Gideon’s First Test – Judges 6: 24-40
Judges 6 and I want to review what is
taking place in this terrible period of time in the history of Israel. We have seen that it is a time of spiritual
apostasy and reversionism in the nation.
It is seen especially in the decline of the leaders and the impact of
the pagan culture on them. It begins
with the first judge who was Othniel; nothing negative was said about Othniel
or his wife, Achsah and they are presented, as it were, as sort of the
standard, the benchmark of the spiritual maturity that was present in Joshua’s
generation and the generation of the elders that came into the land and
conquered the Canaanites. But they also
began to fail because it was that same generation that began the policy of
compromise and assimilation of the value system and the thinking of the
Canaanite culture that surrounded Jews that had previously possessed the
land.
From Othniel there was a period of
rebellion against God afterward and spiritual apostasy and people were brought
under a time of oppression from a foreign power, which is how God was
disciplining the nation at that time, and He delivered them through Ehud, who
through a series of deceptive tactics was able to assassinate Eglon, the king
of Moab, who was oppressing Israel at that time, and once again the nation is
delivered. But it doesn’t last long,
they continue to go into apostasy and idolatry and once again they go through a
period of oppression and they are delivered by Deborah, and specifically Barak,
her general.
Then we have another period of decline
and again they are oppressed by the coalition of Midianites and Amalekites, for
seven years, and then God raised up Gideon and it is in the midst of this
Gideon episode…the Gideon cycle covers 3 or 4 chapters, chapters 6-9 all cover
Gideon and the consequences of Gideon’s judgeship. Gideon is really the turning point, as it were, in this
book. From this point on the judges are
more apostate and are more pagan than they are spiritual. We see even in Gideon that he doesn’t have a
true understanding of doctrine. He is a
believer but he is biblically ignorant, he is operating on pagan concepts more
often than not and we’ll see a little more of that this morning. This is followed by Jephthah who is even
more paganized than Gideon, and culminates with Samson who, though he is a
believer and though the Holy Spirit is empowering his judgeship, his life is no
different at all from the surrounding pagans.
In fact, it is in some ways even more degraded and more perverted than
that of the pagans. And all of this
tells us that it is very possible for a believer, a genuine believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, to give in to human viewpoint thinking and the temptation of
the sin nature and the lust of the flesh, and to go into spiritual rebellion,
spiritual apostasy, and think, live and operate no different from the pagan
culture around us.
One of the sad points is that
unfortunately in too many churches in our country today the people are not
being taught how to think critically about these things, so they spend a lot of
time learning the Bible, almost in an academic sense. They end up learning a lot of things about what God can do for
them but it’s almost as if it is compartmentalized and it doesn’t have an
impact on how they think in every other area of life, whether it is more
personal areas, such as marriage, family, personal relationships or whether it
is something more academic such as the study of law, the study of economics,
the study of literature, history, etc. but yet the Bible tells us the Word is
sufficient for everything that there is a framework for understanding every
arena of thought that derives from the Scripture. And that’s what we call divine viewpoint, and that is in contrast
to what I call human viewpoint or pagan thought. Pagan thought is not a pejorative term; it is a technical term
for the kind of thinking that is not Biblical.
To make something Biblical doesn’t mean that somehow you come along and
you find verses in the Bible that seem to support what you’re saying and then
you tack those verses on.
It’s important to develop from the text
a Biblical view of all the different areas in life and that’s one of the things
that I hope we will be able to do as the years go by and time permits. It takes a tremendous amount of study. That’s why I think it doesn’t happen in a
lot of churches because the pastors just get so caught up in all kinds of other
things, administrative functions, they get involved in trying to build a church,
they get confused with the fact that Jesus said I will build My church and
their job is to feed the sheep and they think that somehow it’s the Sunday
school teacher’s responsibility to feed the sheep and their job to build the
church, and that distracts them and so they don’t spend the time in the
Word. I probably spend somewhere around
40-50 hours a week directly involved in reading, studying the Word, and I think
that’s about half what it ought to be but you can only do so much and God’s
only given us so much time. We just
have so much that’s here and so much that can be developed from the Scripture.
Gideon, like so many today, is not even
sure of how God operates. He’s
confused, he has absorbed so many ideas about “God,” (quote) from the pagan culture
and its worship of the Baalim, the Baals, which is the Canaanite fertility
culture, and the Asherah that in some ways, we’re going to see he treats God in
the same way that the pagans treated Baal and interacted with Baal. You see the same thing today; we have our
version of the fertility cult, which was a prosperity cult of the ancient world
and we see that today with the health and wealth gospel. As I was channel
surfing looking for news, I briefly watched a preacher at the close of his
message saying that if you would send in or visit his website you could learn
all the principles you needed to be wealthy, wealthy and prosperous. And that is our version of the fertility
cult of the ancient world. We are
promising things and interpreting the Scripture in light of pagan categories,
pagan vocabulary and pagan concepts.
And the result is you end up with a church that might have 5,000 people
in it but they think just like the people who are outside the church, outside
of grace, who aren’t saved and don’t have a clue about doctrine.
Gideon, though, gives us hope because
God uses him despite the fact that he is so confused about the truth and so
ignorant about so many things, and despite the fact that even though Israel is
crying out to the Lord for deliverance there’s no real change in the way
they’re thinking, they just want God to take away the suffering, they’re not
saying Lord, we recognize that our problem is idolatry and we’re going to take
care of that. In fact, this is the
point of the passage from verse 25 on.
Last time we stopped at verse 24 where Gideon had sought confirmation
from the Lord, the angel of the Lord had appeared to Gideon and commissioned
him as the deliverer of the nation. In
order to get confirmation Gideon was going to bring out an offering.
We’re told in Judges 6:19,
“Then Gideon went in and prepared a young goat” now think about this, he
says to the angel of the Lord, wait a while, I want confirmation, and he
prepares a kid. Now that takes a while,
to go out into the field or maybe into the sheep pen in the backyard, grab a
kid, slaughter it, skin it, prepare it as a meal, “and unleavened bread from an
ephah of flour;” he has to go get the flour, he has to bake it, “he put the
meat in a basket and the broth in a pot,” so he fixes a whole meal, this
probably took 2 or 3 hours before he brings it out and puts it on the altar and
then it is consumed by this fire from God that consumes everything on the rock,
and that is his confirmation. So once
he has confirmation then the Lord gives him a particular task to perform and
this is given in verses 25-26.
Judges 6: 25, “Now
on the same night the LORD said to him,” that is to Gideon, so now we’ve gone to the
daytime when the Lord first appeared to Gideon and evening has come. “on the same night the LORD said to him,”
so nighttime has come, we’ve seen a lot of time go by, and God is going to
commission him, He says, “Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years
old,” this is a bad translation, we’ll come back and look at the correct
translation, “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.”
What we learn from this is that Gideon’s
father has a Baal temple in his backyard so that Gideon’s family is deeply
immersed in Baal worship, in fact, his father is the lead promoter of the Baal
religion and the Canaanite religion in their region. So God is basically saying to Gideon, okay, we handled the first
part, I gave you a commission, we’re learning a few things about doctrinal
orientation, but it’s not just academic truth.
You don’t just learn that I have a plan for your life; that plan
involves application and before you can function as a servant of me you must
first start applying some truth.
You see, God is demonstrating a basic
principle here that doctrinal orientation is not just learning academic truth,
it is application for spiritual growth, and that if you are going to be
involved in Christian service then it begins first by your own spiritual
growth. Christian service is a result
of spiritual growth, it is not a cause of spiritual growth, so that the
believer needs to first get involved in spiritual growth, learning and applying
doctrine before they’re put, especially in any kind of position of leadership,
whether that involves teaching in Sunday school, or it involves any other level
of leadership in the local church. That
Christian service should flow as a result of spiritual growth and that means
that before you start getting involved in doing something in a local church you
need to spend some time learning basic doctrine and applying it in your own
life.
God is instructing Gideon that his first
task is to start dealing with the internal problem, the root problem in
Israel. The root problem is not that
they have an inadequate military that is unable to protect them from the
onslaughts of their foreign enemies.
The basic problem in Israel is not that they have, perhaps, poor
agricultural techniques or technology so that they can’t produce enough crops
to support themselves and the foreign invader at the same time. The problem is that they have succumbed to
idolatry; they have rejected God, they have rejected the Mosaic Law, and they
have followed after the false religion of the Canaanites and until they deal with
the core problem treating the symptom isn’t going to solve anything. And that
principle holds true both for us as a nation and for us as individuals.
So often somebody comes in for
counseling, they want to talk to the pastor and they have a lot of problems in
their life and all of a sudden everything seems to be falling apart. Those are the symptoms; the problem is that
doctrine is not a priority in their life and they haven’t been consistently
applying doctrine in their life, so when everything falls apart suddenly they
start wanting to show up at Bible class and learn just a few things so that
they can get their lives stable again.
That’s not how it works. What
you have to do is start dealing with those basic issues of making God the focal
point where there is no fundamental compromise in life in relationship to
doctrinal priority.
So Gideon has to start making
application in the realm of doctrinal orientation and this flows from the first
two commandments in the Mosaic Law. In
Exodus 20:2 we read: “I am the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of slavery. [3] You shall
have no other gods before Me,” that is the first commandment of the Ten
Commandments. Verse 4, “You shall not
make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the
earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.”
Now I just want to make a comment there
because of a question that was raised regarding the lifting up of the bronze serpent
in the wilderness, when Israel was going through the wilderness and they came
to a place where they were attacked by the fiery serpents because of discipline
from God and God said to Moses to make an image of the serpent and put it up on
a post. This is not a prohibition of
art; this is not a prohibition of making representations of created objects
because there certainly were representations of different things in the
creation. For example, they were to make
images of the cherubim to place over the Ark of the Covenant, and there were
other decorations of animals and other creation objects in the tabernacle and
in the temple so it’s not a prohibition against art or sculpting or anything of
that nature. It is a prohibition of
making something for the purpose of worshiping it. That is the concept here; so they’re not to make anything as a
worship object, as a representation of God for the purpose of worship.
Exodus 20:5, “You shall not worship them
or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generation of those who
hate Me.” So this is talking about the
fact that this can lead to a generational problem, to the fourth generation
because of the rebelliousness of previous generations. Verse 6, “But showing loving kindness to
thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. [7] You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in
vain,” now this is the fourth commandment, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in
vain” is usually applied in a rather superficial concept in our culture, mostly
because the original languages aren’t consulted. Taking the name of the Lord your God in vain is usually related
to using the name of Jesus or God in sort of profane explicative. That might be part of this but it certainly
doesn’t catch the main idea of this prohibition. The word translated “in vain” in the Hebrew is the word that
means to seek false, wicked, empty light or vain; it has the idea of attaching
wrongly or falsely the name of God to a cause or a person’s life when that
person’s cause or life is not biblically validated.
For example, if you decide that God
wants you to do something just because that has somehow stirred your emotions
and you’ve gotten excited about something and you say well, God wants me to do
X, Y or Z, and God has not appeared or spoken verbally to you since He doesn’t
do that in this generation, believe me, then what you have done is violated
this commandment; you’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain; you’ve said this is
God’s will for my life and you have no basis for saying that, you’ve attached
God’s name falsely to that, you’ve taken the name of the Lord in vain. There are false religions and cults who use
the name of Yahweh or Jehovah in attachment to them and is taking the Lord’s
name in vain; it is attaching it in a false way to a cause or purpose and it is
deceitful because God has not authorized that.
It also can be applied to the life of a person who claims that they are
a believer and they are actually just more concerned about learning a lot of
doctrine and not really applying it and so in common everyday language they are
talking the talk without walking the walk.
They are talking a lot about the Bible and about God and that religious
verbiage peppers their language and they present an overt façade of
Christianity but their life doesn’t reflect it at all and people around them
see through that external veneer of Christian verbiage and recognize that there’s
something missing. That’s taking the
Lord’s name in vain; it is applying the Lord’s name in an inappropriate way to
a cause or a person’s life.
This means that you can’t get involved
in Christian service unless first of all there are the beginnings of spiritual
growth and application of doctrine in the life. It means that you can’t hide behind principles like “it’s the
message, not the man,” and that’s a valid principle, but sometimes people use
that to justify a life of antinomianism so that they can go on some sort power
trip or head trip and they can be in a position of teaching and academic
authority without having the Word transform their own life personally. This is one reason why we have policies in
this church insisting that if someone is going to teach Sunday school or be
involved in Christian leadership that they need to be in Bible class
consistently and that we have a time of observing them and getting to know them
before we ever put them in such a position.
The basic principle underlying this
command of God is verse 25 is that before the believer can start functioning in
the role of Christian service there needs to be a time of learning and
application in the believer’s life. The
second principle we see here is that God does not tolerate compromise; He is
going to address the core problem of Israel before He starts dealing with the
symptom. The symptom is that they’re
being overrun by the foreign oppressors; the core problem is idolatry and God is
not going to solve the external problem or the symptom of the oppressor before
He starts addressing, but he will first start addressing the problem of
idolatry in the nation.
So he starts with Gideon at his own
home, and this is also a stepping stone for Gideon’s spiritual growth. See God is not going to come to Judges 7 and
say Gideon, okay, we’re going to send you against 200,000 Midianites with 300
men right out of the shoot. That’s a
little overwhelming sometimes for an immature baby believer so God is going to
give him a smaller task and in that smaller task God is going to demonstrate
His sufficiency and His ability to solve the problem and protect Gideon and
then once Gideon has learned that and had that level of experience with God
then Gideon can move to the next and higher level of trusting God.
So God commands him to take his father’s
bull, and a second bull seven years old.
Now the interesting thing here is that this second bull is, in the
Hebrew it’s what’s called a homophone or a homonym, it’s a word that is similar
to, looks like another word. It is the
word sheniy, which is the standard
word for second, but why, the question should occur to us, why is he to take
this second bull. There’s also an
indication that this is a seven year old bull, that it’s a son of the older bull,
why this second bull, what’s going on here, because it’s the second bull that
is sacrificed. What’s the significance
of it being “second?” From cognate
studies, those are related languages, it appears that there was another word,
spelled the same way, in Aramaic and that tells us by looking at other
languages like Aramaic and Phoenician and Ugaritic and Akkadian we can learn
some things about the Hebrew language because the only surviving documents that
we have on ancient Hebrew is the Hebrew text and sometimes there are words that
are used only one time, or two or three times, that have certain meanings and
we’re not aware of them because we just don’t have enough documents from the
ancient world to come to a firm conclusion so we look at how these cognate
languages use a similar word. There is
a homonym in Aramaic spelled the same way that refers to that which is
superior, that which is of high rank, that which is of high quality and so that
would seem to fit the context better because it’s not just the second bull
that’s sacrificed, what’s significant of second, but what is sacrificed is a
bull of high quality, of sacrificial quality.
Just like the lamb that is without spot or blemish, this is a prize
bull, this is not just any old bull that he pulls out of the herd.
So he is to take his father’s bull and a
bull of high quality that is seven years of age. Now why is it supposed to be of seven years of age; what does
that have to do with it. Well look back at Judges 6:1, “Then the sons of Israel
did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD gave them into
the hands of Midian for seven years.”
So this bull is as old as the time of the oppression, so this bull is
identified in his life with the period of discipline in Israel’s life. So therefore it is fit to be a substitute, a
sacrifice for the people. In the same
way the Lord Jesus Christ was a true man, He was fully human, He was
undiminished deity, united with true humanity in the hypostatic union so that
He could go to the cross as our substitute, and that’s the function of a
sacrifice, is to serve as a substitute.
So he is to take a bull of sacrificial
quality that, in its lifetime is identified with the period of rebellion and
oppression in Israel, and that will be the bull that is sacrifice. It is not the first bull; it is this second
bull that is the sacrificial bull. So
Gideon then takes these two bulls, harnesses them together and goes out to pull
down the stronghold or Baal. He is to
pull down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah, [Judges 6:26] “and build
an altar to the LORD your God on top of this stronghold,” and the Hebrew word for
stronghold is maoz, and this refers
to a Canaanite temple sanctuary that is fortified with both walls and
towers. Now that doesn’t mean it’s a
large area, probably not half the size, from what we know of archeological
remains it’s probably but not half the size of this meeting house, but it was
built up, there were clearly walls that were 8 or 10 feet tall and there were
towers on the corner and so there was more to this than just coming up with a
couple of bulls and pulling a few things apart. It involved other men as well.
We are told in Judges 6:27, “Then Gideon
took ten men of his servants” we noted last time the fact that he had at least
ten servants, probable had many more, it indicates that he is from aristocracy
and from a wealthy family and he is not the poor down-trodden man that he made
himself out to be in order to avoid responsibility. So Gideon takes these ten men and he does this in the dead of
night. We’re excited about the fact
that he has instant obedience to the command of God but then we discover it
instantly because he doesn’t want to wait until morning when all the neighbors
and everybody around him will see him taking on the task of challenging Baal.
See, he knows that when he takes a stand for the truth that there’s going to be
opposition, and so he is fearful of that opposition. Now he takes the ten men, he probably took five of them and
placed them out as sentries to make sure that nobody would come up and
interrupt their job and then he took the other five and the two bulls and began
to dismantle this altar. It took him
most of the night but he tore it all down, and then on top of the stronghold he
built an altar to Yahweh.
So what we see here is that human
viewpoint must always be challenged by the believer. And this pictures the kind of challenge that should take place in
our own thinking and in our own soul.
This is in Gideon’s own household, he has to challenge his own
assumptions; he’s been brought up in a household where the Canaanite religion
is promoted, this was taught him, we don’t know how he became a believer in
Yahweh, in the Old Testament concept, we don’t know when it happened. Obviously
he didn’t get much more than that but he is at least a believer, but he has
been inculcated in the Canaanite pagan religion and what this is showing is
that before he can go forward in any kind of position of responsibility in the
plan of God he has to challenge the human viewpoint in his own surroundings and
that’s what we need to do as believers.
As we learn the Word of God we realize that there is a conflict between
what the Scriptures teach and what is going on around us. Application often is difficult and we have
to take a stand in such a way that it makes us vulnerable to assault to those
around us, maybe from family members, maybe from friends, maybe we are
ridiculed, we might lose a job. I’ve
run into people in other countries who have lost their jobs, lost nearly
everything they had because they were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. But we are involved in a battle; in a battle
for what goes on in the mind.
Paul refers to this in 2 Corinthians
10:5; we are to “destroy speculations and every lofty thing raised up against
the knowledge of God.” What he means by
speculations and lofty things are lofty thoughts, high thoughts, abstract
thoughts, the abstract thinking that was present in the pagan or human viewpoint
systems of Greek philosophy and mystery religions that dominated the culture of
that time. And it is our job as
believers to engage the enemy. The
enemy is thought, it’s not people; it is the thinking of human viewpoint and it
starts with identifying and rooting out the human viewpoint thinking that we
have absorbed in our own souls. See, we
are born, all of us to one degree or another are born into environments that
have been loaded with human viewpoint thinking. Even if you were raised in a Christian home there is still a
certain amount of human viewpoint thinking in that home and you imbibed that as
you were growing up; you learned it from the value system of your peers as you
were going to school, you learned it from the teachers that you had in the
classroom in high school and college, you learned it from reading the
newspaper, watching TV and movies, all of these ideas in our culture are
present and we pick them up. And it is
our job to think. That’s why I keep
insisting that the Christian life, the spiritual life is a life of thinking,
and it’s not just a life of doing but our actions should result from the way we
think; if we just change our actions on the outside without changing the way we
think on the inside then we reduce Christian to nothing more than an ethical
system and we reduce it to something that is merely superficial and not
something that changes us from the core thinking, which the Bible calls the
heart, the kardia.
So this is an illustration of how this
transpires. Gideon has to challenge the
human viewpoint thinking in his own home and challenge the paganism that’s
there before he can go forward in the plan of God. It also reminds me of Romans 12:2 where we are told not to be
“conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind,” the
renewing of our thinking, “so that you can demonstrate what the will of God is,
that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” So we are involved in a task and that task includes a battle for
the mind. That’s what spiritual warfare
is all about. Throughout the Scripture
there is that metaphor of spiritual warfare and it is not the idea of going out
and engaging spiritual forces in battle.
That is not the thrust, even though that is how it is being
misrepresented in many places, in many theologies today. Spiritual warfare involves the battle for
the mind. Spiritual warfare doesn’t
take place by going out and rebuking Satan, casting out demons or any of that
kind of thing; it involves a battle between your ears for what is going to
dominate your thinking, divine viewpoint or human viewpoint.
Gideon, though he is cautious, though he
is fearful, though he is somewhat hesitant and he wants to avoid any real overt
conflict with his neighbors and the others who live in the village, at least he
is willing to take those faltering steps forward under the cover of night to
tear down the altar.
Judges 6:17, “Then Gideon took ten men
of his servants, and did as the LORD had spoken to him; and because he was too afraid
of his father’s household and the men of the city to do it by day, he did it by
night.” So even though he is still
struggling with the mental attitude sins and the emotional sin of fear, he
recognizes that, but he still carries out the task. That tells us something; a principle here is that there are times
when we are fearful but we still trust God.
There are times when we have certain emotional responses to what God
wants us to do but we go forward anyway.
It’s analogous to what happens to the soldier on the battlefield. There is no soldier in any battlefield
situation that does not experience some level of fear but courage is the
ability to go forward and perform your job despite how you feel. That’s the same thing we could say about
faith. Faith means that we are going to do what God says to do no matter how we
feel, no matter what our experiences might be, and no matter what the
consequences might be. When the Word of God is more real to us than our
experiences, than our emotions, than our circumstances, that’s when we are
trusting God. That is the beginning of
the faith rest drill.
So in light of this I want to review the
basic principles of fear and the snowballing effect of fear and its
consequences in the spiritual life. The
first point; in fear we put our focus on real or imagined dangers, consequences
or calamities. We’re focusing on the
details of life, their absence or their presence, and not the power, provision,
promises and plan of God. We’re putting
our focus on the details of life and not God’s plan; we’re more concerned about
things or people or events than we are about the reality of God’s plan. So fear
is a sign, it is always an indication of a failure to trust God. Faith means that God’s Word is more real to
us than our emotions but when our emotions become more real to us than the Word
of God then we can end up in some sort of emotionalism then that can affect
spiritual life and decision making in one direction and it can also cause us
not to trust God and to not do what we’re supposed to do on the other
hand. Fear means that we have failed to
understand the grace of God. The grace
of God means that He has done everything for us. His grace is sufficient, that means it’s enough, it’s more than
enough; it’s provided everything we need to live the spiritual life and to do
what God has told us to do. So when we
are afraid it means that we don’t understand grace. We have to realize it’s not us, it’s not our power, it’s not our
ability, it’s God.
Now we may have a natural response of
fear, that’s what happened with Gideon, all of a sudden he’s got to step out on
faith, he’s never done this before, he’s a baby believer but he’s going to
trust God despite the fact that he has this fear of his neighbors and his
friends coming out, and the mob coming to lynch him, because he’s torn down
their “church” as it were. So he is
going to do it at night, but the point is he still does it; he does it despite
the fact that he is afraid. So we learn
one thing, that fear means that we aren’t grace orientation…[tape
turns]…doctrinal orientation. Part of
doctrinal orientation is that we have a mastery of the details of life; we
realize that doctrine is more important than the details of life but when the
details of life become more important than doctrine, that’s when we become
slaves to the details of life. So the
first point is that in fear we put our focus on real or imagined dangers,
consequences or calamities, the details of life become more important than
obedience to God.
Point number two; the more things you
surrender to fear the more things you will fear. Once we start succumbing to fear and we begin to get worried
about certain things it develops like a snowball, it builds as it goes downhill. Today we worry about one thing; tomorrow we
worry about two or three things, the next day it’s five or six things, until
like the proverb says, we’re afraid to go out of the house because there might
be a lion in the streets. In the
context of that proverb there really wasn’t going to be a lion in the street,
it’s that this person is so afraid now that they’re making up excuses why they
won’t do what God would have them to do because it just might happen that
something terrible would take place. What
happens is that as we succumb to fear is that we become more and more afraid of
other things until our lives are controlled and dominated by mental attitude
sins.
Point number three; the extent to which
you surrender to fear the greater becomes your capacity for fear. So as we begin to fear we will fear more
things; as we surrender to more fear then our capacity for fear grows and as we
continue we are on the process of reversionism; we are reversing in our
spiritual growth and we are living our lives on the basis of fear, on the basis
of mental attitude sins and as a result of that, it destroys our capacity for
love, for life, for happiness, and for blessing. See, there are no circumstances in life that are going to make us
happy. We can’t base our happiness on
the approval or acceptance of people around us. All of a sudden people become more important than God. All of a sudden circumstances are more
important than doctrine. The only way
we can have any kind of stability in life, any kind of real happiness in life
is based on our emphasis on God, making doctrine the number one priority and
then everything else works out.
It’s amazing how lives are really
systems; there’s a whole systemic thing that goes on here and once we succumb
to negative volition and we get away from the Word and we quit applying
doctrine, then a lot of things start happening under the law of volitional
responsibility. We make bad decisions and there are negative consequences, but
these things tend to have a cumulative effect till all of a sudden one day we
wake up and our lives just all of a sudden turn to garbage and everything is
going wrong. Well now what we want to
do is solve the problem, so what do I do to solve this problem, solve that
problem, and we start taking everything apart, not realizing that it is a
systemic collapse and all the problems in our lives are merely the result of an
internal failure to make God and doctrine the number one priority in our
life. All we have to do to start
straightening things out is to get back with doctrine and once we get back with
doctrine, making our relationship with God the number one priority, then we
start making right decisions. We
realized we’ve failed so we confess our sins and now instead of operating from
a position of weakness on the sin nature we are not operating from a position
of strength on the basis of doctrine and the Holy Spirit. And even though we may now be in prison,
even though we may have some terrible disease, even though we may have cause a
loss of everything we once had in terms of material possessions, we are still
alive, God still has a plan for our life and now we can face and handle those
negative circumstances on the basis of doctrine, so suffering is turned from
suffering for cursing to suffering for blessing.
That’s what happened in David’s life,
after his adultery with Bathsheba when God lowered the boom on him in terms of
divine discipline, and he had a four-fold divine discipline, even though that
was not taken away from him and his family life was horrible, he had one son
rape his half-sister, another daughter of David’s, and then another son killed
that one and then Absalom revolted, all of these things happened but David had
confessed his sin, he was back in fellowship so that he still went through the
suffering, he still went through the consequences of his bad decision but he
was able to handle it on the basis of doctrine so it became suffering for
blessing and he was able to maintain his stability in the midst of those
horrible circumstances, despite the fact that they were pretty miserable. He was miserable, he cried out in grief when
Absalom died but he handled it and maintained his stability in a fantastic way
despite the grief because he knew it was God’s plan and he was oriented to the
plan of God. So the problem is that
when we surrender to fear we develop a greater capacity for fear.
Point four; the greater your capacity
for fear the more you increase the power of fear in your life. I want you to realize that fear in the Bible
is often the starting point for all the other mental attitude sins or emotional
sins such as worry, anxiety, bitterness, all of these things are interconnected
with fear. So the greater our capacity
for fear, the more we increase the power of fear in our life, and that affects
other mental attitude sins.
Point five; the more you increase the
power of fear in your life the greater your mindset as a failure in the
spiritual life and shame at the judgment seat of Christ. See, what happens is when we’re dominated by
mental attitude sins, we’re dominated by fear, we put our focus on the details
of life rather than on doctrine and now we have a mindset that produces failure
in the spiritual life and when we’re a failure in the spiritual life we’re
going to be a failure at the judgment seat of Christ and experience shame at
the judgment seat of Christ.
Point six; fear is the central emotional
sin which first characterized the mental attitude of fallen man. It’s the central mental attitude sin that
first characterized the mental attitude of fallen man. When Adam and Eve
sinned, first Eve sinned, she was deceived, but Adam was the head of the race;
he sinned knowingly. When he ate from
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the race fell at that
point. Then God showed up; God showed
up on a daily basis to have and enjoy fellowship with His creatures. When God showed up they hid. Why does it say they hid? Because they were afraid. You see the core emotional sin of the fallen
creature is now fear. It is a fear
related to loss of everything. So fear
is a central emotional sin; everything else flows from that, and it’s only
corrected through understanding grace as an expression of the love of God.
Now here’s something that will probably
startle some of you. Most of us, when
we think of love we think that its opposite is hatred. That’s not how the Bible presents it. In 1 John 4:18 John contrasts fear and love;
it’s not hatred, it’s fear. “There is
no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Perfect love is related to the grace of God; the grace of God is
the expression of God’s perfect love and when we understand the love of God,
then fear is removed. That’s what
happened in the Garden; when God confronted Adam and Eve in grace they became
aware of His love and His provision of salvation. “…fear involves punishment and the one who fears is not perfected
in love.” That’s the rest of verse 18
but the main point is that “perfect love casts out fear,” so the starting point
for dealing with fear and mental attitude sins of worry and anxiety is
understanding God’s grace and His sufficient provision for us.
Well, Gideon begins to understand this
now in the midst of this entire scenario, and the next morning after they have
torn down the altar everybody shows up to have their morning sacrifice to Baal
and the temple is torn down, and so all of the men of the city come out and
they’re antagonistic.
Judges 6:28, “When the men of the city arose early
in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was torn down, and the Asherah which
was beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar which
had been built. [29] They said to one another, “Who did this thing?” And when
they searched about and inquired, they said, “Gideon the son of Joash did this
thing. [30] Then
the men of the city said to Joash, “Bring out your son, that he may die, for he
has torn down the altar of Baal, and indeed, he has cut down the Asherah which
was beside it.” They’re ready to lynch
him. But listen to what Joash says in
verse 31, “But Joash said to all who stood against him, ‘Will you contend for
Baal,” and here we have the word rib
in the Hebrew which is a legal term for making a defense, “will you contend for
Baal,” is it necessary for you to defend Baal, why doesn’t he defend himself, “or
will you deliver him? Whoever will plead for him shall be put to death by
morning.” This is Joash’s point, “If he
is a god, let him contend for himself, because someone has torn down his
altar.”
Now this is the point, this is extremely confusing the way it’s translated in
the English and I’m just beginning to understand what’s going on here, the
writer is extremely subtle and the Hebrew is very difficult. Much of Judges is written in a very ancient
form of Hebrew and so it’s a little difficult to handle at times. His basic contention is look, Baal is going
to contend for himself, you don’t need to get involved. He’s using that to save his son’s life.
And then Judges 6:32, it’s almost
parenthetical, “Therefore on that day he named him Jerubbaal, that is to say,
Let Baal contend against him, because he had torn down his altar.” Now it sounds like this is a positive thing,
that he’s naming his son Jerubbaal, which means that he contended against Baal,
but in the form of the word in the Hebrew the root is the word rib in Hebrew, it’s what called a hollow
verb, it looks like this in Hebrew, “r” and this is an “i” and this is
pronounced like a “v,” it’s a soft “b.”
Now it’s called a hollow verb because it has this vowel point in the
middle and this turns to a “u,” so this is the r-u-b in the middle of Jerubbaal
and it’s given a “j” or y” at the beginning as an imperfect. See, the way it’s translated in English,
“let Baal contend” would take that as what’s called a jussive form, but there
is no example of a jussive form of this verb anywhere in Hebrew
literature. So that presents a problem.
Also the verb is to contend and the subject of the verb in the name phrase is
Baal, and it’s kind of a sarcastic statement, almost has a double meaning here,
and what Joash is saying is that Baal is going to contend for himself.
Now the interesting thing is, I’ve
always been fascinated by the use of Biblical names and how they are used to
communicate certain things. Everywhere else
in the Bible except for Judges and the reference to Gideon in Hebrews 11,
Gideon is referred to by the name Jerubbaal, but when you get into other
passages, sometimes the Baal is changed to bosheth, where it’s changed to
Jerubbesheth;, Jerubbesheth means let shame contend. We have other examples of compound names with Baal, like Ish-baal
is changed to Ish-bosheth; Merib-baal is changed to Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel
4:4. All of that seems to suggest that
Jerubbaal is Gideon’s real name. He
wasn’t named Gideon; Gideon means to hew down or to cut down, that Gideon was
his second name but the name that his father had given him from birth was
Jerubbaal and that here his father is referring to that and this is all an
ironic statement that’s saying just let the kid live, Baal will contend for
himself and it’ll all work itself out.
And this is a real subtle point. The reason the writer brings this in, this
is why it’s so fun to get into the text sometimes. See, Gideon is going to lead the nation right back into idolatry
when it’s all over with. And this is
foreshadowed by this episode. His
father recognized, he said look no matter what happens, this is what’s going to
happen eventually and so there’s this foreshadowing of what happens under
Gideon. Gideon has this great victory
in the next chapter but when it’s all over with Gideon is going to lead the
nation back into idoaltlry. And to get
through all of this you just have to know the Hebrew. When everything is said and done, after he has the victory over
the Midianites the people want to make him king. And Gideon says no, no, no,
I’m not going to be king. And I that at
first he really is truly humble, I’m not going to be king. But there’s also this element there, this
subtle element that he also wants to be king, but he knows he shouldn’t, so
he’s torn. We know what happens, who
eventually wins because when he has a son he names his son Abimelech and
Abimelech is the story of Judges 9. And Abimelech in the Hebrew means…it’s a
compound word, abi-melech, my father
is king.
So there are all these subtleties going
on in the text showing us that Gideon is not this great spiritual hero but he
is just a baby believer, just stumbling along, but God still delivers the
nation, despite their failures, despite their inabilities, despite their
compromise. Why? Because God is a God of grace and grace is
not dependent on who we are or what we do but it’s dependent on who God is and
His plan. And we see this in the next
episode, verse 33 down to the end of the chapter we have the famous episode
where Gideon once again wants to challenge if this is really God’s will or not,
and the Midianites come in, look at the map, here’s Mount Gilboa here, the hill
of Morah up here, and here is Mount Carmel.
In between here is the great valley of Jezreel, which we usually refer
to as the valley of Armageddon. That
gives you an orientation, the Midianites are going to come across this way and
invade and this is what the valley of Jezreel looks like, it’s an enormous
valley, wide open, and it covers from the Jordan almost all the way across to
the Mediterranean, so it’s a vast area and it just seems like there’s no
defense and the Midianites and the Amalekites just do whatever they want
to.
So we’re told that the Spirit of the
Lord comes upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet and all the troops gathered
together. [Judges 6:33, Then all the
Midianites and the Amalekites and the sons of the east assembled themselves;
and they crossed over and camped in the valley of Jezreel. [34] So the Spirit of the LORD came upon
Gideon; and he blew a trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called together to
follow him. [35] He
sent messengers throughout Manasseh, and they also were called together to
follow him; and he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they
came up to meet them.”]
But then, Judges 6:36, we see this waffling back and forth, back and forth
from Gideon, in one sentence the Holy Spirit comes on him and all the troops
gather, even though they are hostile to him they respond and I think the reason
they respond is because it is the Holy Spirit calling everybody together. “Then Gideon said to God, If
You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, [37] behold, I will
put a fleece” now from verses 37-40 we have the famous fleece episode. First he
puts a fleece out and he says if this is really what you want me to do, “if
there’s dew on the fleece only, and the rest of the ground is dry, then I’ll
know,” well he already knows, we saw that back in verse 16-17, he knows what
God wants him to do, he’s trying to avoid responsibility, he’s trying to make
something so hard that nothing will happen because he really doesn’t trust
God. But the next morning he gets and
there’s so much dew on the fleece that when he squeezes it out there’s a whole
bowl of water there, a gallon of water comes out of the fleece, but that’s not
enough, he wants to test God again.
And he tests God again and he says okay,
this time if it’s really what You want me to do make the fleece dry and everything
else wet. And the next morning the
fleece was dry and everything else was wet so Gideon just can’t avoid it any
more. But the whole episode here of
challenging God to this sort of test is indicative of what the pagans did in
Baal worship. In fact, there is a
Ugaritic text that reads: “If Baal, the almighty is alive,” this is the kind of
bargain with God, trying to get God to prove Himself, “If Baal, the almighty is
alive, if his highness, the lord of the earth exists in a dream of the
benevolent, El the good-hearted in a vision of the progenitor of creation, the
skies will rain oil, the wadis will run with honey,,” in other words, this guy
is praying, Baal, if you’re alive you’ll make the skies rain oil and the wadis
run with honey, “and then I will know that Baal is the almighty.” See, it’s this kind of thing.
So even in this whole fleece episode
Gideon isn’t trying to find out God’s will for his life, he already knows it,
he’s trying to confirm it and his whole approach is pagan. He approaches God on the basis of pagan
methodology, but we see that God is gracious, God is more concerned with
delivering Israel than He is with all the little peccadilloes and problems in
Gideon’s theology, and God in grace always meets us where we are and solves our
problems, and that’s what we’re going to see next time is the tremendous way
God solves the problem of Israel, making it clear that it’s God’s solution and
not our solution that turns the tide.
[Judges 6:37, “behold, I will put a
fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and
it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel
through me, as You have spoken. [38] And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and
squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of
water. [39]Then
Gideon said to God, ‘Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak
once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be
dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground.’ [40] God did so that
night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground.”]