Judges 6:11-24
Unlikely Warrior

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. When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior."

"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 hand of Midian."

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?"

"But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

The LORD answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together."

Gideon replied, "If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you."

And the LORD said, "I will wait until you return."

Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.

The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared.

When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!"

But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die."

So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it "The LORD is Peace." To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

New International Version

The Hebrew tribes had once again fallen to heathen occupying forces, because their sinfulness and their rejection of God left them defenseless. This time, the invaders were tribes from Midian, which were described earlier in Judges 6 as being as numerous as locust. This calamity caused the Hebrew people to recognize their sin and begin to plead with God to save them and restore them again. In this passage, God initiates a Divine plan to save the Hebrew people.

In Gideon, God intentionally chose the opposite of a hero to lead the people to victory! Gideon was a younger son of an unimportant family in the least significant Hebrew tribe. He did not appear to have the intensity and drive to lead the Hebrew army, since he had too easily accepted his fate and the fate of his people. He worked very hard at being cowardly, as we consider the comical effort of threshing wheat in a wine press. The normal way to thresh wheat was to use a flat space on top of a hill, have animals walk over the stalks to break the grain kernels from the shafts, then pitch the wheat in the air so breezes would blow away the chaff and leave just the grain. There was no room for animals in the winepress, no breeze to blow away the chaff, just Gideon scrimping to gather what little grain he could. Anyone within earshot would have laughed when God called Gideon a "mighty warrior."

But there was one factor that was sufficient for Gideon to be God's mighty warrior, and that was Gideon's steadfast faithfulness to God. We see evidence of this in Gideon's knowledge of Hebrew history, and we see another in how reverently and properly Gideon prepared the offering for his visitor. This faith had not come easily, for in the passage following this one, we see that even Gideon's father had an altar build to Baal. Gideon may have lacked sufficient strength and conviction in his faith, but he did have faith, and God buttressed that faith with a miracle of fire and a blessing of peace. It was solely because of Gideon's faith that God could commission Gideon to "go in the strength you have and save Israel."

Now, we ought always to do our best for and give our best to our Lord. Most of the time, that means using our strongest skills and abilities in God's service, offering up as an act of worship and love all that is our finest. However, our finest can never be good enough without obedient faith, but our weakest and most frail is more than sufficient when God calls us to act by our faith. Just like Gideon, God always calls us to be faithful, and God can make the most improbable faithful follower into a mighty warrior.