The book of Judges shows that God is longsuffering with man. The book contains the accounts of God’s people as they continually struggled with remaining faithful.

It tells of seven major oppressions that came because of the people’s rebellion against God. They would follow the idolatrous ways of the nations around them. God would send an oppressor (Cushan, Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Internal strife, Ammonites and Philistines). With each oppression the people would call out to God for deliverance, and He would send someone to deliver them.

When God sent a deliverer, they would become faithful again, but only for a time. By the time we get to chapter six it is seen that the Midianites were oppressing God’s children.

When God sent a deliverer to rescue His people, not everyone seemed to be the right person for the job.

Several times in the Bible one can read of those who were chosen by God for great works, but they did not deem themselves worthy. In the mind of the individual and in the eyes of others they believed someone else would be more suited for the task.

God knows more about man than man knows himself. “O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off.

Thou compassest my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether” (Psalm 139:1 – 4).

One of those who God chose to send to deliver His people was a man called Gideon. Gideon was a farmer. In fact, when the angel of the Lord came to him, he was threshing wheat and hiding it from the Midianites. When the angel appeared to him and told him the Lord was with him Gideon was one of those who thought he was not suited for the task that God presented to him. Alexander Maclaren, in Expositions of Holy Scripture, wrote that Gideon was the noblest of all the judges. He humbly shrank back from the work imposed on him. Maclaren wrote, “men who are worthy to do such work as his are never forward to begin it, nor backward in it when they are sure it is God’s will”.

Gideon asked the angel of the Lord several questions that show his human frailty.

He asked if the Lord was with them, why had such things befallen them? Where were all the miracles their fathers had told them about? Did not God bring His people out of Egypt? Why had the Lord forsaken them, giving them over to the Midianites? These questions are ones most anyone would ask. It could be asked, how could someone with such questions have the ability to deliver God’s people from the enemy? It is no wonder that Gideon asked the question which serves as out text. “And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house” (Judges 6:15).