Lessons from Gideon

The text I have been reading for this sermon is Judges 6-8. I have actually been reading and rereading this text over the past 2 years when I felt that God put this story on my heart. It's the story of Gideon; which I think has some familiar parts, but maybe the whole story isn't as well known. It is an epic underdog story that has a lot to teach us today.

so let's pray and then we'll unpack it together

I am not going to read all 3 chapters to you this morning, but I am going to give you an overview of the story. First of all, the book of Judges is a book of a repeating cycle – apostasy, bondage, repentance, deliverance, freedom.

Apostasy means an abandonment of a religious belief. Twice in the book of Judges, it is described as "everyone did what was right in their own eyes." 7 other times, it is described with the phrase: "the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord." The result of this  was bondage or slavery under an enemy nation. In the midst of their suffering, they would remember God and call out to Him, and He would send a Judge to deliver them and then there would be a period of freedom and peace. Which would only last until the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord or everyone did what was right in their own eyes yet again. Gideon is the 5^th judge that God has sent.

And so this is how our story starts: Judges 6:1 "The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites." The Midianites were very oppressive, causing the Israelites to leave their homes and hide in mountain caves. They destroyed the Israelites crops, livestock and land. It was a terrifying time. 

When we meet Gideon, he is hiding in a winepress, threshing the grain. Threshing is something you usually do out where the wind can catch the chaff. But because Gideon was so afraid of the Midianites, he is hiding in a hole in the ground. As he is doing this defiant act somewhat cowardly, the angel of the Lord appears to him and says "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” to which Gideon counters with one of the most heartbreaking responses in the Bible. Judges chapter 6 verse 13 “With all due respect, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his amazing works that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Didn’t the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and allowed Midian to overpower us.”

To which the angel responds: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” And again Gideon counters "With all due respect, my Lord, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I’m the youngest in my household.”

The Lord answered, “I will be with you" and Gideon starts to change. He starts to trust. But he needs some proof. He asks for his first sign. He goes and gets some offerings – some meat, some bread and some broth. The angel tells him to put the meat and bread on the stone and pour the broth over it. Then the angel touches the end of his staff to the offering and it goes up in flames and the angel disappears! And Gideon realizes he has been in the presence of God. Terrified, he hears God speak to him: “Peace! Do not be afraid."

Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace.

So now, God has a call to action. He tells Gideon to tear down the idols – an altar to Baal and an Asherah pole. Not only tear them down, but then to build on their ruins an altar to God. In Judges 6:26, God says, "build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this stronghold with stones laid in proper order."

Gideon does this at night because he is afraid that his fellow Israelites will not be happy about their idols being removed. And he's right. The next morning, somehow word gets out that Gideon tore down those idols (maybe one of the 10 servants he brought with him blabbed) and people want to murder him for it. Gideon's father defends him and says, if Baal is really a god, he can fight his own battles and so they leave him alone.

Next call to action God tells Gideon to fight the Midianites. This is where the well-known fleece story comes in. Gideon says ok, God if you are really going to save Israel through me, then show me. I am putting a fleece (wool from a sheep) on the ground – make the fleece wet and the ground dry around it and I'll trust you.

The next morning when that happened, Gideon felt a little sheepish (ha!) that the laws of absorption could have caused such a thing to happen and so he apologizes to God and says, can you do it the other way around? so the next morning, the fleece is dry and the ground is wet and Gideon is ready to obey God!

Gideon assembles an army of 32,000 and then God says – that's too many people. I want to show you My power and strength. Tell anyone who is afraid that they can go home. So 22,000 men leave.

Now there are 10,000 and God says, still too many. Take them down to the lake and anyone who laps water like a dog with cupped hands, those are your men. Only 300 men did that.

So now, Gideon and 300 men are going to fight the 135,000 Midianites. God knows that Gideon must be feeling a bit nervous about his odds, so he tells him to go listen to what the Midianites are saying.

In verses 13 & 14 of chapter 7, it says, "Gideon arrived just as a man was telling a friend his dream. “I had a dream,” he was saying. “A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed.” His friend responded, “This can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite. God has given the Midianites and the whole camp into his hands.”

So Gideon and the 300 men surround the camp at night, break jars to reveal torches and yell "for the LORD and for Gideon!" which throws the Midianites into confusion. Then they blow trumpets and when the trumpets sound, the Midianites start fighting each other and the survivors flee.

Gideon sends word ahead to other Israelite tribes to fight the fleeing troops. There is some more fighting and ultimately Gideon is the hero of the day. Then everyone wants to make him their king, but Gideon wants God to be king.

But he asks everyone for their gold earrings and other plunder and melts them down to make an ephod.  So then everyone starts worshipping this golden ephod and it becomes a snare to Gideon and his family. 

Israel has peace/freedom for 40 years while Gideon is alive and then in verses 33&34 of chapter 8: "No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side."

whew. that's a long story. But it is so instructive. For today, I found 5 lessons that we can take away from this story: 

1.  If God wants to use you, it doesn't matter who you are.

Gideon was a nobody. the least of the least. God chose him and that's that. It wasn't about him – it was about God.

2. God will not compete with idols. They have to be destroyed.

Jeremiah 2:5 Eternal One: What happened between us? What could I have done to your ancestors that was so wrong, so unfair?  Why would they pull away from Me to pursue the empty worship of idols that has left them just as empty? Modern day idols are not altars to Baal or Asherah poles, but things other than God that you are worshipping. Anything that is master over you. more on this later.

3. God will persist in His purposes until they are accomplished.

Through Gideon's doubts and tests of God, God remains patient and steady in His purposes. He often uses methods we don't understand and his numbers are way off, but He has a plan.

4. The miraculous way God accomplishes His work should leave no doubt that you did it in your own strength.

God wants us to know that it is His victory, His power, His glory.

5. After God uses you in a mighty way, don't let others praise you.

Gideon says to the Israelites that God should be King, but then he acts sorta like a king. He gets everyone's gold, he has many wives, he sets up a new place of worship in his home town. The temptation to be important proves to be great for Gideon – come see the guy that God used to conquer Midian! feels like the general vibe.So even Gideon, who witnessed the power of God so personally and so powerfully was not immune from wanting the glory for himself. 

As I was preparing for  this sermon, I got an email from Matt Walters, an intern from 2 summers ago. He and his wife Sandy are raising $10,000 for clean water projects in South Sudan. In their support letter, they wrote, " We are constantly being reminded that Jesus is the real God, and money/the fear of having it or not having it, is not." They identified a false god and are actively working to tear it down and work against its power in their life. 

In his book Your God is Too Safe, Mark Buchanan sums up the problem with these idols, or as he calls them "safe gods" "God calls us out of secluded winepresses and into open battlefields. Why ruin the idol of the safe god and risk our good standing in the community? The safe god is actually your worst enemy. He breeds cowardice. He keeps you stuck, complacent, bored, angry, threshing your meager wheat where the wind never blows. The Lord is with you, mighty warrior. Now go, tear down the idol of the safe god; this flimsy, gimcrack invention cobbled together from faintheartedness and softheartedness. On its ruins build a real altar to the true God."

Identifying our idols isn't that hard. In Timothy Keller's book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters he gives us some very simple tests: "What do you enjoy day-dreaming about? One or two day dreams do not indicate idolatry. Ask rather, what do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart?"

"Another way to discern your heart's true love is to look at how you spend your money." 

This next test is for people who have been following God for a long time. Keller asks, "What are you really living for, what is your real—not just your professed—God? A good way to discern this is how you respond to unanswered prayers and frustrated hopes…when you pray and work for something and you don't get it and you respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real god. Like Jonah, you become angry enough to die."

He goes on to say "A final test is [to] look at your most uncontrollable emotions. Look for your idols at the bottom of painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things you know are wrong."

God will not compete. He wants your whole heart. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all you mind and all your strength. Timothy Keller again, "Why do we ever fail to love or keep promises or live unselfishly? Of course, the general answer is 'because we are weak and sinful', but the specific answer in any actual circumstance is that there is something you feel you must have to be happy, that is more important to your heart than God himself. "

Exodus 20 God said to the people of Israel: I am the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of slavery. Do not worship any god except me.  Do not make idols that look like anything in the sky or on earth or in the ocean under the earth.  Don’t bow down and worship idols. I am the Lord your God, and I demand all your love.

If you worship idols, you become enslaved. If you worship idols, you become worthless like an idol. If you put anything in the place of God, he will do everything within His means to reclaim first place in your heart. 1 John 2:15-17 (PHILLIPS) encourages us to see “the world” for what it is "Never give your hearts to this world or to any of the things in it. A man cannot love the Father and love the world at the same time. For the whole world-system, based as it is on men’s primitive desires, their greedy ambitions and the glamour of all that they think splendid, is not derived from the Father at all, but from the world itself. The world and all its passionate desires will one day disappear. But the man who is following God’s will is part of the permanent and cannot die."

The final thing I want to leave you with is these questions to help you identify your idols. find them. tear them down. build proper altars to God in their place.  

Questions to Identify Your Idols
from David Powlison's Seeing With New Eyes
What do I worry about most?
What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?
What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?
What do I do to cope? 

What are my release valves? 

What do I do to feel better?
What preoccupies me? 

What do I daydream about?
What makes me feel the most self-worth? 

Of what am I the proudest? 

For what do I want to be known?
What do I lead with in conversations?
Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?
What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?
What do I really want and expect out of life? 

What would really make me happy?
What is my hope for the future?