Gideon’s story is a great read for someone whose resume doesn’t show great accomplishment or prowess of some kind. That’s why I, personally, love Gideon’s story. My resume isn’t impressive, but my God is. While I’m inadequate in and of myself, I believe God can and will use me somehow to do things of great significance. I bet some of you believe the same about yourself. I want to share six pieces of advice I see inferred in the record of how God used a seemingly below average person for epic accomplishment. The account of Gideon spans chapters 6, 7, and 8 of the book of Judges. For the sake of space, I won’t include that entire passage. It would be worthwhile to read those chapters now. I’ll include here just the verses pertinent to each piece of advice.
First, a little background. The Israelites have been under Midianite oppression for seven years.
Why? Because the Israelites, once again, despite God’s multiple warnings to serve only Him and not the gods of the people groups in the land, turned away from worshiping Jehovah God, who had delivered them out of Egyptian bondage and into the land He had promised their forefathers.
What did Midianite oppression look like? The Midianites, as well as a few allied people groups, stole the Israelites’ crops as soon as they became ripe for harvest, leaving almost nothing for the Israelites to eat or feed their livestock. It was as if they had the Israelites under siege. Only, they didn’t surround them, as if they would a walled city. Rather, they infiltrated their land. We find Gideon hiding some wheat he’s gotten his hands onto, threshing it in a winepress, when the Lord comes to him.
- Relinquish your old identity and embrace the identity God offers you.
From Judges 6:
12 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to [Gideon], and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!”…14 “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites”…15 “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
The contrast is stark. God calls Gideon “mighty man of valor”, but Gideon rejects the identity that the God of infinite wisdom offers him and argues that he is, essentially, the smallest of the small, weakest of the weak. By the time the story ends, Gideon understands that he is who God said he is. But God is looking for people who will believe what He says by faith – before He demonstrates that it’s true.
A few weeks ago, I was having a crisis of identity. Still recovering from a stroke, I awoke one morning and said, “Lord, I wish I could just skip this whole day to the point of lying right here ready to go to sleep again.I don’t want to go through the things I have scheduled today with my physical limitations. I’d like to just skip the entire day” Then, I realized that thought seemed a whole lot like depression. Never having faced real depression before, I became deeply disappointed in myself. I decided it would be wise to tell my wife where I had been mentally that morning, so I did. Then, because I was embarrassed by it, I became even more disappointed in myself. How could I be so weak? I thought I was a lot tougher than that! It wasn’t long, just a few minutes, before a friend, Tex, rang my doorbell. He said I had been on his mind and he just had to come see me. I told him I had been struggling that day with being disappointed in myself. He said, “Gabriel, I’m going to call you what God called Gideon. Do you remember what He said?” I did, and I quoted that verse. “That’s right, Tex replied, “ You’re a mighty man of valor. Regardless of what you think about yourself, with God, you are mighty.”
My wife and I have been watching season one of the Alone series. Ten guys are dropped off on a Canadian island near Alaska. Whoever lasts the longest gets $500,000. So far, three guys have left the island, none for physical reasons, like hunger, cold or injury. The first two left for fear of animals, understandable, with bears, wolves and cougars around their tents at night. The third guy left because he was disappointed in himself for losing his fire steel. One of the successfully remaining guys on the island said he has to forgive himself every day for the mistakes he made that day . But he’s doing it and he’s surviving. I wonder how many challenges we won’t survive if we don’t see ourselves forgiven, a huge part of our identity in Christ.
- When God calls you to something great, it will start with adjustments in your worship life.
Judges 6:25-27 Now it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image that is beside it; 26 and build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement, and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down.” 27 So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night.
God was about to use Gideon to deliver His people from the Midianites. But first things first. Before the deliverance, before the miracle, before Gideon’s military victory, he needed to remove Baal and restore the altar of Jehovah. It just doesn’t make sense to expect God to give us victory when we haven’t established Him as our God.
- Don’t be surprised by a third party identity; be prepared to reject it and cling to the identity God has given you.
Judges 6:23 Therefore on that day [a townsman] called [Gideon] Jerubbaal, saying, “Let Baal plead against him, because he has torn down his altar.”
Gideon’s neighbors literally changed his name to Jerubbaal (meaning, essentially, he no longer stands with Baal). Gideon saw himself as small and weak. While that wasn’t the same way God saw him, neither was this identity assigned him by his kinsmen. They saw him simply as someone who no longer stood for Baal. That was part of who he was, but only part. He was also someone who stood victoriously with Jehovah.
When we come to Christ, some people will see us merely as someone who left an old lifestyle. While we do leave some things behind, that isn’t what defines us. We now embrace the identity we have in Christ.
- Don’t require God to make you great before your battle; instead, depend on His greatness.
Judges 7:2-5 And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’ 3 Now therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead.'” And twenty-two thousand of the people returned, and ten thousand remained. 4 But the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. Then it will be, that of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ the same shall go with you; and of whomever I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ the same shall not go.” 5 So he brought the people down to the water.
God took the thirty-two thousand troops and whittled them down to three hundred. He wanted the victory to be an undeniable miracle, not just a victory. I hope we can remember that God can give us victories any way He desires; we just need to allow Him to bring it His way and for His purposes. That may sometimes involve actions on our part that seem counterintuitive to victory but are exactly what God is leading.
- Seek the encouragement you need for your battle in the Lord, Himself.
Judges 7:9-15 It happened on the same night that the Lord said to him, “Arise, go down against the camp, for I have delivered it into your hand. 10 But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant, 11 and you shall hear what they say; and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.” Then he went down with Purah his servant to the outpost of the armed men who were in the camp. 12 Now the Midianites and Amalekites, all the people of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude. 13 And when Gideon had come, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. He said, “I have had a dream: To my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian; it came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned, and the tent collapsed.” 14 Then his companion answered and said, “This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel! Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp.” 15 And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped.
The Lord knows when we need encouragement, and He knows how to give it to us. He will encourage us in a different way, and a more effective way, than anyone else can.
- Break the cycles of futility in your life by continuing to walk with God and resisting the temptation to return to your old patterns.
Judges 8:27 Then Gideon made it into an ephod and set it up in his city, Ophrah. And all Israel played the harlot with it there. It became a snare to Gideon and to his house.
Despite Gideon’s incredible experience with God, he returned to idolatry, making a golden idol for himself and his Israelite brothers and sisters to worship. It’s puzzling to read the cycles of unfaithfulness in the Biblical narrative. But if we were to read the narrative of our own lives with God, I believe what would impress us most is God’s patience with us in our inconsistent walk with Him.
Thank you, Lord, for advice from the story of Gideon. Please help me take it.