[AI translation] There have been several requests here in the congregation that we take a series from the Old Testament at these Sunday evening evangelistic services. I welcome this request, because in the Old Testament, this wonderful picture book of God, there are indeed many stories through which God has very relevant messages for people today. So I thought that on some of these evenings we would choose a typical Old Testament figure, a person whose person, whose story, almost illustrates God's message to us. Here, for example, is the instructive story of Gideon, who lived more than three thousand years ago.The background to the events we are about to read is that the people of Israel are threatened by this enemy or that enemy in the struggles of the conquest after their arrival in the Promised Land. Even now, the neighbouring Midianites are oppressing the Lord's people, and Gideon is commissioned by the Lord to encourage his discouraged countrymen and lead them to victory over the enemy. Gideon is understandably reluctant to take on a task beyond his strength. Despite the Lord's encouragement, "I will be with you, and you shall smite Midian as a man" (Judges 6:16), Gideon hesitates, bargains - he needs assurance. And here I feel this man of long ago so close to us, believers today. Are we not often so uncertain in our faith, in our mission? Uncertainty paralyses, intimidates, makes us fickle. We are not talking about serious doubt, just uncertainty. So how is it really? It would be nice to be really sure for once of the reality of our whole relationship with God! How?
As soon as he heard the divine word calling him to ministry, a sense of uncertainty arose in him, and he answered the call, "If I have found grace in thy sight, I pray thee, give me some sign that thou speakest to me." Behold, the eternal human desire: give me, Lord, some sign of yourself, that I may believe in you! Yes, we want something visible, something tangible on which to base our faith! It is said so often today, and more and more often, that the whole belief in God is a position that is now outdated in the modern age, a primitive idea left over from the days of humanity's infantile ignorance. Who has seen God? The existence of God is so unprovable that even believers have a sense of uncertainty in their souls! The object of faith, the existence of God, the whole of eternity, the forgiveness of sins, and what God wants with me, is so painfully uncertain, so elusive. Even if I hear a voice from above in a biblical Word or in a Spirit-filled sermon, how do I know that God is really speaking to me? It's as if a tapestry is covering what is speaking to me. Oh, if only a small gap would open in that tapestry! If only I could have some tangible assurance of it!
This was the kind of sign the Pharisees wanted from Jesus in his day. "What sign then showest thou, that we may see and believe thee?" (John 6,30) Do you not feel that there is something in this a great distrust of Jesus, even something humiliating? It is as if Jesus were a talentless novice, who would first have to prove that what he says is true. It's not enough to say that he is the Son of God: he should show it, like a booth man who wants to gain credibility for his wares by showing how well the glass cutter cuts, for example! Here it is, no fraud, no deception, here it is! Don't you feel how humiliating it is to come before God with such a demand: 'Please give me a sign that you are speaking to me'! Because, Lord, your word, your word, your Word is not enough for me, I want to see a more sure sign! And then Jesus said, quite harshly, but still with a view to human frailty: "This wicked and fornicating generation desireth a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but a sign, if it be the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonah was three nights and three days in the belly of the fish of the fowl, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth." (Mt 12:39-40) In other words, God gives only one sign of himself: the death and resurrection of Jesus. He could not give a greater testimony of His love, grace and being! Whoever is not convinced by this, nothing can convince him.
How can you know, for example, that someone really loves you? On the one hand, by their words: kind, beautiful, caressing words, and on the other hand, by a gesture, a gesture, a deed that makes their words authentic: such is the sign of love. Well, God's kindest word to us, his most caressing word, you know, don't you? Well: JESUS! For in Jesus, the invisible God's declaration of love for us was made flesh, incarnate. God's unmistakable gesture, His unmistakable gesture of His love, is again the death and resurrection of Jesus on Calvary. You can know that there is an invisible God, with whom you have found grace, who loves you as no one else in the world, by the only sign that Jesus died on the cross for you, and by His resurrection He opened the way to invisible eternity before you. Expect no other special sign from Him, for no other sign is given but this! The death and resurrection of Jesus! This is the objective sign of God of Himself.
But in Gideon's case, it was not really such a sticky question when he asked for a sign. He was not so much uncertain about the Lord as he was about himself. For his request was the same: "If I have found favour in thy sight, I pray thee, give me some sign"! So was he seeking assurance that he had indeed found favour with God? According to the custom of the time, he prepared his sacrifice in the order and manner of the time, and he thought: if God accepts the sacrifice, then he will know that he has found favour with God! And God accepted. Behold, we read, "Fire came out of the rock and devoured the flesh and the unleavened bread".
This is how God's mercy can be ascertained today: will he accept my sacrifice? But what sacrifice is it that I can be sure God will accept? Should I present Him with, for example, a larger monetary offering? Or should I offer Him my sufferings? Or should I renounce for Him the pleasures of earthly life and continue to live ascetically? Or should I offer Him a goodly portion of my time, in which I eagerly seek to serve Him? Well, I am not sure that such a sacrifice is really acceptable to God. He cannot be paid, satisfied, won to grace with such sacrifices! There is only one sacrifice that I know for sure that God will accept. The one we read about in Psalm 51: "Sacrifices acceptable to God: a contrite soul; a contrite and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise." (Psa 51:19) So if you bring your repentant heart before God, you can be sure that He will accept it, and you can be sure that you have indeed found favor in His sight!
When Gideon saw the fire consume the sacrifice, a tremendous joyful realization came over his soul: the Lord is here, the Lord is indeed standing before the very face of God. When a man, in true repentance, brings his sins as a sacrifice to God, he always has the fearfully happy experience of the presence of the living God. For what is sacrifice? It is something that I lay down before the Lord, that I give to the Lord completely, irrevocably. If you thus give your sins to the Lord, you will most certainly experience the shuddering wonder of Gideon, that your sacrifice - that is, your sins - will be consumed by the fire of God's redeeming love. For the first time in my life, I experienced the reality of the living God by bringing my repentant heart to Him. He who wants to be convinced, to be sure that there is a God: that Jesus really died on the cross for him; that his sins are forgiven; that he too has found favour with God; that redemption is true and eternal for him too, let him gather up all his sins and bring them before the Lord as a sacrifice, in one great, sincere confession of sin! But truly, as a sacrifice, and acknowledge it as an absolute certain reality that God accepts! For Jesus came into this world precisely to be the Lamb of God who takes upon Himself and bears the flood of repentance and confession of sin. If the death and resurrection of Jesus is the objective sign of God's self, then this sacrifice is the subjective sign that assures you that God is alive and loves you!
But that's not all! Now God is waiting for a sign from you. Now you too must give some sign that God has given you such objective and subjective signs of Himself. The Lord is waiting for a sign from you that will again only you can be sure that your Saviour is really alive! At God's command he is doing a great cleansing at home in his father's house. He tears down the altar of the pagan idol-god, cuts down the trees of the holy mountain around it, and builds an altar to the Lord in its place. In other words, before he can be a true blessing to his people, he must first put his house in order. For until our own lives are in order internally, God cannot use us, nor bless our zealous service! Is this not the reason for our many fruitless ministries? We cannot, or will not, deal with our sins as firmly and as finally as Gideon dealt with the idols that had taken over his home! It is terrible how many idols are in the human heart! It is the idol that plays a greater role in our lives, that has a more decisive influence on our thinking and actions than the living God. It may be money, whether because there is a lot of it or because there is little; it may be a passion that binds us; or a dear face that may no longer live here on earth but over there, but we still cannot tear ourselves away from it; or a secret longing that lingers in the heart; or the daily worries that weigh us down; or time, whose frightening passage drives one to a panic; and it may be the strongest idol - you know what it is: our own dear, cherished, feared selves! And as long as such an idol stands and reigns in one's life, he cannot be an instrument of God who can be a blessing to the people around him!
We believe in God, of course, but unfortunately our faith is not attractive enough! And indeed, it is not attractive because it is weakened, its power is taken away by some idol that is banished! Our Christian life is not a good example because we have left many, many altars in ourselves that should have been destroyed long ago. Do you wonder why your best-intentioned witness has no effect on your child? After all, He sees you up close and He sees your idol at the centre of your life, not the God you may be telling Him about. Because someone else will see that idol in our hearts sooner than we will. With a double heart, a heart divided between the idol-god and the living God, God cannot be served! All efforts are in vain! God will not accept and bless our service! God can only pour His Holy Spirit into a heart emptied of idols!
Here again, when Gideon performs the great purification, when he ruthlessly and uncompromisingly takes down the idols, things happen to him that he himself is amazed at. His father, who he feared would have something to say about the great purge, stands by him, and at his call, the people flock to him, listen to him, take heart, follow him. What has happened here? What we read is, "The Spirit of the Lord has possessed Gideon". Because God can only pour His Holy Spirit into a heart emptied of idols. And now Gideon receives another assurance of his faith in God: he feels, he experiences, that he has been taken in hand by God, that now the Lord Himself is at work in him. When someone so truly gives his life to God, he is always strengthened in the certainty that Jesus is really alive in him, because he experiences that, behold, he is at work through him! The words that he speaks, the effects that flow from him, the results that he achieves through his ministry: they would not pass him by. There is another Someone else working in and through him: the living God himself! This is the happiest assurance of the living reality of God. So to feel that I am being used up by God! God is making my life a blessing to others!
If only we could go on living our whole Christian life with such unshakeable assurance that our Saviour, though invisible, yet experienced, is truly ALIVE!
Amen
Date: 21 September 1969 (evangelization)