“Gideon went, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour:  the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it.”  Now this was an Old Testament worship offering called the Meat Offering.  It’s in your margin of your Bible, the alternative to the word ‘present.’  He suddenly got religious.  ‘Now you wait on me, God, while I get religious.  I mean, there can’t be any communion between us till I get religious.  Wait right here, God!’  That’s….  I like that too!  You know, he wasn’t ready to worship on the spot.  He had to get ready.  I could do something with that. 

“Gideon went, and made ready a kid”—and all the things it said. “And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth.  And he did so.”  Now God’s getting a little fed up. “And the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes.  Then the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight.  And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the Lord, Gideon said, Alas.”  I mean, that has to be the biggest spiritual imbecile thus far ever to encounter in the Bible.  There is nobody that can’t identify with this fluke.  I mean, there’s nobody in front of me—television, radio, or here—whose starting point with God is any worse than that one.  “Alas, O Lord God!  I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face.  And the Lord said unto him,” ‘That’s right, you imbecile, and you ain’t gonna see me again.  I got better than you to play with.’  “The Lord said unto him, Peace be unto you; fear not: thou shalt not die.”

You know what this verse tells you?  In the theology of the day, to see the Lord face-to-face was to mean certain death.  After all

this, “When Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the Lord,” when Gideon said “Alas, O Lord God!” he wasn’t worshiping.  Ithink that’s funny.  When he finally decided there’s a chance it was the Lord he said, ‘Wait here.  I gotta get ready to worship.’  Then when he worshiped and realized it was the Lord, scared the liver out of him.  He was sure he’s gonna die.  That means his worship was not in Faith either because if he was sure if he saw the Lord he’d die, when he said ‘Lord you wait here,’ it’d been like hide and seek.  He’d of ran all the way to Jordan rift not wanting to see the Lord. 

You see the raw material?  Doubter, fake worshiper, crushed by his circumstances, filled with the ‘vocabulary of doubt.’  “But the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die.  Then Gideon built an altar there.”  Will you circle the word ‘there’ in the 24th verse?  “Then Gideon built an altar there.”  Where?  In the winepress area, in the vineyard where he had been threshing, in the place where his doubts had covered him like an envelope—he built an altar there.

Now to a modern mind an altar is like this area here in front of the Pulpit.  Now I grew up in the Church where you got saved by coming to an altar.  The whole meaning of an altar in the Old Testament is lost.  An altar was a place where something died, where claims were readjusted.  An altar was a place where you confronted God and you recognized in the dying sacrifice His right and your lack of any.  An altar was a place where you readjusted the life’s direction and in this case, as always, the name of the altar tells the kind of adjustment that had to be made.  “Gideon built an altar there, and called it Jehovah-shalom.”  Peace, “The Lord Peace.”

Now ‘peace’ is another one of those superspiritual words.  Some people think you can pray till you get peace.  Peace in ordinary