Judges 8 - Sore Winner

PARENTAL WARNING: If this were a movie, it would probably be rated PG. If you have younger kids reading this, please read it first for yourself and decide if your child can handle it.

Let’s be honest here – it feels good to win. When I was younger, I would play a game of Monopoly with my dad and grandpa every time we went to visit my grandparents. We always made it into a huge competition. We would all get as many properties as we could as fast as possible, hoping to knock someone else out before they became too big of a threat (you know, as you do in Monopoly).

When the dust settled and only one of us was left standing, the winner would lord it over the other two. My dad, grandpa, or I would talk about how we were the best, the champion, and depending on how long we had left in the visit, that might inspire a rematch.

Now I don’t suggest you start acting like I did whenever you win a game. People like sore winners about as much as they like sore losers. It feels good to win, but we should never let a victory in a board game, a sport, a difficult time in life, or even an actual battle get to our heads.

This is what brings us back to Gideon. We learned last week how Gideon had just a tiny bit of faith, but it resulted in some big, amazing things from God. He and an army of 300 Israelites faced off against an army of thousands upon thousands of Midianites. The Israelites had a bigger army at first, but God sent most of the soldiers away so the Israelites would know that it was God who gave them victory, not themselves.

This really happened guys. A group of 300 people beat a huge army with some torches, some jars, and some trumpets. And as the Midianites were fleeing for their lives, the Israelites chased right after them!

I hope some of the soldiers celebrated God that night. I hope some of them sang songs to Him and prayed to Him and thanked Him for saving His people yet again from their enemies.

But as we keep reading the story of Gideon, we see this isn’t what Gideon did. Remember, Gideon is an unlikely Faith Hall of Famer, a super scared and unconfident guy who needed God to prove to him 4 different times that He was really with the Israelites… I’ve been saying it’s because Gideon doubted so much that I’m surprised he was included in the Faith Hall of Famer, but we see another reason in Judges 8.

One last warning – This is the part of Gideon’s story we don’t often hear in Sunday school. Because the sad thing is guys, even after all the amazing things he saw God do, Gideon messed up really badly. And his mistake didn’t just hurt him – it hurt the entire country!

The first part of this story is what Gideon did immediately after defeating the Midianites. He and his army were trying to chase down the stragglers, the Midianites who were running away after they had been defeated. Gideon especially wanted to capture Zebah and Zalmunna, two of the Midianite commanders, to make sure the Midianites wouldn’t bother Israel again any time soon. 

But the army couldn’t chase all day and night. The people were tired from all the fighting and chasing over the last few days, so Gideon decided to make camp one night among the people of Sukkoth. Now I don’t know if Gideon had planned to lead this chase or not. Probably not, given how scared he was to go through with the battle in the first place. But if this chase wasn’t preplanned, then they had probably used up most of the food they had brought with them. So, a hungry Gideon asked the people of Sukkoth if they would share their bread with the army.

Gideon had every reason to expect the people of Sukkoth would help him. Sukkoth was certainly not in the heart of Israel, but it was still part of the nation. And the Israelites had promised long ago that even though they were all from different families and tribes, they would always rally together to help each other when the nation was in danger.

So imagine how shocked Gideon was when the people of Sukkoth said no. They even mocked Gideon for letting Zebah and Zalmunna get away, saying they wouldn’t give food to troops who couldn’t finish off their enemies!

Now I don’t know exactly what made Gideon react the way that he did. Maybe Gideon got a taste of what God could do and assumed God would help him do anything now. Maybe Gideon was super excited after his victory and thought he could do anything. Maybe he was just really tired and hungry, which made him cranky.

Whatever the reason, his response is still shocking: “The LORD will hand Zebah and Zalmunna over to me. When he does, I’ll tear your skin with thorns from desert bushes” (Judges 8:7 NIrV).

…What? This is the Gideon that was scared to go after the Midianites? The same Gideon that always needed convincing to do God’s work? That doesn’t seem right!

But Gideon was a man of his word. He chased the Midianite army down, caught them by surprise, and won another huge victory. And this time, he did capture Zebah and Zalmunna. And like Gideon said, when he came back through Sukkoth on his way home, he showed the elders of the city that he had now captured the two Midianite commanders. Then he made the elders of the city pay for their rudeness with those thorns from desert bushes and whole bunch of other, awful things!

I’ve mentioned that Gideon’s story is my favourite in the Bible. I’ve always liked the battle against the Midianites. But I didn’t learn about this part of the story until much later… No amount of mocking deserves this kind of response. What the people of Sukkoth did was wrong, but Gideon’s reaction was even worse.

If that wasn’t bad enough, listen to what happened next. After returning home, the Israelites were so happy that Gideon had saved them from the Midianites that they asked him to be king. Now notice that there’s no mention of how God had saved them from the Midianites. The whole point of making the army smaller was so God would get the credit and not anyone else. But it seems the Israelites had missed the point…Again…

Gideon did try to set them straight. “I will not rule over you,” he said, “and neither will my son. God will rule over you.” But then he continued, “I do ask one thing, though. I want each of you to give me an earring.” (Judges 8:23-24). It was normal for the Midianites and Israel’s other neighbours to wearing earrings in their ears. This is what Gideon was asking for – the earrings the people had taken from the Midianites after defeating them.

So all the people gave Gideon some earrings. He got 43 pounds worth of gold. Now I’ve done some math, and if each of these earrings weighed around 5 grams, which the Internet tells me isn’t too outrageous, then that would mean Gideon received around 3900 earrings! He then took all of these earrings and melted them down into a golden ephod.

What’s an ephod, you might be asking? It’s like a fancy apron that the priests wore, but Gideon’s was made of pure gold! And instead of wearing it, Gideon set it up in his hometown of Ophrah where the people could come and admire it.

And admire it they did. A little too much in fact. People started bowing down to the golden ephod and started treating it like an idol. And they kept this up for years, even long after Gideon and his sons were all dead!

This is how Gideon’s story ends guys. It doesn’t end on a note of victory… It ends with Gideon doing some pretty awful things to some Israelites and making a golden apron that accidentally became an idol.

Gideon’s pride and greed got the better of him. Gideon knew better than to start calling himself a king, but he certainly started acting like one at the end of his life. He acted as though he could do whatever he wanted, and the Israelites let him.

They had missed the point of that miraculous battle! Instead of remembering that God was the one who gave them victory, they looked to Gideon as their hero. And while Gideon said all the right things, he didn’t act like God was the one who had done all the work. He took the fame for himself and ran with it.

And that brings us to our lesson for today. God’s victories are for His fame, not ours. He is the one who deserves the praise when He helps us through a really difficult time, gives us the strength to avoid doing something we know we shouldn’t, or who works through us to introduce someone to Jesus. Our lives are supposed to be examples to others of how great and loving God is, but we ruin that when we take the credit for the stuff God has done. When we do that, we treat Him like He doesn’t exist.

So that’s the other reason I’m sometimes surprised Gideon is in the Faith Hall of Fame. Even though he said the right stuff, he acted like he had done all the heavy lifting against the Midianites.

But if we can take any encouragement from the end of Gideon’s story, I guess it’s that even when we mess up, God still knows and acknowledges the times we have done right. He is grateful for the times we have shown our faith and done what He’s asked us to do. And when we do have faith, giving Him the credit when things go well, we can trust He will be pleased with us too.

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That's not actually quite it for Gideon. We're done with his story, but we'll be coming back to it during the Second Sunday Switch-Up in a couple weeks. And after that... Well, do the math and I'm sure you can figure out what story we'll be talking about!

~Brentagious