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Last week, in “Sing a New Song: The Time Before the Kings, Part 6”, we saw that we need to record the specifics of God’s blessings and remember them, so that when future troubles come, we will understand and remember that His mercies begin anew every day, and we will ensure that the Lord's blessings to us will never become mundane or common!
The next few chapters of the book of Judges take us to perhaps one of the more familiar stories in the book of Judges: The Midianite oppression.
Most of us are familiar with the story of how Gideon delivered Israel from the Midianites; but do we know what God did before sending Gideon?
Israel had fallen once again into idolatry: "Then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord..." (Judges 6:1a NASB). God's response is to hand them over to the enemy: "...and the Lord handed them over to Midian for seven years." (Judges 6:1b NASB). The times were perilous. The Midianites would come with their livestock and camels, "...like locust in number..." (Judges 6:5 NASB), plundering the land to the point that there was: “…no sustenance in Israel, nor a sheep, ox, or donkey." (Judges 6:4b NASB). As a result, "…the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds." (Judges 6:2 NASB).
Nonetheless, despite the severity of the oppression, it took Israel 7 years to cry out to the Lord….It was only when, "...Israel was brought very low because of Midian..." that "...the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord." (Judges 6:6 NASB).
By now, 6 chapters into the book of Judges, we are pretty familiar with the pattern. Israel turns away from God, God allows them to be oppressed by an enemy, they turn back to God, and God raises up a mighty deliverer. This isn't exactly how the story plays out this time, however. Rather than immediately calling Gideon, God inserts another step: "…the Lord sent a prophet to the sons of Israel..." (Judges 6:8 NASB)
Wait. What? The people needed deliverance! Why would God send nothing but -- a prophet?
Because God had to do something to break the pattern. Instead of sending a deliverer, He sent a prophet with a pointed message: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ‘It was I who brought you up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of slavery. And I rescued you from the hands of the Egyptians, and from the hands of all your oppressors, and I drove them out from you and gave you their land, and I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live.” But you have not obeyed Me.’” (Judges 6:8-9 NASB)
It was a warning. But where was the punishment in that?
Two-fold:
First of all, the oppression continued, for a while at least.
Secondly, God needed to remind them of why they fell victim to the Midian oppression in the first place. His love was so big that rather than delivering them immediately, He gave them a chance to remember the correlation between obedience and blessing, and conversely, between disobedience and curse!
Was God going to deliver them?
Of course. Through Gideon, as we will see later in Judges 6. And we know from Gideon's story that God didn’t even wait until all of Israel had turned back to Him, for one of the thing that Gideon was told to do and got into trouble for actually doing was to destroy the places of worship in his home town (See Judges 6:25-32)! But before He sent in the solution, God sent the prophet to prevent further falls away from obedience!
That's God's love for His Beloved children. He loves us enough to send the solution to our problems, yes, but sometimes His love is even greater! Sometimes it dictates that we remember the cause of our problems and learn from our mistakes, so that hopefully, further problems can be prevented!
How does this look to us today? We know that God doesn't send us troubles to punish us; but we also know that our poor choices can bring about consequences, consequences that God doesn't necessarily protect us from. That one hour of infidelity can and does destroy families. The intemperate pattern of eating will result in weight gain and health problems. Cheating on your taxes will result in you being held in contempt with whatever tax body your government has. The pattern of withholding your offerings and tithes will block the blessings God wishes to pour out upon you. When we cry out to the Lord to deliver us, He doesn't necessarily take away the consequences of our sin. His love for us is so great that He wants us to remember the root cause of our problems so that we don't find ourselves falling time and time again into the same patterns of difficulty!
When troubles arise, do what Israel did: Turn to the Lord -- And perhaps don't wait seven years to do so! -- then expect Him to carry you through the problems! And He will! But you can also understand that if it is a problem that you've brought on yourself, He will also deal with the root of the problem. In His great love, removing the cause is even more important than removing the consequences, for this assures that you won't fall again!
Join us next week to begin looking at how God chose to deliver Israel!
In His love,
Lyn
Lynona Gordon Chaffart
Author, Moderator, Acting Director, Answers2Prayer Ministries
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