Session 9
EXPLORE THE TEXT
We can be encouraged to know that God calls unlikely people to do great things for Him.
11 The angel of the Lord came, and he sat under the oak that was in Ophrah,
which belonged to Joash, the Abiezrite.
His son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites.12 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said,
“The Lord is with you, valiant warrior.”
13 Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us,
why has all this happened? And where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about?
They said, ‘Hasn’t the Lord brought us out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.”
14 The Lord turned to him and said,
“Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the grasp of Midian. I am sending you!”
Use Judges 6:11 to explain the winepress.
Summarize this content from pages 87-88 of the PSG:
“Gideon did not appear to be a valiant warrior.
He was hiding like everyone else just hoping to survive. .Upon hearing the messenger’s greeting, Gideon’s frustrations with God rose to the surface.
He asked, ‘If the Lord is with me, then why has He allowed all of these terrible things to happen to us? And if the Lord is so mighty, then where are all the wondrous things we have heard from our forefathers that He is capable of doing? How could the Lord bring us out of Egypt and then turn around and abandon us to the hateful Midianites?’ Gideon’s facts were correct, but his conclusion was wrong. He blamed God for the perilous situation when it was Israel that was responsible for it.”
God promised Gideon His strength in fulfilling this assignment,
but he was still skeptical.
As Gideon interacted with the angel, the full awareness of what was being asked of him set in.