say.
The scribes from Jerusalem, the experts in the Law, had an
opinion about Jesus, He was from the devil.
Logically it doesn’t make sense and worse yet they have committed a sin
that cannot be forgiven, they have ascribed the work of the Holy Spirit to
satan. We can go back to the knowledge
of good and evil in the garden here and see how our reason and discernment has
fallen through eating the fruit in disobedience to the commandment of God. We have not listened to and obeyed His voice
and so when true righteousness is before us we get it completely backwards, we
say it is unclean. The consequences of
Adam's disobedience, listening to the voice of his wife after having heard the
voice of the Lord, are great, we need to have our eyes and ears re-opened to
see and hear rightly.
Do we trust God? Do
we believe that all things come from Him, all that we have? One of the major changes in the way we think,
the renewing of our minds, is to recognize that indeed we are blessed to be a
blessing to others, that it is all His and that we are simply stewards. We are to be conduits of His blessings to
others, our brothers and sisters who have need.
The early church recognized that reality and shared all things in common
for a season of time. Apparently the
Corinthian Christians were enjoying a measure of the Lord's material blessing
at this time while their brothers and sisters elsewhere were in need. Paul's encouragement to give for the relief
of suffering in the brotherhood is important for us to consider today. They may not have thought of themselves as
blessed, but they were called to give of abundance, more than their daily
bread. Has He earned your trust? Have you earned His?
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