I went into this week excited to preach about Gideon. His story is so interesting. I found it inspiring. I saw him as a great leader, as someone with a special relationship with God.
I am still excited to preach about Gideon’s story but now it’s for very different reasons. Rather than seeing him as a hero, I now see him as the Bible really shows him. He’s terribly human, and he falls short of his potential by miles. God has given him everything he needs and then some, and he wants more than that, and ultimately fails God and the people. Gideon’s story is merely a warm up for Samson, whom we look into next week, getting us ready for how really terrible Samson was. (Of course, as a kid in Sunday School, I loved the Samson stories — his feats of strength, his good looks, his uncontrollable ego. That’s yet another story that I read wrong growing up!)
Our Greatest Hits of the Bible series has us in Judges for three weeks. Last week Kristine took on Deborah and Jael. This week I get Gideon, and next week we’ll cover Samson. What I am now noticing is that Judges is on a constant descent. The stories and characters break bad, going from bad to worse. Kristine said that the pattern of Judges is this — the people were unfaithful to the Lord; they cried out for help; God rescued them from their troubles; the people forgot God’s goodness; and unfaithfulness took root again. That’s very true, but I’d layer on top of that this idea that the book’s view on humanity’s ability to be faithful goes from grim to despairing.
In this tribal time for Israel, the clans did not have kings and were not unified as a nation. They had leaders that we call judges, who had a special anointing from God in guiding the people and protecting them from enemies. Before Gideon, there were three judges that the book more or less portrays positively. Othniel, Ehud, and Deborah all help bring the people back from the brink to a time of peace.
By the time we get to Gideon, we see a leader that the Bible shows to be weak and fallible from the start. Yes, he can be heroic, but what we see for the most part is how infuriatingly selfish and unfaithful he is. I do know there’s still plenty for us to learn from Gideon’s story, but I do need to frame this by talking about how tragic it is when we humans do not entrust our gifts and abilities to God’s purposes.
Backing up, over these weeks, we’ve gone from God delivering the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Moses has led them through the wilderness for forty years. He dies on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, and Joshua leads the campaigns that bring them into their new home. Many years have passed, and the twelve tribes of Israel have spread throughout the region. That brings us to Judges, where these tribes are regularly fending off attacks from neighboring tribes, which is why the Lord keeps raising up gifted leaders — judges — to deliver the people. Just last week we heard about God’s deliverance of the people from the Canaanites under the leadership of Deborah. Judges 5 ends with these words, “And the land had rest for forty years.”
But chapter 6 begins, “The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years.” Whenever I’ve read this part of the Bible, I’ve found it maddening how susceptible people are to unfaithfulness. It’s jarring to read about God’s deliverance and then in the next breath watch humans screw it all up again. But that’s the pattern.
It’s a bad time. Their enemies are taking their food. They’ve claimed the livestock. These invading hordes are so vast that Judges describes them as “thick as locusts.” The Israelites have fled their homes and farms. They’ve found caves to hide in. It’s a terrible situation, so they cry out to the Lord, who hears them…again.
Unlike all the other judges, God goes directly to Gideon and gives him the assignment. Where does the Lord find Gideon? This mighty warrior is hiding in the wine press, where he’s sifting out the wheat from the harvest, trying to protect it from the Midianite invaders. The narrative’s irony cannot be clearer. What Gideon is doing reveals not only that the harvest is small but also that he is afraid. He is not someone you’d choose to lead in battle, right? But what does God see? God “sees Gideon not as a frightened farmer but as a mighty warrior who, because [the Lord] is with him, he has the potential to become.”
So, God sees Gideon as someone equipped for the task, but Gideon clearly does not trust God. His lack of faith is apparent in his first words, “If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian” (Judges 6:13-14).
To paraphrase, that was then; this is now; what have you done for us lately, God? Again, not a good look for our hero.
The story continues that Gideon might be willing to do what the Lord asks, but he wants a sign. Off he goes to grab a goat and some flour and broth. He brings them to the Lord like an offering, and, miraculously, fire from the rock consumes the offering. This steels Gideon a bit, so he goes home. In the middle of the night, he tears down his father’s altar to Baal and the sacred pole, calling the people back into a faithful relationship with the Lord.
Soon, their enemies amass across the Valley of Jezreel, so Gideon rounds up troops from the neighboring tribes. But he still isn’t so sure that God can live up to his word. Our reading today also included Gideon’s demands for signs. His lack of faith is so apparent in this, isn’t it? Not only is Gideon in a “what have you done for me lately” posture, but also his “preoccupation with such tangible manifestations is a serious and dangerous spiritual problem” for him and for any who do not take God at his word.
God’s patience and grace in this is quite amazing. Gideon lays out a fleece and demands that God miraculously make only the fleece and not the ground wet with dew overnight. God does, and Gideon filled a bowl with all the water from the fleece. Not satisfied, Gideon demands the opposite the next night. He wants a dry fleece and dewy ground. And, despite how ridiculous the request is, God does it. This raises the question, what does it take to believe? Signs? Or taking God at his word?
There are over 100,000 Midianites waiting to fight Gideon. He’s gathered 32,000 fighters, and God tells him that’s too many. The Lord tells Gideon to send home any who are afraid, which is two-thirds of them, leaving Gideon with 10,000. Not satisfied, God wants a further reduction. God has Gideon bring the men to the river to get a drink. He’s to watch how they drink. Most cup their hands and bring the water to their mouths. But 300 of them bend over and lap at the water like dogs. It’s those 300 the Lord chooses to fight the Midianites. All the rest go home.
That’s as much as we read today, but there’s a lot more to the story, much of it hitting on the theme that God stays faithful while Gideon keeps doubting God’s goodness. God tells Gideon it’s time to attack the camp, but Gideon wants more proof. He sneaks into the camp at night and overhears a Midianite soldier share a dream that predicts their destruction. So, really what has happened is that Gideon is ready to believe the dream of his enemy and not the word of the Lord.
Still, that strengthens his resolve, and his 300 men succeed in routing their enemies. Chapter 8 is a vicious story of Gideon’s vengeance on the kings of Midian and on Israelite towns that mocked him previously. It’s quite nasty. Then Gideon’s story ends with the people establishing him as a leader, and he still does not understand that God is the one who has done this, not him.
He gathers gold from the people, and voilà, Gideon turns the gold into a religious outfit, drawing attention from God to himself. I enjoy how Frederick Buechner describes Gideon’s final act. “As soon as you’ve got a golden god you can shine up and deck out and push around like a doll in a baby carriage, you start thinking God himself is somebody you can push around too. The next step, of course, is that you think the graven image is God, and by that time it has about as much genuine religious significance as a rabbit’s foot.”
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. No doubt some of you are wondering why we’re spending time in these odd corners of the Old Testament, but let me remind you of our “why.” First, Christians are a biblical people, which means our following Jesus means knowing the Bible well, even the hard and weird stuff. Second, God gave us brains, and we must use them, even in the hard and weird stuff. To not do so is an act of unfaithfulness to the gifts and abilities God has given us. Third, in these stories, there are clear lessons for us that are applicable to our lives right now. So, let me share four of those connections that relate to our lives today.
First, this story reminds us that there is often a difference between how God sees us and how we see ourselves. It begins with Gideon protesting that he was insignificant. He’s from the weakest clan. He’s the least in his family. Yet, God sees him as a mighty warrior and someone who has the ability to do great things.
We are in a season of asking you what your talents, interests, and abilities are, hoping that your sharing those will help us match you with a ministry in the church. But I can already imagine the objections we make to sharing ourselves in this way. I don’t know the Bible well enough. My schedule is already full, so somebody else will have to help. Trying something new scares me.
But, what does this story tell us? It says that God is the one who calls and equips. We only need to make ourselves available and responsive. Stepping into something new is more about faith than it is about our abilities. “Gideon is apparently a man of great potential and perhaps natural ability but lacks significantly in faith.” While God is not calling us to the same task as Gideon, I believe the principle is the same. God calls us to step out in faith to do uncomfortable or new things and that success rests on God working through our willingness and partnership.
Second, knowing the right things does not necessarily lead to faithful action. Gideon uses his knowledge as an impediment to stepping forward — “God, you rescued us from Egypt, but where are you now?” he asks. Gideon is a great example of someone who has the head knowledge — he knows the stories, he knows the creeds, he knows the Sunday School answers — but he cannot find the faith to apply those to his present challenges.
We are tempted to live like that, aren’t we? We want what we hear in church or read in our devotions to stay cloistered away from the hard issues of our world. Church is spiritual. The world is material. But our understanding of how God works is that there is no distinction, that there is no place where God will not rule and call us to live against the grain of a broken and fearful world.
Third, it is important that we remember the mighty acts of God — not just the stories from the Bible but also those places where we’ve seen God’s faithfulness directly shape our lives. But I think we’re a lot like Gideon here too. We know those things, but when the going gets tough, we want extra signs and proofs that God is acting. Amazingly, God is so gracious that God puts up with Gideon’s tests over the fleece, but wouldn’t it be better if our relationship with God was deep enough that we already had that trust? Lawson Younger points out that, “It is difficult, if not impossible, to have faith in someone that you don’t know or barely know. It is extremely hard to trust someone that you misunderstand or are misinformed about.” If you find it hard to trust God, then there is work to be done to see afresh how God has been faithful to you in the best and worst of times.
Finally, we learn from this story that even when we get it right, it’s so, so easy to get off track. Gideon is a mess. He needs God’s constant intervention, and then he interprets that as his own power and strength. Faithfulness today does not mean faithfulness tomorrow. I said earlier that God speaks directly to Gideon. He’s the only one in Judges who gets this direct contact. This story spans four chapters. In the first two, God is constantly and graciously reaching out to Gideon, helping him along the way, and Gideon is constantly not trusting and messing things up. In the second half of the story, God is not there, and Gideon spirals deeper into unfaithfulness. He is breaking bad.
We’ve had seasons when we’re all in and are passionate about our faith. We’ve also had seasons when we’ve backed off out of fatigue or disinterest or even disappointment. Seasons are part of life, but when we set up camp in our disappointment, we become like Gideon who evicted God from his life and ended up squandering everything.
And if you’re in that place where you feel like God is distant or silent, I ask you, who moved? The silence at the end of Gideon’s story says more about Gideon than it does God.
God is still there — even when we’ve broken bad — waiting for us to step back up toward faith, living so God can use us.
