God Ain't Got...

"Thank God!" said the mysterious woman.  "God ain't got nothing to do with it," replied Sawyer.  This is the short of the conversation between Sawyer (pictured left) and a mysterious woman last night on Lost.  The idea is that God, if there is one*, has abandoned the inhabitants of the esoteric island.  Ironically, Gideon, the oft acclaimed judge of the Old Testament, made the same statement about three thousand years ago.

Judges 6:11 opens up with Gideon "beating out wheat in the wine press."  That is, he was threshing grain at the base of a hill, which is the worst place to do so.  (The wine press was usually located at the bottom of a hill.)  The "threshing floor," in Scripture, usually refers to the middle of a hill.  It both produced and blocked the right amount of wind to separate the chaff from the grain.  The top was too windy, the bottom was not windy enough, but the middle was "juuuuuuuussssst right."  Gideon was threshing by the wine press "in order to save [the grain] from the Midianites."  In other words, he was scared--willing to sacrifice good grain for safe threshing.

In the following verse, an angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said to him, "The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior."  Gideon replied, "If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?  And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?'  But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian" (Judges 6:13).  In other words, Gideon is saying, "God ain't got nothing to do with us."

The message of Gideon's call was that God chose the weak (Gideon) to shame the strong (Midianites).  Gideon was weak physically and spiritually.  He said, "My family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father's house."  Eugene Peterson says it this way, "Look at me.  My clan's the weakest in Manasseh and I'm the runt of the litter."  This weak-defeating-the-strong message is precisely what Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29: "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."  J. Vernon McGee, concerning this, wrote, "Our problem today, friends, is that most of us are too strong for God to use.  Most of us are too capable for God to use.  You notice that God only uses weak men, don't you? (J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible - Joshua and Judges, 150.)

Gideon had every excuse in the world to ignore God's calling.  He was weak, he was scared, and he didn't see any evidence of God's presence.  Even after three signs, he still hesitated to believe.  God, however, was compassionate.  He desired to manifest His glory to Israel and used the weak, unbelieving, unfaithful Gideon to do this.  Gideon was only valiant because God made him valiant.  Likewise, we are only valiant when God makes us valiant.  Thankfully, we can be valiant in our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. (1 John 5:13)

*According to Lost.