One of my many faults is that I’m sarcastic. I don’t think sarcasm is always wrong, but there have been many times when I’ve taken it too far. Even so, I love a good sarcastic remark. 

We find an instance of this in Judg 6:13. The Angel of the Lord, the pre-Incarnate Christ, appears to Gideon while he is threshing wheat in a winepress. This was a lousy place to thresh grain. It was in a low-lying area, where the wind couldn’t blow away the chaff very well. A winepress was also very small, which meant that Gideon’s harvest was pathetic. 

Gideon was doing it that way because the Israel’s enemies were oppressing the nation. These enemies would steal the Jews’ crops. Gideon had to hide what he was doing, hoping to eke out a living from what little he had. 

The Lord appears to him and says, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (v 12). It is never a good idea to be sarcastic with the Lord, but Gideon didn’t know it was the Angel of the Lord who was speaking to him. As a sarcastic person, I completely understand his response to those words. It drips with sarcasm. 

Gideon said, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” One writer translates the Hebrew of the first few words (“O my lord”) as “Excuse me?” Gideon, in effect, asks this Visitor: “If the Lord is with the nation, why is my harvest so puny? If the Lord is with us, why are our enemies wreaking havoc on our security and economy? And if I’m such a ‘mighty man of valor,’ why am I hiding at the bottom of a hill, like a scared little girl, from those who want to steal what little wheat I have?” Gideon saw himself as a weak coward. “Excuse me” seem very appropriate words. I don’t doubt that I would have responded in a similar or even more sarcastic manner. I would have said something like, “Yeah, I’m a real Rambo.”  

Most people know the story. Gideon turned out to be quite the mighty man of valor—a real Rambo. With just 300 men, he defeated the enemies of Israel, who were as “numerous as locusts” and had camels like “the sand by the seashore in multitude” (Judg 7:12). 

And the Lord really was with His people. He was the One who brought them their great victory. The reason their enemies had oppressed them was that Israel had fallen into idolatry. The Lord disciplined them for their own good. He refused to allow them to continue in that idolatry, which would lead to their ruin. He taught them a lesson for their own good. 

The Angel of the Lord brought the word of the Lord to Gideon. It was a word that was hard to believe. Often, when we, as believers, read God’s Word, we find it hard to believe. We can respond in several ways. One is that we can simply not believe it. Gideon didn’t. But we can also add a bit of sarcasm to that unbelief. Gideon did that as well. It may add a little bit of humor to the situation, and we might even enjoy it for a moment.  

But unbelief and sarcasm are not appropriate responses when the Lord speaks. Another option is the best: Believe it.