Judges 6
God finds Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress, because he was afraid of the Midianites, and greets this fearful man with one of the most ironic greetings in the Bible: "The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor." Gideon essentially says, "Well, if you're with us, why is all this bad stuff happening?" God responds, "I have chosen you to say Israel from the Midianites." Gideon says, "You have to have the wrong address. I am from the weakest clan in Israel, and I am the weakest person in my father's house. You can't really mean me." And God said, "I will be with you."
God's response to Gideon's fear of Gideon is very helpful. He didn't work to pump up his self-confidence. He didn't work to help Gideon see that he brought more to the table than he thought. Gideon's problem was not first that he feared his inadequacies. His problem was awe. Gideon failed to fear God in the sense of "God is with me, and he is able." So Gideon was terrified at the thought of leading Israel anywhere. --Paul Tripp
God's response to Gideon's fear of Gideon is very helpful. He didn't work to pump up his self-confidence. He didn't work to help Gideon see that he brought more to the table than he thought. Gideon's problem was not first that he feared his inadequacies. His problem was awe. Gideon failed to fear God in the sense of "God is with me, and he is able." So Gideon was terrified at the thought of leading Israel anywhere. --Paul Tripp
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Judges 6:10:
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.” |
And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God,
The covenant God of them and their fathers, and they ought not to have owned and acknowledged any other besides him: fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; meaning not a fear of being hurt by them, but such a fear and reverence of them as to worship them, which was only to be given to the Lord. The Amorites are here put for all the Canaanites, they being a principal people among them: but ye have not obeyed my voice; to cleave to him, fear and worship him; they had been guilty of idolatry, and this is the sin the prophet was sent to reprove them for, and bring them to a sense of. |
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Judges 6:25-26:
Now on the same night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; 26 and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down |
One of the first tasks given to Gideon by the Angel of the Lord was to tear down his own father’s altar to Baal and to use the wood from the Asherah that was beside it as firewood for a burnt offering. I have always found this to be rather interesting especially in light of the fact that in his first encounter with the Angel of the Lord, Gideon was able to reference great and mighty acts of Yahweh which he had heard from the fathers among whom would have been his own father: Then Gideon said to him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” (Jdg 6:13) How did Gideon hear about this? Where did this history come from? Would it not come from his own father? It is truly enlightening as to the idolatrous nature of man to behold the ease by which he can set the holy and the profane side-by-side, on equal footing, without any sense of contradiction. The fathers passed down stories of how Yahweh proved that the gods of Egypt were not gods only to turn and bow the knee once again to those things which are also by nature not gods. I contemplate this passage from time to time to remind myself that it is very easy to couch our language with religious terms, to cite with precision Scripture, confessions, doctrinal statements, and the like and yet at root be an idolater. I do not negate the importance of such precision, only to remember that theological precision is not antidote to idolatry if the theological belief is not one that is held in faith and does not promote reverence. True theology melts the heart, for it is in sound theology where one meets his Lord and King. I also remind myself that if those who hold to sound theology can nevertheless have an idolatrous heart, how much more so will those be who have unsound doctrine as their guiding light? It is the nature of man to be a lover of self, and to desire his own good and pleasure above God. --To Him Be The Glory |
