When God Abandons a Nation

The Israelites made it into the Promised Land, they had settled down, and were raising their families and their crops. They’d had a few rough times being invaded or persecuted by neighboring countries but whenever they cried out to the Lord, he would answer and send someone to help.

Well, things had gone bad again. They had been invaded by the Midianites this time. And whenever the Israelites had a bountiful harvest, the Midianites would come and take all the produce. Not only did they take the crops, but they also took the livestock, leaving nothing for the Israelite people. They were having a hard time just surviving.

A young man named Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press to hide the fact that it was wheat, in order to salvage something that the Midianites wouldn’t take. An angel of the Lord came and sat down near him, under a tree, and said, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” (Judges 6: 12) Gideon’s first response wasn’t to ask why the angel was calling him a “mighty man of valor,” it was to question God, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.” In other words, if God is ‘with us,’ where is he? Why are we going through all this? What’s going on that he doesn’t do something?

Good question! Why isn’t God taking care of his people? And why is this angel saying “the Lord is with you” when it’s obvious he isn’t? Well, first go back to Deuteronomy 27. Moses is preparing the people to enter the Promised Land. He cited the blessings that would be theirs if they obeyed the commandments God had given them. They would be prosperous and flourish in their new land, God would protect them and keep them safe. And he also cited the curses, what would happen if they didn’t follow his commands, for example,  if they started worshiping other gods instead of him. They definitely wouldn’t prosper, they would be invaded by other countries and be ravished, demolished by them.

Looking a little deeper and a little further ahead in the story, we find this: “The Lord said to him [Gideon], ‘Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it…’” So his own father had an altar to the god Baal and the Asherah pole honoring the goddess, Asherah. And when Gideon and his servants tore down the altar and pole, they did so at night because he was afraid of the reaction of his father and the townspeople. Sure enough, in the morning when everybody saw the devastation, they wanted to kill Gideon. They were defending their false gods! These people were descendants of the Israelites God had delivered from Egypt, brought them to this land, promised to protect and prosper them forever—if they obeyed his laws. They had cast God aside to worship these false gods. Now they were defending these gods. And Gideon was wondering where God was, why wasn’t he blessing them and taking care of them like he had promised?

Just exactly who had cast whom aside? Doesn’t that resonate with us today? We live our lives like we’re in charge, like we call the shots, like we got it under control. We invest our time and energy into things that we think will prosper us and protect us and bless us—modern day versions of Baal and Asherah. And then we wonder why things are going to hell around us. Well how about each of us sit down and exam that for a while.