GIDEON'S WHEAT HARVEST - The FEAST of WEEKS

In October 2021 I shared about Gideon threshing wheat in the winepress. You might want to read that post before reading part two of that topic. The wheat harvest came in the late Spring and the grape harvest is brought to the wine press 4 months later in the fall. 

Threshing the wheat harvest in Scripture always speaks of the purification of the people of God, Israel, the Hebrews, the Jews, and the Church. even the two big events that happened on the Feast of Weeks declare this. 

At the First 'Feast of Weeks' in the Old Covenant God gave his people the Torah = His Instructions. 

At The First Feast of Weeks in the New Covenant, He gave His people His Instructor (the Holy Spirt) 

Whereas, when the winepress is mentioned in Scripture it speaks of the judgment of the peoples of the world, the pagan nations, the unsaved, or the gentiles. Today, I want to go on to reveal the significance of Gideon's harvest. What does it reveal about Gideon's heart condition? 

Let's read the passage it is found in Judges 6:1-10. Because it helps to lay out the context. What events preceded this story in Judges chapter 6. 

6:1 then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. So the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years. 

6:3 So it was, whenever Israel had sown, Midianites would come up; also Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.

6:6 So Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried out to the LORD.

Now that we have the backdrop of their disobedience in place, we can go on to look at the story of Gideon from a proper perspective.

6:11 Now the Angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth (Oak) tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. 

6:12  And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him, and said to him, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!”

 6:13 Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

Gideon asked two questions: 

1. Why has all this happened? 
2. Where are all His miracles? 

6:14  Then the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”

Notice here in verse 14 it is not the angel ('my lord' v13) who answers Gideon but the LORD that responds to his first two questions. 

Here comes a third question...How can I save Israel? 

 6:15 So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” 

Gideon's natural response came from a victim mindset, woe is me, I am a nobody, a weakling, a cast-off. But God's promise was, "I will be with you." 

6:16  And the LORD said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

Gideon's faith-filled response: 

6:24  So Gideon built an altar there to the LORD, and called it The-LORD-Is-Peace. (Jehovah-Shalom) To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

God's response:

6:25 Now it came to pass the same night that the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image[fn] that is beside it; 

As we said in the post "which comes first the Wheat harvest or the Wine harvest?"  First things first. Before God will judge our enemies, we must first judge ourselves. The first application of the law is always a personal one. 

God's first requirement for Gideon was to return to obeying the first two commandments that He gave to Israel... recorded in Exodus 20:3-4. 

1. "You shall have no other gods before Me"
2. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;"

Remember what preceded this story of Gideon. "Israel was doing evil in the sight of the LORD."  

God couldn't remove the Midianites from Gideon's fields until Gideon first removed the idols from his father's house.

Gideon's first act of obedience had to be to cleanse the house of Israel of Idolatry starting with the idolatry of his own father's house.  Threshing wheat was and is tied to Pentecost and to the sanctification of the people of God. 

At that first Pentecost of the Old Covenant, God engraved His instructions with His own finger on stone tablets. The 10 evidence(s) of a people separated unto the LORD. But before Moses could even make it back down off the mountain and into the camp, they had already broken His first two commandments. They had fashioned a golden image in the likeness of a calf (calf god Baal or Molech) and they bowed down to it and worshipped it, giving the image, the honor that belonged rightly to the LORD alone. The idol was destroyed ground into powder which was cast into the water the people were made to drink of it. Three thousand souls were lost that day judged by the LORD. God forgave them and continued to lead them through the wilderness and eventually brought them into the promised land. 

I also shared previously about Moses saying to the LORD God Almighty "Please show me your glory". The context of that story is also during the time of the wheat harvest. 

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Various writings from the past
The Road Not Taken
At Home In MN