For doubters hiding in the winepress

Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding the harvest from Midian's hand. The place made for grapes of joy has become a hole of fear, and from that hole he asks: 'If Yahweh is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where are all his wondrous works?' He reads the hand of Midian as proof that God has cast him off. But Yahweh looked at him. The Lord's look does not remove the winepress; it turns it into a sending place.

The Lord does not begin with a lecture about the wonders; He begins with a commission: 'Go in this your might, and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Haven't I sent you?' Gideon answers with his smallness: the poorest family, the least in his father's house. The Lord's reply is not a pep talk; it is a promise: 'Surely I will be with you.' The sending is the might; the presence is the power. I confess that I have measured God's presence by the size of my comforts and called my winepress a sign of His casting off. But the 'with you' of the sending is the answer to the 'with us' of the complaint.

On the cross, the Son of God took the winepress question into His own mouth — 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' — and in that place of being cast off, God accomplished deliverance. The wondrous works are not only a memory from Egypt; they are finished in the crucified and risen Christ. He has looked upon our oppression, so that 'Surely I will be with you' is not a mood but a fact sealed in blood and resurrection.