Hebrews 11 could be called the “Faith Hall of Fame.” This chapter lists person after person who trusted God and saw Him do BIG things as a result. It talks about Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab (who you’ll remember we talked about some months ago), and a whole bunch of others.
But towards the end of this chapter, it’s like the writer of
Hebrews ran out of room on the page. Suddenly, he’s like, “What more can I say?
I don’t have time to talk about all the others…” and then he just names a whole
bunch of other big examples of faith. But one name has always stuck out to me.
Up there with David and Samuel and Samson, this one guy isn’t someone I would
have put in the Faith Hall of Fame.
Gideon. Gideon was one of Israel’s judges, one of those
special leaders God chose before the Israelites had kings. The Israelites kept
disobeying God and worshiping idols, so God removed His protection and let some
other nation take over Israel. It would take a while, but eventually the
Israelites would realize their mistake, and then God would raise up a judge to
lead the Israelites in battle and kick out that other nation. The judge would
rule for a while, but then the Israelites would start to disobey again, and the
whole thing would start over.
Now Gideon’s story starts in Judges 6, where the Israelites have
once again started worshipping other gods and are now under the control of the
Midianites. The Midianites were very cruel rulers. Every year, they would
destroy all of the Israelite farms and animals they could find. Without these,
the Israelites would have to survive on very little food each year. They even
took to hiding in caves, hoping the Midianites wouldn’t find them there.
You can imagine how hopeless this made them feel. How were
they supposed to survive if their crops and cattle were destroyed every year?
How could they protect their families if they had no food and had to hide in caves?
This is the scene when we meet Gideon. Like the rest of the
Israelites, he would have been feeling pretty hopeless. He probably started to
wonder if all those stories he had heard about God protecting the Israelites in
the past had been just that: stories. He may have started doubting God, and
maybe didn’t even believe in Him anymore.
But that was all going to change. One day, Gideon was hiding
at a winepress, a place where they squish the grapes to make wine. But instead
of squishing grapes, Gideon was threshing wheat, trying to get some kind of
food for him and his family. But as he’s sitting there, threshing away,
somebody walks in. This guy doesn’t say “Hi” or “How you doing?” All he says
is, “Mighty warrior, the LORD is with you” (Judges 6:12, NIrV).
“Pardon me, sir,” Gideon replied, and you could almost hear
his voice dripping in sarcasm, “you say the LORD is with us, but then why is
all this awful stuff happening? Where are all those wonderful things, all those
saving miracles that God did all those years ago? If you ask me, God has
deserted us.”
Gideon was angry. He was seeing his people – his family –
starve! He couldn’t understand why God would allow that. But Gideon didn’t
realize who he was talking to. He probably thought this guy worked at the winepress,
but actually he wasn’t a man at all. He was an angel, and God had sent this
angel to begin one of those “saving miracles” Gideon was complaining for. But little
did Gideon know that this saving miracle would start with him.
“You are strong,” the angel said back to Gideon. “Go and
save Israel from the power of Midian.”
For the first time, Gideon properly looked at this stranger.
He looked him up and down, head to toe, but then turned back to threshing his
grain. “That’s a good joke. Me, save Israel? Out of all the tribes of Israel,
mine’s the weakest, and I’m not even anyone important in my family!”
But then the angel said something that caught Gideon off
guard. “I will be with you. Go, and fight the Midianites.”
Now you would think this statement wouldn’t mean much,
especially coming from a stranger. Gideon still hadn’t clued in that he was
talking to an angel. After all, usually when people meet with angels in the
Bible, they fall on their face in fear. But the words “I will be with you”
finally twigged Gideon that something unusual was going on.
We already know Gideon had heard the stories of God’s
miracles from the past. He probably grew up on the stories of Noah and Abraham
and Moses. And that line “I will be with you is important in a lot of these
stories.
Take Exodus 3 for example. While Moses was a shepherd out in
the wilderness, he came across a bush one day that was on fire but wouldn’t
burn up. God was in this bush, and He spoke to Moses from it. He called Moses
to go back to Egypt to set His people free from their slavery. Moses freaked
out, a lot like Gideon did, saying that he was nobody and wondering why anyone
would listen to him. But God answered Moses the same way He answered Gideon: “I
will be with you.”
Hearing those words would have made Gideon take what was
going on here seriously. He hadn’t figured out he was talking to an angel yet,
but he probably figured this guy was a messenger from God.
But Gideon wasn’t 100% convinced yet. So he said, “If you
really are pleased with me, then give me a sign. Let me bring an offering to
you and set it before you.”
And all the angel said in return was, “I will wait.”
So off Gideon ran and started preparing some soup and bread.
We can only imagine what was running through his head the entire time. This can’t be real. I’m no hero in a story.
I’m just a guy trying to watch out for my family! For all I know, this guy’s
just a madman. But what if… what if this is really is from God?
When Gideon came back, the angel told him to put the soup
and bread on a rock. Then the angel touched them with the tip of his staff.
Instantly, fire blazed out of the rock. Not the staff. Fire didn’t come from
heaven to burn up the offering. The rock itself caught on fire to show that God
had accepted this offering.
Just as instantly, Gideon fell on his face. He was
terrified, probably thinking God was going to kill him, or at least be really
angry with him because he had doubted. But that isn’t our God. Through the
angel, God spoke to Gideon, saying, “Don’t be afraid. You aren’t going to die!”
Then the angel gave Gideon some instructions. There was an
altar and a tall pole in the middle of the village that the Israelites had been
using to worship some false gods. God told Gideon to tear them down. And
Gideon, scared out of his mind but with the tiniest bit of belief that God was
with him, did exactly that.
Well, maybe not exactly that. Instead of ripping down those
idols right then and there, Gideon waited until that night when everybody was
asleep. He was afraid the people would be angry and try to stop him, so he
waited.
We don’t know what would have happened if Gideon had acted
the moment God spoke to him, but I think we can safely say God would have
protected Gideon. In fact, if he had acted then, Gideon might have started the
war with the Midianites right then and there. But Gideon still had his doubts
and was afraid. He knew God had commanded him to take down the altars, and he
would do what God asked him to do, but he probably hoped this would be the end
of it. He had done his part to get rid of the Midianite gods in his town – now
God could ask someone else to overthrow the Midianites completely.
Of course, God had more plans for Gideon, which we’ll hear
about in the next few weeks, but Gideon’s story has already taught us something
important. Faith isn’t necessarily
fearlessness. Just because we have faith in God doesn’t mean that we will walk
through life totally unafraid when God asks us to do His work.
No, faith doesn’t mean fearlessness. But faith is believing despite our fear. It
can be nerve-wracking to talk to our friends at school about Jesus. And if we
look at all those people in the Faith Hall of Fame, almost all of them were
afraid or uncertain at some point about what God had asked them to do.
But faith is all about being willing to trust Jesus and
acting based on what He’s told us to do, knowing that He is with us and will be
the strength in us as we do His work.
Some might call Gideon a coward, and we’ll see next time
just how much it took to convince Gideon to have faith. But the important thing
is that, when all was said and done, Gideon did
have faith, however small, and enough faith to trust the God would help him
accomplish what He had called him to. And for that, Gideon has earned his place
in the Faith Hall of Fame.
________________________
I hope you all enjoyed that. Gideon’s story is probably my
favourite in the Bible, and I figured there was no better place to kick off my
return to these stories than with his. It’ll be a few weeks before Part 2, but
I hope you’ll come back then to check it out. We got some fleece and fights to
talk about. Believe me, this is when his story gets good!
~Brentagious
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