Names | Peace - Judges 6 | May 31

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All right, let's pray together. Lord, I just ask that you would teach us this morning,

that you would teach us from your wonderful word, that we would have ears to hear it,

in all the ways that we struggle with fear and all the ways that we struggle

with anxiety or worry and all the ways that we are unstable and double-minded

in our ways and not trusting.

We need you. We need you for peace. We need you for joy.

Because you are peace. You are whole and complete.

There's nothing lacking in you. So I pray that we would come to you this morning,

just as we sang, just as we've already heard, and that you would just fill us, God.

Fill us to fullness, and may our peace be in you. Teach us this morning. Amen.

So one thing that I have enjoyed as we've been talking about the different names of God over the weeks,

is the realization that we're not really learning something new, so to speak, each week.

It's not like each week is this completely separate idea that's unrelated.

In a lot of ways, we're taking the name of God, even the name Yahweh, Yehovah,

as it says in Exodus, when God introduces himself and he says,

Yehovah, Yehovah, the God merciful, right? slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

We're just kind of looking at the name of God.

And then we're seeing and focusing in and zooming in and seeing all the ways

that this name is the name above every other name and all the meaning that he has in it.

And so we get to look at all these individual characteristics of the name of

God, really, rather than these different names, we get to look at what the fullness

of his name really means each and every week.

And just as we talked about Shepard last week.

In some ways, we're zooming in again because the shepherd is the one who leads us to peace.

He makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters.

So peace is found in our shepherd. And so we're just expanding on that.

But that same name, the same God who knows us, loves us, and is aware of every detail of our lives.

What he's doing throughout scripture constantly with his name is taking his great name.

And then he's breaking it down into specific ways that we can understand it

more and more. and also more practically.

Because I think sometimes we can understand or know who God is theologically

or in the understanding of mental agreements.

But what we need to do a lot of times is experience who He is in the moments

where it really matters, in the moments where the bills come or when the anxiety comes,

when the diagnosis comes, I can't say that word, when the future looks uncertain,

when difficult times come.

And even when times are great, we need to know how to experience who He is and

not just understand and mentally agree with who He is.

And so today we are coming, as you already know, to a really awesome,

beautiful name that we encounter in Scripture. We only encounter it once.

And if you're not already aware of where that is, you might be surprised.

But it is Yehovah Shalom. The Lord is peace.

God is peace. And so, as Sandy already initiated, maybe turn to the person next

to you and say shalom this morning.

That's great. In some ways, all of our battles that we experience throughout

life are for peace and peace is the thing that everybody in this world is searching

for and trying to achieve in some way,

whether that be through diet and exercise and yoga or pouring themselves into work or activity,

moving, moving new locations.

All of these things are searches for peace in a lot of the world.

And in some ways, a lot of our battles, if not all of our battles are for peace.

And last week, as we talked about the shepherd, there's that verse that talks

about how the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, right?

We didn't really talk about that verse last week, but it is true that there

is a thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy.

And sometimes the question is, well, what is he destroying? And I feel like

a lot of times that answer, the response that answer is peace.

And so peace is something that we all need and we're all searching for.

And when most of us hear the word peace, at least in English,

we already have an idea in our minds of what that looks like.

We all have a history of how we've used it or how it's been used.

And so a lot of times what we pour into it, we might not say it this way,

but is the absence of something.

No more conflict, no war, no problems, no stress, no trouble.

We pour these absence of things into our definition of the word peace.

And it is true that peace is when those things, potentially,

we could say that peace is when those things are not happening,

we're not experiencing conflict.

But as we'll get into a little bit later, we'll see that peace is something

we can experience even as those are going on.

So that's not really what the biblical definition of peace is at all.

If we look at peace in the Bible, we think of the word shalom that comes from another word.

And that word shows up one of the first times in Exodus 21 and 22, which is also a.

This idea of peace. And what it is, is Moses is giving people the law.

And 14 times in these two chapters, the word for peace is used,

but your Bible might not translate it that way.

And so what's happening is specifically he's saying things like,

if you wrong a person, or if you accidentally kill their cow,

or that these things happen,

then there is a restoration, a restitution that has to be made because there's

a lack that has been created.

There is some incompleteness that needs to be restored.

And so the biblical definition of peace is wholeness.

When the need for something to be restored is because there is peace that is

lacking, because there is not wholeness, there's not completeness,

there's not wellbeing, but peace in the Bible is those things.

It's wholeness, completeness, well-being, contentment, satisfaction,

nothing missing, nothing broken.

And so while we pour in the meaning of the absence of something into the idea

of peace, the Bible pours in the idea of fullness and wholeness.

In ancient Hebrew, it really means to make something whole. That's the definition

I want you to hold on to this morning.

And restoration, as we experience, brings back that completeness,

that wholeness, that shalom. Not merely the absence of conflict,

but the presence of completeness.

And so, as it was mentioned, when Jewish people greet one another with that

idea of shalom, and there's a fuller phrase, you guys might have heard in Arabic

how they say, assalamu alaikum, right?

And then the response is, alaikum assalam.

That is, they're shared languages, they're very similar languages.

In Hebrew, it's very similar, shalom alaikum.

And then you respond in the reverse, and that is a blessing of peace to be upon

you. a blessing and desire for wholeness.

They're literally speaking this idea of well-being over one another,

that may you be whole, may you be complete, may you lack nothing,

may you experience wholeness.

And so they are speaking those over one another.

And so when we come to the passage where we experience God as peace,

a lot of, it might be surprising because it's found in Judges chapter 6,

Judges 6 · chapter mention

which is not the place that you think of for wholeness.

It's not the place you think of for peace, for calmness, for lack of war or conflict.

None of Judges is a place that you would go to and think of God as peace.

But that's where the only place that Yehovah Shalom, Yahweh Shalom is mentioned.

So this is the story of Gideon, which many of you might be familiar with.

Rather than reading the chapter, I just want to give a quick recap of what's happening.

So Israel and Judges, Israel is handed over to sort of the nations as a result of their sin.

The whole theme of Judges is this idea that there was no king and everybody

just did what was good in their own eyes. In fact,

It's so strange to think about this as we read the Old Testament,

but the law, the book of the law had been lost.

They didn't even know where it was. And you're like, oh, well,

they must have found it before there were kings.

But that's like Hezekiah or somewhere towards the end of Israel's kingdom is

when they actually, maybe it was Josiah, but uncover the law of the Lord again.

So in Judges, this is felt and seen greater than anything. In this particular

chapter, Israel had been in captivity or under threat by the Midianites for seven years.

And so they weren't really in captivity. But what would happen is they would

grow their crops and they would start to bring them in and collect them.

And then Midian would go and raid them.

So they would come in raiding groups and take all of the good things from the

Israelites over and over again. So they lived in constant fear.

And this is where we find Gideon. it says that he is threshing out grain in a wine press.

And obviously that seems odd to us because grain and wine are different things.

But physically speaking, a wine press is sort of like a circular hole in the ground.

And so he's in this hole in the ground with his wheat.

In some ways, I had a professor one time explain it like this,

almost as if you see this hole in the ground, Midian is looking out from their hills.

And he's got his wheat in the ground and he's kind of like standing around rubbing

his feet to get the grain. So he's hiding.

He's trying to not let Midian see what's going on and he's hiding from the fear

of what could happen, trying not to be noticed, trying to make it just another day.

And before we're too hard on Gideon, because I feel like a lot of times Gideon

is given this, he does it to himself.

He says, I'm of the least tribe, I'm weak, who am I? so he does this own pity

party but we also adopt that persona and we give him a hard time but.

A lot of us, I think, know exactly what that feels like.

We're not threshing grain in a wine press, but we live cautiously.

We hide ourselves emotionally.

We carry these burdens that God never intended us to carry.

And all of it kind of balloons off of this idea, worry and anxiety.

All of it comes from this idea that we are assuming responsibility that God

never intended us to have.

Whenever we worry, whenever we have anxiety, we're assuming this responsibility

that God never intended us to have.

And so when we meet Gideon, it's not just this physical threat that they're experiencing.

It is just as much the emotional and the mental occupation that the threat of

the Midianites has occupied in their minds.

And so that's why they're experiencing this worry, this anxiety, this fear.

And fear has a way of understanding,

causing us to take our eyes off of the good shepherd. Last week,

we talked about how when the predator is out, sheep actually look towards the shepherd.

But for us, when we experience fear, it has a way of turning our focus away

from God instead of trusting him.

And we can be physically in the promised land, but mentally not experiencing

peace because of worry, because of fear, because of anxiety.

But when the angel of the Lord shows up in Judges 6, he greets this guy hiding in a hole.

And he says, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.

Even though at that moment, nothing could have been further from the truth.

But God has a way of seeing things beyond what we can see.

He has a way of understanding, as he knows all things, life in its truest sense.

And he has a way of speaking confidence and truth into our fear.

So this is the story of Gideon. Of course, there's so much more, right?

So he tears down his altars and the altars of his father to the Asherah pole.

He upsets the people and his dad's like, essentially, if those gods are upset

with Gideon, let them deal with him knowing that they're not gods at all,

right? So nothing's going to happen to Gideon.

Gideon leads the soldiers on attack against the Midianites.

He brings an army and God says, whoa, that's too many. So he gets rid of a whole

bunch of them. And he's like, wait, that's still too many.

So they go and drink some water. And through that, they determine who can go

up to battle. And at the end, it's about 300, I think, warriors.

And with that group, they don't even have to fight and God gives them the victory.

And in that story, Gideon, when he first meets the angel of the Lord, doesn't know who it is.

He calls him Lord in the lowercase sense of the word, just this idea of someone who has authority.

And then as he encounters time and time again at the beginning of this chapter,

and the Lord speaks to him, and as they interact, and as he gives him signs,

and as he proves to him who he is, slowly Gideon's language changes from just

this idea of some important person to God himself.

And he calls him Adonai in that moment, he calls him master.

And then he, upon experiencing the presence of God and knowing who he has finally

come face to face with, he builds an altar to the Lord.

And there he calls it, the Lord is our peace.

So this happens in verses 23 and 24. And this is the only place where Jehovah Shalom is mentioned.

But here's the important part that you didn't get because we didn't read it.

He builds the altar and calls it the Lord is peace before anything has changed.

Before Midianite has been delivered from them.

Before he starts tearing down altars. Before any of that happens,

Gideon experiences who God is, nothing changes, and yet peace is the result.

Gideon doesn't call the altar God is victory. The victory hasn't happened yet.

He doesn't call it Jehovah deliverer, Jehovah warrior.

None of that has happened yet. He calls it Jehovah Shalom. The Lord is peace.

Not the Lord will be peace someday.

Not the Lord became peace, becomes peace when it all works out.

But the Lord is peace right here, right now, in the middle of it all,

before anything has changed, before the breakthrough, before the answers, before the victory.

And I wonder how many of us, as we contemplate the idea of peace,

we think of peace as waiting on the other side of something.

Waiting on the other side of our circumstances changing.

But if God is teaching us the same lesson that he was teaching Gideon,

then peace is not found in knowing what's going to happen. And peace is not

found in knowing all of the intricate details that are going to play out.

Peace isn't really knowing that the battle is going to be won.

Peace is found in knowing who it is that's with you.

And that's a powerful, powerful reversal of our mindsets.

Because I think as we continue, I have three things for you.

One, we've already talked about what peace is. It's wholeness.

It's completeness. Two is what we just talked about now, that peace doesn't

come from the change of our circumstances, that peace is found in our lives.

Before the breakthrough. And it's found in the midst of the storm that God grants

us that peace before anything changes.

And so for me, it all stacks up into this reality that peace is not something

you experience externally.

It's something that happens within you internally.

Something changed in Gideon as he encountered who God was in more fullness.

Something changes in us as we understand what God is bringing to us.

It is a battle of the mind and heart more than it is a battle of what we're experiencing.

And that's the second important thing, which leads us to kind of the.

The full thrust of it. That God is peace.

Peace is not an emotion or season of life that we experience.

God himself is peace.

And that's what makes this name that we're encountering today so powerful.

Because there's a difference if we believe that God gives us peace.

There's a difference between that and believing that God is peace.

That peace, not that peace is just another gift that God gives,

but that peace is found as we seek and find him in his presence.

Which means there are some things in life that cannot be solved by changing our circumstances.

And there are some things that can only be solved as we grow closer to God.

And peace is one of those things.

But if God is peace, and we all like to think that we all want to be better

at living in God's presence, I would say that.

None of us, I don't think, believe that we have arrived to perfection in living in God's presence.

But if God is peace, why is it that so many believers struggle to live in peace.

We've talked about some of that reality that I think we tie our peace to our

circumstances. If the situation has changed, then I'll have peace.

If the problem goes away, then I'll have peace. If I can figure out what's going

to happen, then I'll have peace.

But what Jesus taught in John chapter 16, he says, I've told you these things

John 16 · chapter mention

so that in me, you may have peace.

In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

So he tells us that peace is found in him, not in circumstances, not in understanding.

This is how Jesus greets the believers

when he appears to them after the resurrection, before the ascension.

He meets up with them in Luke 24 and says, peace be to you.

And of course, we know that that's just a greeting. But I kind of like to think

of it as we find the disciples hiding after Jesus is resurrected or dies,

before they really realize what it means for him to have resurrected.

We find them hiding. We find them scary. We find them doubting.

I like to think of Jesus showing up in those moments.

And when he greets them in a way that they might expect, peace be to you,

it's almost as if he's saying, guess what? I'm still here.

I'm still here. Peace is still here. And he's just pronouncing that reality of them.

Peace be to you. I haven't left. I'm still here.

But as we read in John chapter 16, peace doesn't come from a trouble-free life.

John 16 · chapter mention

Just like Gideon, circumstances don't change.

Yet God reveals himself as peace.

And this is why I think the Old Testament,

spends so much time, if you read Ezekiel, if you read Isaiah,

if you read any of these major prophets, not because they're better than the

other prophets, because their books are longer, they refer to God time and time again as a refuge,

as a strong tower, as a fortress.

There's that song, right? A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing,

which is why we don't sing it because nobody knows what a bulwark is anymore.

But the Old Testament is full, the Psalms are full of these images of God as

a strong tower, as a fortress, as a refuge.

Proverbs 18.10 says that the name of the Lord is a fortified tower or is a strong

tower. The righteous run to it and are safe.

God uses this language time and time again because everybody will run to something.

Everybody runs to something, to distractions, to entertainment.

Some days I'm just like, I've had enough. I'm going to go watch YouTube because I'm a millennial.

That's my distraction. But we run to endless information. Some people are just

like, I need to be better informed.

That's what I need right now. Then I'll have peace because I'll understand what's happening.

We run to relationships, right? We find comfort in each other, which is not a bad thing.

Some of us run straight into anxiety. we just started like, yep,

I'm just diving headfirst into that moment.

Some of us run into worst case scenarios or what ifs, futures that don't even exist. This is what I do.

I build up the things that I'm imagining are happening.

And I talked to, I think, JP one time, you know, JP and Katie are both counselors. And.

He can probably elaborate, but I'm pretty sure this is what he said.

He said, yeah, that's called the magic mind.

We think if we think about it, then it won't happen.

So I guess it's a thing. I've looked it up. I haven't been able to find it.

So we'll have to talk to him about it.

But if I can just imagine all of the worst case scenarios, then none of those

things possibly will happen.

Or on the other flip side of that, what I'm thinking about this and what other

people is probably what other people are thinking and how they're reacting.

How I believe they're reacting is probably the real truth of this situation.

So we just build up these futures that don't even exist, but the righteous run to God.

So again, he puts in this idea of refuge because we're all going to run.

That's not the question. The question is, where are we going to run?