No Delight in a Fallen Legacy
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Judges 8:22-35.
Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.” Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.”
And Gideon said to them, “Let me make a request of you: every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil.” (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) And they answered, “We will willingly give them.” And they spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings of his spoil.
And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the collars that were around the necks of their camels. And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.
So Midian was subdued before the people of Israel, and they raised their heads no more. And the land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon. Jerubbaal the son of Joash went and lived in his own house.
Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he called his name Abimelech.
And Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father, at Ophrah of the Abiezrites. As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god.
And the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side, and they did not show steadfast love to the family of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the good that he had done to Israel.
Gideon Refuses to reign as King (vv.22-23)
This is a good first step for Gideon, he refuses to take the place that God should have before His people. But Gideon makes a puzzeling request - that each soldier give him a gold earing from His treasurer collected from the Midianites. This amounts to 1700 shekels, equal to 42.5 lbs of gold in weight. Gideon then proceeds to make an ephod out of the gold and sets it up in his hometown of Ophrah (v.27).
Gideon Makes a Golden Ephod (vv.24-27)
What is an Ephod?
An ephold was a priestly garment, woven with gold into it’s wool and linen fabric. Being primarily of gold, it was one of the four items of apparel reserved for the High Priest of Israel alone. The breastplate attached to the ephod contained 12 stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel and the Urim and Thummim; divinitory items used to “inquire of the LORD” (1 Sam 30:7-8; Jdg 18:5) and judgment. The ephod was a holy garment and ritual object, bringing the human representative of Israel into contact with the unseen God.
So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart, when he goes into the Holy Place, to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.
And in the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be on Aaron’s heart, when he goes in before the Lord. Thus Aaron shall bear the judgment of the people of Israel on his heart before the Lord regularly.
No one is quite sure how these items worked, but they were used by God to communicate His will “to the High Priest” (and employed in some cases a king, like Saul and David, or a judge like Gideon). Some conjecture God’s will was made known by a refracturing of light, or the toss of the two stones Urim and Thummim (The New Interpreter’d Dictionary of the Bible, The Anchor Bible Dictionary). Regardless, Gideon was not a high priest, nor a King, but yet he set up a holy sacred item and employed it to be used to determine the will of God for the people. Did Gideon use it himself, to make judgment and discover the will of God for the people? Seems, likely, as the people prostituted themselves to it, and it became a snare to Gideon, his family, and the people of Israel (v.27). Did each Israelite inquire on their own? Was this Gideon’s idea of “God’s rule over the people”? The fact is this: the golden ephod became an object of worship, instead of God Himself, and Gideon established an item of idolatry/worship for the people instead of God.
[Illustration] Sarcastic 9 Ball - What should I do? People are highly superstitious and desiring to know their purpose and will. To do what please whatever force or god they worship.
People consider their astrology chart/reading for the day. Attend a medium, employ a weege board. Maybe even what way are the geese flying? What side of the bed did I wake up on? What side of the coin faces up. How do you decide what you are going to do? What God is saying? What He wants you to do or not to do? How do you know His will?
The Point is: We can know God and His will if we simply open His Word to us and read. Holy Spirit works through the Word, through dreams, through prophetic word, and through prayer.
Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
But for you, O Lord, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Why is divination not communicative way of God?
Because God has forbid His people from employing this method of communication because it is susceptible to demonic forces in speech, signs, possession, and power and is an abomination to the LORD God.
There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead,
for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God,
for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.
What is divination?
A ritual action employed to determine the will, knowledge, or plans of so called ‘deities’. Methods have been employed to force (or prompt) the deities to reveal knowledge, information, outcomes, and the future and future actions. It can employ signs, omens, and/or supernatural powers of supernatural beings, being demons. It is usually employed by those of the occult and one who practices such methods is called a diviner, medium, witch, warlock, sage, fortune-teller, or even a prophet.
In the Last Days, as has been throughout human histroy, divination and diviners will be prominent. They will be part of setting the stage for the Antichrist, his rule, and preclude the second coming of Jesus Christ.
For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
The Point: “To inquire of the LORD” is to be done in His prescribed ways. To do so in any other way, is to entertain deception and invite the Devil and his demons to speak and act. For as 1 John 2:16 says, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” . The Apostle Paul said as much when he taught the Corinthian church about the way God speaks to and with believers and followers of His. Remember, the Corinthian believers were exposed to the occult and divination of the local pagan temple, and prophetesses, of their culture and religion, dedicated to the Baals of Rome and Greece. 1 Cor 2:9
1 Corinthians 2:9 (ESV)
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
The wisdom, secrets, and truth of God is only revealed by the Holy Spirit to those who love God. You want to know God’s will? Then we are instructed to love God! The word love here is agapao [25] love - meaning to esteem, a direction of the will, to find joy in, to delight in! It is the opposite of to neglect, to disregard, to condemn. The question is: Do we delight in God?
Do You Delight in God?
Do you delight in darkness or in light? Do you delight in the right things or the wrong things? The ways of righteousness or wickedness? The ways of Jesus, or the ways of the Devil, the world? If in the things and ways of darkness, God says, you do not delight in Him, you do not love Him.
1 John 2:15 (ESV)
Do not love (delight in) the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves (delights) the world, the love (delight) of the Father is not in him.
‘love of the Father’ (26) agape - affectionate regard, goodwill, benevolence. It is the love that God has for man, His willful direction toward us even though we are sinners and do evil. Doing what is best for man, not necessarily what man desires.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Do I do what is best in God? Toward God, toward others? I delight in God when I obey and do what is of God, of Jesus Christ, of Holy Spirit. Did Gideon do what was best in God? No. He set up an idol, that the people came to worship because they believed God supposedly spoke through it to them, for direction and answers. It became a snare the Word says, something to trap and catch. Snare (4170) moges - a trap, bait; the lure or bait placed in a hunter’s trap. A moral pitfall (Prov. 18:7; 20:25). Anything that lures one to ruin and disaster (Judges 2:3; Prov. 29:6).
A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul.
Gideon’s ephod became a trap to the people, a lure to leave the God who delievered them, and return to the Baal’s, idols, demons, which they did after Gideon died, immediately after (v.33). A snare is anything that lures one to ruin and disaster. What snares have you allowed to enter your life? What snares are you inviting into your life? What bait is being used to lure you into ruin and distruction, away from delighting in God? Repent, confess, and remove, become redeemed in Christ and delight in Him! Jesus is not a snare, but life. He leads us into all things good, and is all about our good and our well-being of person and soul, even though we suffer and will suffer pain, persecution, and every injury and death, as He said we would, because we love Him, obey Him, and follow Him (1 Peter 2:21; 4:1; 5:10). The Apostle Paul assures us that God works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). There is that word again ‘delight in’!
Romans 8:28 (ESV)
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Do I truly delight in God? Then I should expect things to work out for my good! Good (18) agathos - meaning something useful and profitable, beneficial. Therefore, if I truly delight in God, I should expect somehting useful, beneficail, and profitable from God. Do I expect so? Why or why not? Or is my delight in the Lord Jesus only because I am saved by having believed in His atoning sacrifice and shed blood on the cross? Have I ignored the benefits of following Him and obeying Him as LORD? As Pastor Dallas Willard has said, am I a “vampire Christian”, meaning one who takes the benefit of Jesus’ shed blood, but does not care to be a student or disciple of Christ. “My life is still my own, but I will see you later in heaven” (The Great Omission, pg. 14).
This is exactly what Gideon did. He reaped the benefit of God’s work, but then did not honor Him and follow Him with his life and family afterward. Our account actually says that “the people forgot God and did not show steadfast love to the family of Gideon in return for all the good that he had done to Israel” (v. 34, 35b). That ‘steadfast love’ means kindness, mercy, goodness, faithfulness, love, and acts of kindness. That’s what it means to be a Hesed (2617) - a steadfast lover of God and people! Are you a Hesed? In our culture and society a ‘hayseed’ is considered an unsophisticated person from a rural area; a country bumpkin. I am totally okay being called unsophisticated as long as God is delighted in me, and I in Him! How about you? If being a country bumpkin is uncool, I will be uncool for God because He delights in me! It’s actually quite ironic that in our society, to be a believer and follower of Jesus Christ one is considered ignorant, racsist, uneducated, unimportant, and unsophisticated.
Gideon was a hayseed, but not a steadfast lover of God. He failed to live and model a life of devotion to God and employ the goodness of His ways. The people did not know the ‘delight of the LORD’ because they did not live delighting in the LORD, as we see that Gideon’s family was not shown Hesed, the steadfast love of God. Do people experience the steadfast love of God from you? Do we experience Jesus’ steadfast love from others? You and I may proclaim to be Hesed, but do others know that? Have they experienced that, or are we just Christian vampires, living off the blood of Jesus Christ? What a snare indeed that Gideon set for the people of God! Idolatry lures the Hesed to grow cold in their delight for God. How is your fire for God? How is your delight in Him? Have you stopped, blocked, and snared your experience of the delight of God? Then repent, confess, ask for forgiveness, and remove the idol, the attitude, the false god, and expectations of godly benefit without godly devotion.
If Gideon had indeed been about the delight of God, why did he not institute reform throughout the land? Why did he not order all the people to tear down their altars to Baal? Destroy the Ashera poles? The account records nowhere that Gideon ordered or tore down the altars to Baal. For forty years the people had peace from Midian, what did they do with their time? What did Gideon do with that blessing from the Lord? He wasted it. Do not waste the blessings of God! When God gives you forgiveness, it behoves you to institute reform in your life. Canada has had the blessing of God’s steadfast love for ages and how have we responded? With contempt, ignorance, and plain indifference. We have abused the grace of God, and make a mockery of Him and His creation. And man is basically good??? Good at evil, wickedness, and sin. Good at ignoring, rejecting, and mocking God.
Question: Is the world becoming more like Christ, or is the Church becoming more like the world? What is the legacy we are establishing? What is the legacy we are leaving behind? Who do our children look like? Our grandchildren? Who do they emulate? Who do they imitate? What do they delight in? Gideon lead the people, taught the people, to forget God and to worship idols. Are we, are you, doing the same? What is the name you are leaving behind? Hesed - steadfast lover, or Pharisee - hypocrite of God?
Gideon refused to be anointed king over the people of Israel, but yet he believed and lived like he was. He had 70 sons, and many wives, including a concubine, who had a son. His name? Abimelech - means “my father is King”. What did Abimelech believe? That indeed his dad was king, and Abimelech would be likewise. He imitated and emulated what he learnt from his dad. Abimelech, killed sixty-nine of the seventy brothers, on his way to establishing himself as King over Israel, of whom he ruled for three years. He was not Hesed of God, he was a pharisee of God, he did not delight in the LORD God. Things did not end well for him, nor will they go well for us when we do not make the Lord Jesus our delight!
Gideon was a farmer who was a coward, then became courages, but ended up corrupt because he did not delight in God. His heart did not belong to God alone. He lived a hypocritical life, not a life as a Hesed - steadfast lover of God. Who are we? Who are our children? What is our church? What is the legacy we are establishing? and what is the legacy we will leave behind? We are to be like our Master, LORD Jesus; we are to follow our Savior, the LORD Jesus. Have you merely tasted His blood? Or have you made a blood covenant with Him to not only your Savior, but your LORD, whom you obey and follow…in everything? May we delight in Jesus, and be a steadfast lover of HIs. Amen.