READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Judges 6:11-24
St. Luke 1:8-17
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His book of Judges heard, saying:
“Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.”
Gideon is our hero of faith from Hebrews 11:32, but he is a reluctant hero of faith as you could describe his career with the phrase: I don’t know. Moses was the same, as were all the heroes in the Bible. They were called by God not because of their strength, but because of their weaknesses. This is because in our weakness, God’s power is perfected (2 Cor 12:9).
The first obvious weakness is Gideon’s reluctance. His second obvious weakness, from Judges 6, is his constant need of assurance from God, always asking for a sign. But, true to His Word, God sticks to the plan, as He said in Isaiah 7:14, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign”, and presents the Malakh YHWH to Gideon in a small Divine Service.
As we began to teach on Ash Wednesday, there is a lot of confusion as to what angels are in the Bible, mostly because of our sin of not listening to God. How we biblically define angels, always, is by the message they bring, for they are messengers.
That is what the word “angel” means. Anyone can be a messenger, so we included men in the office of angel as well. Meaning that they are not angels nor do they turn into angels, but they simply do the same work of angels, as God’s Word attests.
Malakh is the Hebrew word for angel and YHWH is the Divine Name God gives to Moses from the burning bush. This Malakh YHWH, or Angel of the Lord, stands above all the other angels and messengers in quite a few ways, two of which are that He accepts worship, as with Gideon tonight, and speaks as God as with Moses.
What Gideon shows to us today, is that he cannot believe that this being in front of him is going to defeat Israel’s enemies, for they are numerous. Now, if you had a super-shiny, high and lifted up God saying you can do it, all well and good. But something here makes Gideon doubt over and over again, just like Moses.
It begins in v.11 when the Angel of the Lord enters and sits under a tree. We have gone through that exercise multiple times before tonight, seeing that spirits don’t sit, they don’t “look” with eyes, nor do they carry staffs in hands.
This is important and this angel that is more than an angel is also important. If only for the fact that Jesus leads us to see the Angel of the Lord in that way and question whether or not something else is going on. He plants things in our head such as, “all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31) and “all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44), and “when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (Jn 15:26).
Because of these words, we reread the Old Testament and start finding more and more similar incidents to Gideon’s encounter. But we are still not sure. Along with Gideon we say, “I don’t know” about that.
We don’t know, but the Lord is going to prove it to us. We demand signs from Him, even doubting His Word.
The Angel of the Lord is having none of it. He has begun this conversation with Gideon and He is going to end it. And He began the conversation with the Gospel. Gideon is a reluctant coward, allegedly, yet he is declared a valiant warrior by the Angel of the Lord at the start and that the Lord is with him.
At this point, it gets even more interesting. Gideon wants the Angel of the Lord to prove His divine mission, that He will go with Gideon. All of us, along with Gideon, are doubting God’s Word, because all we see here is a man. He looks just like us. Gideon is looking at just another person, for all he knows, and not God Who could give him victory.
But this is not the message and this is not the plan. The message is that Gideon is a valiant warrior and the plan is to defeat the oppressors. There will be no errors. There will be no obstacles. The Lord’s people have been brought out of Egypt, not to suffer, but to enter into the joy of their Lord.
The message is clear: there will be victory over sin, death, and the devil. The proof is also clear: the Lord will set His Table and win His victory. Gideon, though weak, is chosen to do God’s Will in order that God would be strong to save and get all the glory. Gideon is declared valiant in Christ.
The Lord’s Table then is the proof of God’s communion with us. It is on purpose that St Luke writes the same way as Judges 6:21, in his Gospel about the Lord’ s Valiant One Who fights for us, as we sing in a Mighty Fortress. In 24:30-31 St Luke records: “When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.”
Though Gideon says, I don’t know, now at his Lord’s side in heaven he says, “I do know”. And we say “I do know”. We know that the Old Testament speaks of Christ and we know there are angels and archangels and men. Now, we know that there is and there was and there always will be Jesus Christ, Who is to be found in the Old Testament doing the exact same work as He does in the New.
that is suffering and dying on the cross, giving faith through the preaching of the message of the cross, and saving us in Word and Sacrament. In Gideon’s encounter with the Malakh YHWH, we see this picture saying “I have seen the Lord”, not just of the Old Testament being about Jesus, but that Jesus Himself was the main character in all of it, working out salvation.
Sometimes by the title of Malakh YHWH.
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