Gideon: The Unlikely Candidate

Intro and Background

The book of judges shows most clearly the cycle of retribution where the Israelites would worship idols and generally behave disobediently, then as a consequence of their actions they would be oppressed by a neighboring people group, who the Lord told them to remove from the land in the first place, but they were disobedient in that regard, then the Lord would raise up a judge who would lead the people back into worshipping the Lord and God would deliver them.

Each judge represented a generation of leadership. As we read last time, the book of judges documents that each judge and each generation is less and less good. Each generation behaves and disobeys worse than the previous generation. Each judge is less reliant upon the Lord and has a harder time not only leading the people but also displays even worse personal morals.

In our series through the Bible, we are only highlighting one of the twelve judges documented in the book of Judges. Gideon is the fifth judge in the order. That means that 4 judges and 4 generations of Israelites have come and gone before Gideon, each one getting worse. Compared to the judges that followed him, Gideon deserves a gold star.

The last documented judge was Samson. Samson outright disobeyed God at nearly every turn in his life. The Lord used him still and blessed him tremendously, but he is not the role model for our children. I sort of cringe when I see churches perform children’s plays about the life of Samson. That’s a story about a leader who lacked faith, was grossly immoral, and chose to not obey the Lord. It’s a story about God’s goodness and patience, but there are many other people in the Bible whose life we should look up to as good examples of followers of the Lord.

Gideon was right about in the middle. His story spans from Judges 6 through 8 and this morning, we are going to highlight specific passages that progress the story of how God used yet another unlikely candidate, Gideon, for an incredible purpose.

The Cycle Continues: Israel is Unfaithful… Again.

Let’s start by reading Judges 6:1-10,

1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.

Here is the cycle starting up once again. The people are unfaithful. By all accounts, God has the right to end the covenant. Remember that Israel is expected to maintain their part of the Mosaic Covenant. They are supposed to represent God well to the rest of the world and be His holy people. That includes worshipping Him alone and obeying the rest of His commandments. God could, but he doesn’t end the covenant that the people have broken.

2 And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. 3 For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. 4 They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. 5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in.

The people can repent, and if they do, then God will consider the covenant intact. And yet again, God allows the people to go through hardship, the consequences of their own actions so that they will come around to him.

Let me step away from the text really quickly and ask this question.

Have churches and Christians in the United States at any point stepped away from obedience to the Lord as it is dictated in God’s Word?

If we have, it would start by making allowances, like with the people of Israel. They allowed the idol worshippers to live among them. The presence of those idol worshippers starts to influence the people of God. The people of God start worshipping those false gods, drawn in by a feeling of acceptance. Perhaps they felt the false gods they were worshipping were more real because they could see the idols before them.

Has the church, has our church, this group of people, ever made allowances in the way we practice worshipping and obeying the Lord? It would look like straying from a church structure that reflects what God requires in the New Testament. It would look like parents not strictly bringing their kids to church and requiring it during their children’s teenage years. It would look like extracurriculars taking greater precedence than our church worship gatherings. It would look like a hurried, rushed church worship service on Super Bowl Sunday.

Perhaps the rationale is, “well the way we understand such and such passage is subjective.” “Maybe the Scripture doesn’t really mean that.” “The bible was influenced by its culture, and the culture has now changed, so what we practice and teach can adjust with it.” These are all untrue statements.

The Bible is clear and should be studied to understand the author’s original intent, not what we think it should mean to us. The Bible is actually quite clear on what it means, you should read it for all its worth rather than questioning if God actually means what He says He means. It actually doesn’t matter how much our culture has changed. The Word of God doesn’t. We might see the rise and fall of cultural practices, but what the Bible proclaims as true and proper is never to be subverted by people.

Family. We are to wrap our schedules, lives and preferences around the Word of God. God’s Word doesn’t change, and our dedication and obedience to the Lord should only deepen as we encounter it.

The People are Humbled

Getting back to the text, let’s read Judges 6:6

Judges 6:6 (ESV)

And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.

Due to the consequences of their actions, the people were invaded by the Midians and others. Finally, at their lowest point, they cry out to God and ask for deliverance.

Again, stepping away from the passage and relating this to our church, where is our church’s lowest point? Have we hit it, or is it yet to come? What needs to happen for the believers in our church to realize, like the Israelites, that we need to cry out to the Lord and get back to obedience to Him in the way documented in Scripture. I’m not going to lie or sugarcoat this. It will be a process. We will need to look at each and every aspect of our church and ask ourselves why we do it the way that we do it.

We will need to provide biblical justification for all the things that we do.

It will be a process and we will need to put our most trusted, faithful servants of the Lord to this task and trust them to search the Bible and present the facts to the rest of us.

God Elects Gideon

God would call a man named Gideon to lead. The instance in which God called him to lead we can read in

Judges 6:11 (ESV)

Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

Gideon Lacks Faith and Courage

For fear of the Midianites, Gideon hides and processes food in unusual places so as to not be seen by the enemy. Fear and lack of faith are common in Gideon’s life and heart. He has not experienced much genuine worship and obedience to the Lord. It hasn’t been modeled to him. This is the importance of having a home centered on the Lord where obedience is worshipped even within the walls of your home.

You have to model obedience and faith to your children so that what they read in the Bible and are taught in the church makes sense because they have seen you practice it.

Gideon’s lack of faith informed his cowardice. God told him to boldly tear down the idols of false gods in his community. He did so, but he made sure to be careful about it. He did it at night so that no one would see. Scripture says in Judges 6:27 that,

Judges 6:27 (ESV)

So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.

Not only in this instance but the Bible documents that a total of three times Gideon’s faith was weak and He asked the Lord to provide evidence of His existence and His commitment to do what He said He would do. Let’s read Judges 6:36-40

Judges 6:36–40 (ESV)

Then Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.” And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, “Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night; and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.

God would deliver His people and He does it in remarkable fashion. It was done in a way that no one could deny it was the Lord’s hand working the situation out. Chapter seven documents how the Lord dwindled Gideon’s forces from 32,000 to only three hundred men to fight against the entirety of Midian’s army at their own camp.

And He did that because, as documented in Judges 7:2

Judges 7:2 (ESV)

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’

Being open with you, as my church family, I confess that I sin in this way. Things in my life start going well. The sermon hits home. We make leaps and bounds in our church’s administration in streamlining our processes. And through it all, I’m tempted to pat myself on the back and say, “Good job. Look what I’ve done. I’m the best thing to hit this place. You’ve done it. Without you, none of this would have happened.” I can get caught up thinking “my own hand has saved me.” This is my confession to you. That’s how pride works. That’s how all sin works. We become the key player, the hero of the story, the god of our own lives. That’s the idea of pride. That’s been my confession to you, and now I’m professing something else. All good things come from the Lord. All good things come from the Lord. Preaching biblical sermons? Praise God, because He is good and He provides for us in this way. That’s not Charles’ work and it will never be the work of any pastor. All thanks to the Lord. We are blessed to be used as instruments for His noble purpose, and we do it by His strength alone. Help me, and let’s help each other, to realize that the Lord delivers, and it is not by our own hands that we are saved.

God Delivers His People

So God delivers his people. It brings the Israelites back into worshipping God.

It’s not only a cycle with the people of Israel, I think in some ways it can be our cycle, too.

The People Return to Disobedience

Prepare your eyes, mind, and heart for what we are about to read. Judges 8:33-35,

Judges 8:33–35 (ESV)

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.

As soon as Gideon died, the people turned again and whored after false gods. That means they made themselves available to them. That means they turned their back on their relationship with God who loves them and pursued something shallow and fake with a false god who doesn’t even have the capacity to love.

How Do We Learn from This?

We have got to learn from these people, church! It makes me shiver to think that one day our church will revert to something far worse than we ever began. We need to start preparing now for the hardships that will come. It could come from our culture with pressures to change what we believe or practice. It could come from within.

Wherever it comes from, we prepare for it by these three things:

1) Pray for each other and for our church.

2) Educate yourself with the Word of the Lord.

3) Bring the practice of obedience to the Lord not only into this church but into your homes.

Truthfully, there are more than three things we ought to do and practice. But these will get you started.

Prayer: God delivers us and brings us into alignment with your Word. Bring us into obedience to you. Maybe some of us are there and have never left. Maybe some of us need to get back into a habit of reading your word and praying. Maybe some of us have never been there in the first place. Wherever we are individually, Lord I pray that communally we rise up as a by-product of how we lean into you.