This evening we are diving into the story of Gideon. The section we heard read began, “That same night…” which begs the question – “the same night as what?”
The story of that night actually begins in verse 11 of chapter 6 when we find an angel of the Lord coming and sitting under an oak tree in a place called Ophrah. In many of the appearances of angels in the Old Testament there’s a bit of glorious confusion about who exactly is there.
Let’s follow the verses through and see how this works.
In verse 11 we find the Angel of the Lord sitting under the oak tree, and in verse 12 the Angel appears to Gideon and says, “The Lord is with you….”
There’s a bit of back and forth, which we’ll come back to, and then at the beginning of verse 14 it says, “The LORD turned and said…”
similarly in verses 16 and 17, the LORD is described as speaking directly, and waiting for Gideon to return.
By v20 we’re back to it being the Angel of God. Then we get this strange interaction in verse 22 and 23:
In verse 21 the angel of the Lord disappears and then we read:
“When Gideon realised that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!”
“But the LORD said to him, “Peace” Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
So, is Gideon talking to the Angel of the Lord or The LORD. Is it a messenger of God or God that is present to Gideon?
Or is there a third, less clear cut option? Could it be that an angel is more than a messenger of God, but is somehow also an expression of the presence of God? This seems to me to be the way to make most sense of this, and this also lines up with other appearances of angels / The Lord in the Old Testament such as Abraham’s encounter in Genesis 18.
So, having thought a bit about who was on one side of this conversation, what about the other side? Who was this Gideon and what was he like? We know that his encounter with the angel happened in a wine press, where he was threshing wheat, and that his father owned at least two bulls, so it seems to me that we’re talking about a farming family with some resources – not just labourers, but not so well off that they can just employ other people to do all the work. Gideon himself claims that they are weak in the clan of Manasseh, and that he is the least in the family, which suggests that they are not warriors.
In fact, you could say that Gideon wasn’t a natural warrior with an “a” but he was a natural worrier with an “o”
Having said that, it seems to me that he does have some gumption. It’s true that he’s doing hiding from the Midianites – which is sensible, they have after all been oppressing the people of God for the last seven years, raiding the land and stealing the crops. However, his response to the angel shows some backbone.
The angel leads with, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
And Gideon’s response is great. “If the Lord is with us – why is all this bad stuff happening. Doesn’t look much like the Lord is with us – it looks like God’s abandoned us.”
The Lord doesn’t take offence at this challenge, but returns with his own challenge. “I’m sending you – off you go.”
Gideon backs down a bit at this – the worrier with an “o” coming back to the surface. This is where the protestations that he is weakest surface.
“it’s fine” says the LORD, going back to where the conversation started – “I’ll be with you.” (just a little side note picking up what we were looking at earlier – notice how it’s gone from the angel saying, “the Lord is with you.” to the LORD saying, “I will be with you.”)
Gideon perhaps remembers his manners, perhaps remembers the accounts of Abraham’s encounter at Mamre, perhaps wants to buy some time and offers some food to his guest at the same time as making his first request for a sign.
The visitor agrees to wait and when Gideon returns with the meal sets it on fire and disappears. In this action there are echoes of Moses’ call at the burning bush and the fire coming from heaven to consume the sacrifice when Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel.
Gideon is freaked out by this, realises that he has been speaking to God, and as we’ve already said, fears that he is going to die. God responds with one of the things with one of the things that he says most often to people, “Peace! Do not be afraid.”
Gideon’s response is one of worship, he builds an altar, a place of sacrifice, to remind himself and others that God is peace. I find it interesting that Gideon, someone who is famous for the battle he fought, and we’ll come on to that in a minute, built an altar the was called, “The Lord is peace.”
All this has happened in the afternoon / evening of the day and then we get to our reading for this evening. “That same night….”
And what was it that Gideon was to do that same night? He was to demolish the places of worship of the false gods that were leading the people astray. Baal was the agricultural and weather god of the Canaanites and Asherah, a fertility goddess, was his consort. Sacrifices would have been made on the altar to Baal to attempt to secure good harvests, and the Asherah pole was a focus of prayers for fertility of land, crops, and people. These weren’t just the community altar and pole, they were the ones belonging to his father. Not only was he to tear them down, he was to slaughter his father’s second best bull. This was an attack on his own family’s religion and on their economic resources. This was a big ask.
Gideon the warrior (with an a) steps up to do as he is commanded, but still being a bit of a worrier (with an o) he does so at night and then leaves the wreckage for the community to find the next morning.
It didn’t take long for them to work out who did the deed (perhaps one of those ten servants was a snitch?) and the lynch mob arrives at Joash’s door, looking for revenge on behalf of their gods. But Joash is having none of it, he stands up for Gideon. Basically he challenges the gods – if they really are gods then they can look out for themselves, if they can’t, then they’re not much use as gods – are they?
With this encouraging victory behind him, and filled with the Holy Spirit, Gideon calls together the tribes of Israel to drive out the Midianites who have been oppressing the people of God. Our reading tonight ended with Gideon riding the crest of a wave, all very warrior with an “a”.
If we’d continued, though, we would have discovered that the worrier with an “o” wasn’t far away. Although it had only been the first test had only been the day before, when the meal was burned up with fire from heaven, Gideon is beset by doubts again, and sets another test for God – the famous fleece.
Gideon puts out a woollen fleece and asks God that the next day it should be wet with dew, whilst the ground around it is dry, as a demonstration that God will be with him when he goes up against the Midianites. Sure enough, the next morning the fleece is soaking and the ground is dry. This isn’t enough for Gideon though, and he knows he’s pushing it, as he leads with “Do not be angry with me….” as he asks God to do it again, only this time the other way round – with the ground wet and the fleece dry. God is gracious and does as Gideon asks, and so he prepares to head off to drive away the Midianites.
A couple of days have passed, enough for the two nights of tests, and by then the armies from the tribes that Gideon had sent messengers to had arrived, and there are thirty-two thousand men gathered ready to attack the army of Midian. To what I suspect might have been Gideon’s dismay, God had a problem with this. God doesn’t want to leave any room for the people of Israel claiming credit for the victory, it has to be completely obvious that it was God’s work.
So, God tells Gideon to allow those who are afraid to leave. That cuts the army to third of it’s original size, down to ten thousand men, but it’s still too many. So God tells Gideon to take them down to the river and watch the way that they drink. The vast majority kneel down to drink directly from the river, a very few, only three hundred scoop up water in their hands and drink from their hands.
Now, some commentators suggest that this was about finding the experienced warriors who knew always to keep watch and not to get caught out by lowering their heads to the water. I suppose that is possible, but it seems to me that there had been quite a lot of war going on, and that there would have been more experienced warriors than that in the tribal armies. Three hundred just seems too few – my suspicion is that it was a pretty random way of cutting down the numbers.
Either way, Gideon is left with just three hundred warriors to take on an army of several thousand. Another big ask. And this time God initiates a conversation with Gideon to reassure him.
“If you are afraid to attack, take your servant with you and go and listen to what they’re saying in the Midianite camp”
The worrier (with an o) is afraid, so he does go down to the camp, and he hears two of the sentries discussing a dream one of them had had the previous night, in which a round loaf of bread had come tumbling into the camp and knocked over a tent. The man’s friend suggested that it was a premonition, that the loaf of bread was Gideon, and that it was a sign that the Midianites were going to be defeated.
What was Gideon’s first response to this affirmation of God’s promises to him? In verse 15 of chapter 7 we read that he bowed down and worshipped.
Having worshipped, Gideon goes back to the three hundred with a plan. He gives each of them a trumpet and a torch hidden in a jar. He arranges them around the Midianite camp and then, on a given signal, they all smash the jars, sound the trumpets and shout “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon.” The sudden light and noise cause a panic in the camp, and the Midianites in the confusion start turning on each other before fleeing.
There is something interesting to note here. Whilst the Israelites shouted about swords, they didn’t actually wield any in this rout. They had torches in their left hands and trumpets in their right hands. The only swords in use that night were the swords of the Midianites, turned on each other.
Gideon and his army pursue the fleeing Midianites, joined by others from the different tribes. The rulers and Kings of the Midianites are captured and executed.
The end of Gideon’s story is a bit of a mixed bag. The people of Israel want to make him King, but he refuses, he insists that it should be the Lord who rules over the people. Big tick there for humility and wisdom.
But then he asks for some of the share of the plunder, some gold, which he has made into an ephod – a breastplate worn by priests as they led worship – that became itself an object of worship after Gideon’s death, distracting the people from the worship of God. Which is ironic given that the first thing that God got Gideon to do was to destroy items of false worship.
Nevertheless, in chapter 8:28 we read that, “thus Midian was subdued before the Israelites and did not raise its head again. During Gideon’s lifetime, the land had peace for forty years.”
During those forty years, Gideon lived at home, collected wives, and had many children. He died at a ripe old age and was buried with his ancestors – a good death. Sadly, as soon as he was gone the people reverted to the worship of the Baals and there was a war of succession as one of his sons murdered the other seventy to try and secure leadership for himself. It didn’t end well for him – he was killed by a woman throwing a millstone from the wall of a city he was besieging.
So, that is a bit of a whistle-stop tour of the story of Gideon.
I wonder what we might take for ourselves and our lives from this life story set in such a different context to ours – centuries ago, half way around the world, in a world of active conflict and subsistence agriculture?
The first thing I’d like to suggest is that it seems to me that in his going back and forth between being a worrier with an “o”and a warrior with an “a”, Gideon is like many of us. Sometimes we feel braver, more courageous and sometimes we feel anxious, worried, and afraid. As I said earlier one of the things that God, either directly or through the angels says to us is, “Do not be afraid.”
In our reading from Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life and teaching we hear Jesus saying exactly this – do not be afraid, your Father loves you and cares for you. God’s love is opposed to our fear. In the story of Gideon, God meets Gideon in his fear and demonstrate his presence with physical signs. In Jesus ministry, we see many of his miracles described as signs, particularly in John’s account of his life.
Now, we do need to remember that Jesus wasn’t always sympathetic to those who asked for a sign, he said to one group of religious leaders looking for a sign, “A wicked and adulterous generation ask for a sign.” However, it seems to me that this was targetted at those who doubted Jesus and were trying to catch him out, rather than those with honest fears who wanted to believe. Of course, the greatest sign of all was Jesus death and resurrection, when he showed his victory over sin, shame, and death.
The second thing that seems to me to resonate down the ages is the reality of conflict in families. Gideon demolished his father’s altar and killed his bull. Gideon’s own sons died in family conflict. As we read in Matthew, even Jesus knew that his message would cause families to fall out, a prophecy that has proved to be true throughout the years since Jesus spoke them. Sometimes our commitment to following Jesus will be attacked by members of own families, and that can be very painful and difficult to go through. When Jesus says that we should love God more than our families, he isn’t saying that we should love our families less, but that we should love God more.
In fact, because God is love, the more that we love God, the more our capacity for love grows, and the more profoundly and deeply we will be able to love our families. Love is not a zero sum game. It’s not a pie that has to be divided up, and if we give more to God we will have less for others. The more that we love God, the more we will love others. The less that we love God, the less we will love others. So, if we are in conflict with our families we choose to love them with the love that God shows us.
The third thing is the importance of worship – of what and who we worship. The root cause of the oppression that the people of God were experiencing was that they were not worshipping God. They had been seduced by false gods. That is why the first thing that God got Gideon to do, before calling together the army, was to destroy the objects of worship of the false gods. It’s why the army was whittled down, so that the people’s focus would be on what God had done for them. It’s why in the middle of the enemy camp Gideon worshipped God.
It’s why Gideon refused to be made king – because he wanted to point people to God. Whilst the worship of the people is maintained towards God, through the remaining forty years of Gideon’s life, there is peace in the land. What happens as soon as Gideon is gone? The people revert to the worship of the false gods and conflict returns.
It is as we centre our whole lives on God, losing them to God in our worship of the one who created us, rather than the things that we have created, that we find peace, our fears are stilled, and we can live full lives of love. It is here that we truly find our lives.
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