P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

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.”