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| Photo courtesy of psbobby.wordpress.com |
I've been studying and reflecting upon the life of Gideon and his call in Judges 6 this week.
Honesty, there are parts of this passage that just stupefy me.
Let's take how the angel of the Lord first addresses Gideon. Check it out with me...
"And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, 'The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.' (Judges 6:12 (ESV), emphasis mine)
The NIV translates this verse: "When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.' (emphasis mine)
I am blown away as to how the angel of the Lord can call Gideon "O mighty warrior" (NIV) or "O mighty man of valor" (ESV) (valor = courage especially in battle, fearlessness, bravery, boldness) when Gideon is ANYTHING BUT!! In fact, in the following verses (6:15), Gideon reminds the angel of the Lord that he is weak and the least of his house, and as we will see later, he lacks faith that God will indeed save Israel through him and does the fleece/dew testing thing with the Lord (Judges 6:36-40).
But yet, because of GOD Gideon DOES have valor and IS a mighty warrior (the Israelites will go on to be the victors in the battle against their enemies the Midianites with a meager 300 soldiers) and he can wear that name because as the angel first stated above "The Lord is with you."
Whaaaat??!
You see, just like we see in Genesis chapter 1 in the creation account, God speaks and names and therefore IT IS.
We don't have to feel like it. We don't have to prove it by our actions or words. Because God is with us, dare I say, WITHIN us as believers, we are what God says we are. Period.
At any rate, this renaming of Gideon got me thinking about other people in the Bible that were renamed. And that brought me to Abraham and Sarah. I learned, and in some cases relearned (oh, how prone we are to forget!) some wondrous things about them this week, too.
First off, Abram (which literally means "Exalted Father") was renamed Abraham ("A Father of a Multitude/many nations") BEFORE Isaac was born. Abram had fathered ONE child at that point, Ishmael, but yet this was not the fruit of his own wife's womb. Stay with me for a bit because I think this is soooo cool...
God reveals his personal name in the Bible as YHWH (known to Jewish scholars as the tetragammaton). It is actually an unpronounceable name, so scholars had to add vowels to make it into "Yahweh" (also translated "Jehovah"). The Hebrew letter "He", the repeated letter among the four letters of the tetragammaton, is a sound like the letter H in the English language--it is made by breathing out. In the Hebrew, the word used for the Spirit of God is the word "Ruach," which literally means "the outbreathing." God breathes Himself into Abram (and Sarai) and makes them into Abra-H-am and Sara-H (hyphen emphasis mine). God literally inserts that letter He into the middle of the name Abram, transforming who Abram is and what he will go on to become. Now, Abram, with Jehovah a part of him or IN him becomes Abraham, the "Father of the Multitudes." (And as NT Christians, God renames and resides with us--so this insertion of the Hebrew letter He, this outbreathing, foreshadows the Holy Spirit who would come to Earth in the NT at Pentecost and indwell us as believers).
So, like Gideon, Abram, and Sarai, when the Lord is with us, when He resides IN us, we are transformed and renamed. We are mighty men (and women) of valor! We have the breath and life of God breathed into us to do all that God will equip us to do.
Now let's hop back over to Gideon to close out...
You see, even though Gideon states (very accurately, I'd assert) that he is weak and the least of his family, the angel of the Lord has a very specific instruction for him. We see it in Judges 6:14...
"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?'" (emphasis mine)
Did you catch that? You don't have to have it all together to be used of God and to have a mighty impact on this earth. You will never have all the strength you need at the outset. Like the boy with the fishes and loaves, we offer up to God what little we have (or that mustard seed of faith) and He does the rest (John 6). The Apostle Paul states it best when he pens that we ought to boast in our weaknesses, for God's grace is sufficient for us and HIS power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Like Gideon, Abram, and Sarai, God has renamed us as his believers. And what He declares and speaks into being is what IS.
Rest in that truth with me this week, won't you? And go only in the strength you have and take heart that God will do the rest! And in so doing, God will reveal Himself to be the LORD of PEACE like he did with Gideon later in Judges chapter 6. We have His Word.
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