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FLEECES AND FAITH #4
SPINNING YOUR WHEELS
Have you ever gotten out a Palm Pilot and tried to
calculate how much emotional energy you were blowing out the window fretting
over some certain problem? When in fact, if instead of fretting, you could
aim all that passion AT the problem . . . you might have gotten rid of
it by now.
Do you remember back in the 1970s reading about a policeman named Serpico?
There was a book and also a Hollywood film, starring Al Pacino, about
this simple New York City detective who just had one passion in life:
to be a good cop. To protect New York and to bust criminals and to be
an honorable man in blue. The only trouble was: no matter where he went,
no matter what precinct he got moved to, there was corruption. Cops were
shaking down criminals instead of busting them; gambling rings were being
“taxed” instead of investigated. Cops who were assigned to arrest prostitutes
instead located their pimps and extorted cash from them. Weary and angry
with it all, Serpico managed to get transferred to another unit, one where
he was assured things were “as clean as a hound’s tooth.” The very day
he arrived, a fellow officer took him aside and cheerfully explained that
the average “nut” or slush fund of dirty money was running eight hundred
bucks per man per month– and that the entire unit was in on it.
The point is this. Serpico stood back in amazement at how clever, how
ingenious, how driven these cops were . . . to the business of collecting
dirty dough. They were actually brilliant workers and diligent detectives,
but they poured all of their energies into expanding their net, finding
new people to squeeze, fresh loan sharks to strong-arm. Serpico would
ride shotgun with some of these guys, and see them crawl up fire escapes,
chase hoods through back alleys, map out escape routes and cut their enemies
off. But all for evil purposes. And Serpico once confided to an honest
friend: “If these guys would turn even half their investigative energy
toward SOLVING crime instead of exploiting it, man, New York City would
be the safest place in the world to live.” Isn’t that amazing?
Well, back here in the beleaguered nation of Israel, I don’t know about
dirty cops, but certainly the spiritual leaders were bending all of their
energies toward false worship instead of true. And because of the nation’s
apostasy, they were suffering from annual invasions. The Midianites, Amalekites,
and other assorted tribes from the east just rolled in and took what they
wanted.
As a result, as our story really begins, our friend Gideon is in an interesting
place. He’s in a winepress, but he’s not pressing wine or stomping on
grapes. Instead, he’s down in this narrow little pit doing his wheat-threshing.
It’s hot down there; it’s cramped and uncomfortable . . . and of course,
you normally thresh your wheat out in the open. Explanatory notes over
in the book of Ruth describe threshing floors as “hard, smooth, OPEN places,
prepared on either rock or clay and carefully chosen for favorable exposure
to the prevailing winds.” It was common to just toss the grain up in the
air, sometimes with a winnowing fork, and let the breezes blow the straw
and chaff away, leaving the grain to conveniently fall right at your feet.
But here Gideon’s not out in an open, windy area at all; instead he’s
down in the nether regions like a coal miner. Why? Because he’s scared!
Marauding bands are everywhere; enemies are all about. So Gideon is having
to work harder than usual.
How about everyone else in Israel? I imagine some of them did their work
at night instead of during daylight hours. Why? Same reason – scared.
There were probably fields where, instead of having ten guys get the harvest
in, you had to post four of them as guards. So now six harvesters are
doing the work that ten used to do. People traveling or going on summer
vacation to Disney World with the kids probably took the long way around
some trouble spots where they knew the Midianites like to hang out.
And now we have a divine confrontation. God begins to make His move. Verse
11:
“The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that
belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat
in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.”
Well, what does this heavenly being have to say? Let’s
find out:
“When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The Lord is
with you, mighty warrior.’”
Despite his protests, which we’ll get to later, it
appears that Gideon must have had some position in Israel. His family
might have enjoyed a position of some aristocracy; in fact, just a bit
later Gideon has ten family servants help him bulldoze the infamous altars
of Baal. But now, perspiring freely down in that pit, Gideon can’t help
but curl his lip a bit at the suggestion that God is with him. Here’s
verse 13:
“‘But sir,’ Gideon replied, ‘if the Lord is with us, why has all this
happened to us? Where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about
when they said, “Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?” But now the
Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hands of Midian.’”
In a way, I think we can forgive Gideon for this little
retort. “Gideon, good news. The Lord is with you!” “He is? Tell me another
one. If this is what things are like when God is with me, I’d hate to
think what things are like when God takes HIS summer vacation.” Because
it didn’t feel to Israel that God was there at all. Of course, as we’ve
been studying all week, that was Israel’s fault for deliberately abandoning
the faith of their fathers. Be that as it may, God was still interested
in His chosen people, and kindly announces His continued presence.
But now here’s the line that I think has meaning for Detective Frank Serpico
and also for you and me.
“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?’” The King James has
it this way: “Go in THIS THY MIGHT.”
And the point is this. Gideon had a certain amount of might, of strength,
of power, of human passion. And what was he spending it doing? Well, he
was working twice as hard as necessary, down in a wine press, having to
stop short on his backswing, so to speak. He was using all of his energy,
in fact, double energy, to get that stupid wheat harvest out from down
in the basement. And the Lord is essentially saying: “Wouldn’t you rather
take that same energy, that same God-given talent, and use it on the battlefield
setting Israel free from its oppression? Wouldn’t all of Israel rather
use its collective power to worship Me freely, to harvest abundant crops
out in the open, to enjoy the fullness of good health and financial prosperity,
to know that its borders were safely protected by divine agencies? Wouldn’t
that be better? Wouldn’t that be more fun? Wouldn’t you all rather swing
the sword of Gideon in obedience to heaven than be down here with sweat
dripping off your collective brows, taking twice as much time to get half
as much done as usual? Huh?” The Adventist Bible Commentary observes:
“‘This thy might.’ That is, use the might now being expended in threshing
wheat, the abilities exercised in eluding the Midianites, yes, the sum
total of your human abilities, for the noble task of delivering your people.
God will be with you, and supply the enabling power.”
There’s a terrific book by psychologist Leonard Felder,
entitled The Ten Challenges. He uses the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20,
and demonstrates how these ten powerful, Scriptural principles lead to
emotional wellness. In chapter 10, which is about coveting, of course,
he describes a patient of his. Suzanne was just like the children of Israel
in that she was expending huge amounts of emotional energy each day fretting
over the fact that she wasn’t married. Nobody was coming along. She couldn’t
seem to meet anyone. Why why why? And really, for huge amounts of time
each week, she was losing emotional strength worrying instead of doing.
And Felder asked her:
“What if those feelings could be transformed into a positive force in
your life? What if these painful thoughts of ‘why is it happening right
for everyone except me?’ could be a wake-up call that motivates you to
try some new ways of finding a great relationship?”
And you know, it worked. The hours that Suzanne was
spending in self-pity, she now spent improving herself and networking
with new friends, putting herself in positive places where she might meet
someone. In just a few months she was successfully in a nurturing relationship,
and before Dr. Felder’s book was published, the wedding bells had already
rung.
Can you hear God quietly saying right now: “It takes time to worry. Time
to fret and live in fear. Time to stress out over your inadequacies”?
And then He invites us: “Take just a bit of that time . . . and come to
Me. Take just a bit of ‘this thy might’ and walk over to Calvary and My
Son’s kingdom. Let us do your worrying. Let us give you rest.”
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