We are fallible, impatient, intolerant, sin-filled humans who worry and stew about every detail of life. When faced with a new circumstance beyond our control and not on our radar we melt into a puddle of fear. Those who know, love, and say we trust God first ask; “Why me, why am I going through this difficulty, God?” “I try to obey You in all your ways.” “Life isn’t fair, God, can you make it be more equitable, and make this go away?” “Can you take away the pain consuming us and change this circumstance?”
These prayers seem vain and shallow as we are really praying for perfection for ourselves in an imperfect world tainted by evil. Maybe, just maybe, we need to stop asking why. Maybe we need to stop trying to control and make demands of God—who already knows. We need a huge dose of truth from God’s Word along with the wisdom of His Holy Spirit who stands ready to help us. Truth: God uses all the things of this world—the good and the bad—to change us in the circumstances we find ourselves.
Our awesome, all knowing, relentlessly loving, extremely merciful, full of grace God has uncommon, not of this world, patience with us. When we really believe, trust and obey God; we will cease to ask why a little more often. Our daily work is to submit and surrender to God and ask for His agenda of purpose for us. “What are you teaching me today?” would be a more appropriate demonstration of our love for God. (See Romans 12 for how this works.)
Gideon is called of God to deliver His Israelites yet again from the evil they not only allowed to reside with them in The Promise Land God gave them; they joined in their evil ways. Worship of Baal means losing God. They shoved God aside and worshipped the manmade idols of Baal and others. God’s protection paused but He did not leave them. The Midianites are given free reign when left unchecked and turn on the Israelites, bringing them to ruin. When God’s people came to the end of themselves—they cried out to God. God, with uncommon patience, comes to their rescue with an unlikely, timid, unsure candidate to lead them—Gideon.
Judges 6
Gideon
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. 2 Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. 3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. 4 They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. 5 They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. 6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
7 When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
11 The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
13 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
14 The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
15 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
16 The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
17 Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. 18 Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.”
And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.”
19 Gideon went inside, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
20 The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so. 21 Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of the staff that was in his hand. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. 22 When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”
23 But the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
24 So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
25 That same night the Lord said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. 26 Then build a proper kind o altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
27 So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night rather than in the daytime.
28 In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!
29 They asked each other, “Who did this?”
When they carefully investigated, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”
30 The people of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”
31 But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” 32 So because Gideon broke down Baal’s altar, they gave him the name Jerub-Baal that day, saying, “Let Baal contend with him.”
33 Now all the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples joined forces and crossed over the Jordan and camped in the Valley of Jezreel. 34 Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. 35 He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet them.
36 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised— 37 look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” 38 And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.
39 Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” 40 That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.
WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?
The Backstory: “The Midianites were desert marauders related to the Israelites through Abraham’s second wife, Keturah, and her son, Midian. For centuries they were at odds with Israel, especially during the period of the judges. At one point, when the Midianites and their allies were about to invade Israel again, God raised up the judge Gideon. As a test, God asked Gideon to destroy his father’s altar to Baal and offer one of his father’s bulls as a burnt offering to the Lord. This step of obedience was the first step toward the defeat of the Midianites.”Max Lucado, The Encouraging Word Bible
God raised up Gideon as the one who would transform from grain farmer to warrior leader. Gideon’s first response to God is not uncommon to us, “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?” We all want to why because we like reasons for explaining all our problems. If we have reasons then we feel we can solve them. We need to stop this annoying habit that is dangerously close to saying God doesn’t know what is happening while demanding our own way in the solution! Wow, our God is so patient with us!
God’s discipline of love is wanting His best for us at our worst. The discipline of God is evidence of God’s hatred for sin and His love for His people. We can’t conceive of a holy God wanting anything less than His very best for His children, and the best He can give us is a holy character like that of Jesus Christ who demonstrated all the characteristics of God for He was God in the flesh! Daily surrender to God’s will with willing obedience builds His character to bear the spiritual behaviors of His character. (Galatians 5:23 has the list!) Sins of evil destroys our character. God cannot sit idly by and watch His children destroy themselves.
Once God has called and commissioned us; our part is to obey Him by faith, and He will do the rest. Faith means obeying God in spite of what we see, how we feel, or what the consequences might be. God uses the things of this world that produce darkness to transform us into the beauty of all that His Light provides! “Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,” a chorus of my youth, is the heart cry of my heart today and always!
This is our story…We have been dealing with litigation over an accident for almost a full year. God has used this circumstance in our lives to humble us in surrender to Him while He changes and transforms us! And He is still working on us! So, we know personally what God can do in all circumstances. Like James taught us; we can truly “count it all joy whenever we face trials of many kinds, because we know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4 (Emphasis mine.)
The circumstance remains to be settled; but God has settled us as we surrender to Him!
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? —Jesus, Matthew 5:25-27
Jesus is saying that worry demonstrates a lack of faith in God. Therefore, worry actually becomes a sin! Worry demonstrates a lack of trust in God’s love because it implies that God doesn’t really care about our needs. It shows lack of faith in God’s wisdom because it implies that God doesn’t know what He’s doing. We are set free from worry, figuring life out by ourselves, fear of the unknown by loving, trusting, serving, and worshipping a Known God who loved us before we loved Him back! Read this again, prayerfully asking for God’s Holy Spirit to correct us, until all fear is gone!
God was so very good and patient with Gideon who “laid out the fleece”, not once but twice, so he could be sure of God’s calling and will. When you consider the kind of man Gideon was at this time, we do wonder why God selected him, but God often chooses the “weak things of the world”, the unlikely like you and I, to accomplish great things for His glory (1 Corinthians 1:26–29). Gideon wasn’t a man of strong faith or courage. God had to patiently work with him to prepare him for leadership. God is always ready to make us what we ought to be if we’re willing to submit to His will. The phrase “putting out the fleece” is still used in religious circles. However, “putting out the fleece” is not a biblical method for determining the will of God. Rather, it’s an approach used by people like Gideon who lack the faith to trust that God will do what He said He would do. Surrender to God is the way to discovering the “good, perfect pleasing will of God.” (Romans 12:1-2) The fact that God stooped to Gideon’s weakness only proves that He’s a gracious God who understands how we’re made and is uncommonly patient with us!
Oh Lord,
How amazing You are! How gracious, loving and faithful you are to us. You gave so that we might live forever. There is no one like you. Thank you for all you provide when you guide us in surrender to your will.
In Jesus Name, for Your glory, Amen
Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus) 