Chapter 6, verse 25-27
"Now on the same night." Sometimes the Lord gives you a vision of your place in the kingdom, and then makes you wait a while to start working. This time, there was no time to waste.
I want to make sure you get the gravity of Gideon's first assignment from the Lord. First of all, the alter he was supposed to pull down belonged to his own father. He was also using his father's livestock to do it, so this was no small structure. It was big, and had taken money and labor to construct it.
After that, he was to cut down another structure of the gods, the Asherah pole, and use the wood to burn an offering to the True God on top of the old spot. This was going to have consequences. People were going to be angry.
So Gideon did what God asked him to do. And he did it at night. Did I mention last time that Gideon was maybe not such a brave man? Yet when the angel of the Lord came to him, He called him a vailiant warrior. God doesn't wait until you are at your best before He uses you. It's the task that makes you who you'll become.
And what does this whole tearing down the alter thing tell us about the god we serve? He used the wood from the Asherah in an alter to Himself! He is a jealous God. And it's a jealousy that will tolerate no other gods. His gesture here was to demean these other gods. Ficticious gods who were invented by the Enemy to distract the people who belonged to Him. His bride. Some are turned off by the idea of a jealous god, but I am not one of them. If I were tempted away from my marriage to another man, would I want a husband who would stand idly by, twiddling his thumbs and hoping that maybe I'd change my mind? No! I'd want him to fight for me. Remind me of my place with him, and that all others are hollow, filthy imposters. And that's what our Lord was saying here. He loves His people fiercely.
Well, the next morning, after the destroyed alter is discovered, the men of the city are ticked off. They saw the insult to their gods for what it was, and they wanted revenge. I thought Gideon's dad would feel the same way, but he really comes through in verse 31. He say's "If Baal is a god, let him contend for himself, because someone has torn down his alter." I love that! And as we know, not only did Gideon survive, but he suddenly had a serious reputation and bad-boy nickname because of his defiance of the false god. Not bad, Lord.
In verse 34, "the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon" and he began to gather men against the Midianites. He was now someone they respected enough to follow.
Verses 36-40 Have you ever heard someone say, "We put a fleece before the Lord?" This is where that comes from. It it asking God for reassurance that He is the one behind a decision in your life. Now, I have never asked for a sign as bold as the one Gideon asked for. (Do you get the idea that maybe he was trying to get out of it?) But I have definitely done this in my own way. When we traveled from Texas to Indiana for the first time to check out the church there, we asked God to make it obvious what His will was in the situation. I personally prayed that the people of the church would either like us or not like us. He came through in a major way. When we met the people of Franklin Road, as I've mentioned before, we recognized them as old friends. It was a prayer answered in an obvious way. A couple years later Donnie was offered a position at a church in Michigan, and again we laid the same "fleece" before Him. And this time it was just as obvious to both of us that it was not the right move. We didn't know it, but He'd already begun preparing a place back here in Texas for us.
Here is one thing to keep in mind. When you are seeking the Lord's will, remember what Jesus said to the devil during the tempation. Be careful not to test the Lord with miraculous signs. When I was little I used to pray that God would prove He was real by writing my name on the inside of my Bible. Every time I opened it the page was still blank. Did that mean God wasn't real? Of course not! But He would prove Himself to me in His own way.
Next time: Judges 7-8
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