GIDEON'S EPHOD - THE DANGER OF
CORRUPTION IN RELIGION
Chapter 10
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WE are considering in this chapter Judges chapter 8 and verses 22 to 27. In the last chapter we were looking particularly at verses 22 and 23, and we saw that this was a high point in the life of Gideon. Perhaps the highest point in his spiritual life, higher even than his victory over the Midianites. He refuses the honour of king and ruler. He points Israel to the Lord as their ruler. He has learnt this important lesson that without the Lord he can do nothing. Gideon has learnt this truth - It is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. He gives a wonderful example to the Israelites, and then, at almost the same time Gideon plans spiritual folly.

That is what we are like. By God's grace Gideon showed great spiritual exaltation, putting the Lord first. Being humble before the Lord. Pointing Israel to the Lord as their King. Then in the same breath, in his own human weakness he showed spiritual folly. We find him carrying this out. He makes this gold ephod, and it becomes a source of spiritual weakness in Israel and in his family.

I don't know about you, but when I come to such a passage of Scripture as this, I do wish that there was a bit more detail. I struggle with what actually happened, and what was going on. It would be nice to know what was in Gideon's mind as he made the ephod. It would be helpful to know a little more about what the ephod was, and particularly the Urim and Thummim which was part of it. I would like to know exactly how Israel prostituted themselves in worship before it, and why it was a snare to Gideon and his family. I would like the details, but the Scripture does not give them to us. On reflection I think that that is the wisdom of the Scriptures. If we had all the details, we would probably say that it was a very interesting story, but with no relevance for us today, because we are not in that situation.

Because we do not have the details, and because we just have the bare bones of the situation and what happened, we can't ignore it because we see Israel and Gideon, their leader, doing something that led to spiritual decline, and problems in their religion. A corrupting of their religion.

It brings before us, and that is what we are considering in this chapter, the problem of corruption in the Christian faith, and how easy it is for us to allow corruptions to come into our religion. What we see in this incident is how easy it is for things which are not right to creep into our worship, and our ways, and our practice, and how we need to guard against it.

Firstly, I believe Gideon's intentions were good though mistaken. I cannot see here any idea that he had any premeditation to do what was wrong in God's eyes. Indeed it would be quite out of the character of the incident, having put the Lord first, and pointed people to the Lord, that he should do something that would take the people's minds off the Lord, or have the intention to do it.

His intentions were good. I do not find it easy to know exactly what those intentions were, but I do not get the impression that Gideon was planning evil. I think, perhaps, though I can't be sure, that this problem arose because of this tricky situation of the Israelites wanting to make him king and wanting to honour him. He sees what they want, and he does not want to hurt them, nor offend them nor put them down, so he says, "The Lord must be your ruler"; but if they wanted to do something, he did not wish to disappoint them completely, so he thinks of the least thing that he could ask them to do. So he notices the ear-rings on the Midianites.

The Midianites happened to wear ear-rings. Verse 24 tells us that it was their custom to wear gold ear-rings, and they were part of the plunder that these were taken off the dead bodies. Gideon said, "I do just have one request, that each of you give me an ear-ring from your share of the plunder." (Verse 24). The Israelites did that, and then he had the problem of what he was to do with all these ear-rings. I guess, perhaps, that in wondering what he could do with these ear-rings, that this idea of a golden ephod came to his mind. So we see how easily we do things, and easily things happen.

As I was reflecting on this, it seemed to me as I look back on my life and the way I have looked at particular things in other cultures in the Christian church, and the way the Christian culture looked on them, I find myself thinking how badly and perhaps uncharitably was the way I have reacted to some of things that I have perceived to be contrary to the Bible.

I used to look at the various practices in other parts of the Church of England which I could see plainly from God's word were not the things which should be there. I could see a corruption which resulted. I found myself getting on a self-righteous pedestal from which I looked down upon them and said how wrong they were, and thus writing off the people who practised them as graceless and godless. How awful that is.

Here was Gideon doing something with the best of intentions. It had wrong results, but we don't find God in this passage looking down on Gideon, nor should we. There are many people who are worshipping in a way which, perhaps, we can see is not scriptural, but they are doing it with the best of intentions, and their hearts are in the right place. It is not them that have gone astray, but rather that they have been led astray by the Christian culture that they are in. We should not look down our noses at them.

And again, if we have been brought up in a certain way, it is very difficult, very very difficult indeed to just strip off errors we have grown up in. It is very difficult to see through the culture which we have been nurtured in and to overcome the prejudices impressed on our minds, and so see the truth beyond. Bishop Latimer, at the reformation, took thirty years of the study of God's word, before he had stripped off the things which he had learnt from the medieval church which he found after thirty years to be wrong. Thirty years! But all that time God was graciously using him and blessing him, even though he was doing things which later he felt were not right.

I remember a clergyman which we knew in another deanery, and he was, I believe, a very godly man, one who God honoured, but his tradition was very high church, very high church indeed. I remember pressing him once on a particular issue, and I drove him back with God's word, and in the end he said, "Well, Godfrey, it is an emotional block". That was his spiritual culture. He could not just strip it off. We need to love each other in these situations.

That is all by the way, but I believe Gideon's intentions were good. I think it would be helpful now to consider a little bit about the ephod and what it was.

The scripture is not as clear always as we would like it to be. We are told what an ephod is. The ephod was a garment which the priests used in the Old Testament. Particularly the High Priest had the ephod. It was a garment which had a piece down the front and a piece down the back, and the pieces were clipped together on the shoulder by a clip inlaid with some precious stone. The High Priest wore this garment in his official capacity as a priest. In the case of the High Priest's ephod, there was attached to the ephod in the front, the breast-plate of judgement, which had on it twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel. A pouch there on the breast plate was called the Urim and the Thummim.

If you enquire in the scriptures as to what the Urim and the Thummim are, you become totally confused. Scripture mentions the Urim and the Thummim as if you know all about them. No doubt the people did in those Old Testament days, but we don't now, but the association with the Urim and the Thummim was this that when the Priest ministered with the Urim and the Thummim he discerned the word, and the message, and the will of God, and so could pass it on to the people. That seemed to be the significance of the Urim and the Thummim, and Gideon, having thought about what he could do with all this gold, made this ephod, which presumably was the complete high priestly ephod. No doubt he had the idea that it may be the centre of God's revelation to the people. Then he did not know what to do with the ephod when it was provided, so he hung it up in a prominent place in his home town, may be in his own house, I don't know, or may be in an adjacent house. Then we find that all Israel prostituted themselves in worshipping it there.

Whatever the purpose for the ephod was in Gideon's mind, it soon became an idol to Israel. Notice how something which was intended for good corrupted the whole worship of Israel.

Observe that they prostituted themselves in worshipping it there. There is spiritual prostitution, as there is physical and sexual prostitution. What I am going to say now, you may feel strange and a bit strong, but it seems to me that as I come to the Word of God, although the Word of God clearly and decisively condemns sexual physical prostitution, it condemns more, and sees as more evil, spiritual prostitution. Therefore, those who are worshipping idols and prostituting themselves spiritually, (that is, giving themselves, in a way they should not, to an idol,) are worse in the sight of God than those who only commit physical and sexual prostitution, or so it seems to me is the view of scripture as I read it.

We don't realise this as we think of these things. The scripture testifies that our attitude to God, and our sins against God directly, are far greater and more heinous in the sight of God than our sins against each other, that is if we can make any distinction between sins, which perhaps we cannot.

These things happen so easily, and there was Gideon caught up in it. It was a snare to him also. No doubt he did not worship the ephod, but still it was a snare to him as he found the ephod taking such a prominent roll, and himself finding kudos for being the originator of it.

Secondly, I want us to see how easily true religion can be corrupted, and how easily Satan creeps in with that corruption. All Israel was corrupted - not just a few, but all.

How clever Satan is! And how careful those who are leaders in the church need to be. I find this a source of great fear and trepidation. A thing you might do in all innocence, then catches the imagination of people and becomes important and something that takes from the glory of God, and leads people away from the true worship of God.

Why was this ephod such a snare and a danger? Well it appears to me that the problem lies with the fact that here was something that was associated with the worship of God, and in particular with the discerning of God's will. The problem we have is that it is difficult to worship an invisible God. We find it difficult because an invisible God is intangible. We kneel down and God does not seem to be there. But if we have a focus, seen by our physical eyes, that is much more easy for us. We find it easier to concentrate on something that is concrete and visible.

I don't know what happened, but let me guess a bit, because I think this may be helpful. If it isn't helpful to you, just forget it. Perhaps there was in Israel, at that time, someone who had a particular problem. They prayed to God and they took advice and still they could not see their way through the problem. In there desperate searching for an answer, they probably thought of that ephod, and how it was used for discerning God's will, and felt that a prayer before the ephod was more likely to be successful than anywhere else. Then, perhaps, God graciously answered there prayer, and everything was resolved. What do we do in such circumstances? We give our testimony, and we say that we had all these problems, and then we went to Gideon's ephod and we prayed there and we had this marvellous answer from God.

Do you see where we are going? Having made such a testimony, when someone else has a problem, they immediately go to the ephod. Though at first they are praying to God before the ephod, and the ephod is something there which, as it were, helps them to concentrate on God, it is not very long before it is difficult to distinguish between whether they are really praying to God and having faith in God, or praying to the ephod and trusting in that.

It is the way we talk about these things, and the way we testify about these things, that brings the problem. It is so easy to concentrate on peoples experiences. I don't know about you, but for most of my spiritual life, and I am still struggling with this, I have found it more easy to read a book on the Bible, than to read the Bible itself. People turn to a book on Christian experience more easily and readily than they turn to the Bible. This is the danger of testimonies.

We find it much more interesting to read about the experiences of other Christians as they put them in their books, than to read the Bible. Now, there is nothing wrong in reading the books, but those books, by their very nature cannot be the pure Word of God, because we do colour what we say, even with the best of intentions, with things which are not quite right. So we need to have the Word of God read side by side with these books, so that the Bible may help us to discern, in what we read, what is the Word of God and what is deviating from it, even if only in the very slightest way. We need to discern what is the pure truth and what is simply our human nature expressing itself. It is better to read the Word of God than books.

We get so excited about something that has happened. That person who had that problem and prayed before the ephod would be so excited about the answer to the prayer. Here is success in the spiritual life, and so everybody, as they are told about it, follows the way of that success. But it is not the way that they should have gone. If the ephod had not been there, they would not have been able to go after it.

So we see how the problem arises because of our fallen nature. We find it easier to concentrate on things before us, like a cross or some other religious object, as a focal point. We defend this by saying that it helps us concentrate on God. That is all very well, and it may be so, but it is very soon that we find ourselves not being able to distinguish whether we are actually praying to the image or to the invisible God, or whether we are trusting in the image or in God.

This is how these errors creep in, and they come in with the best of intentions. Paul said when speaking in Athens that "God does not live in temples built with hands" We read of this in Acts 17 and verse 24. Athens was where this expression of our need for tangible things to look at in order to worship was so ripe and obvious. The problem is that once things have crept in it is so difficult to correct them afterwards.

Can you imagine Gideon's dilemma. He sees the abuse of the ephod happening. What can he do. Does he get up and say, "Well, you heard that testimony by so and so, but I want to tell you that they have got it all wrong". He would have been crucified. So what does he do. He takes the line of least resistance, and leaves the problem. He leaves it because it is the easiest thing to do, and he is able to justify doing nothing by saying it is the lesser of the evils. He would behave like this because he is a weak man. He is a great man when God's grace manifests itself through him, but in himself he is a weak man, and he can't bear to find all this anger directed against him if he seeks to correct the problem.

Supposing he had taken the ephod down and hidden it away, or destroyed it or burnt it. Imagine his position in such action when the ephod had gained such ascendency in the community and in the country. So once these things have crept in it is so difficult to remove them, because our emotions are bound up in these things, and to remove them provokes much anger and misunderstanding.

I remember in my first parish where I was incumbent. It wasn't particularly high church. It was a typical country church, but there were two candles on the communion table. Two candles, by the way, are associated with Low Mass. I found that I could not light them, so I did not light them during services. That was alright, until one of the wardens who I thought would really want them lighted, said to me, "Aren't you going to light the candles on the communion table, Rector?". And I said, "No!". He replied, "Well, I should take them away." So I said, "Thank you very much", and I took them away and put them in a cupboard in the stoke hole. That is where things were stored in that country church. Well I did get myself into hot water over that. They were back next Sunday. I was then asked by the people who had put them back why I did not light them. So we had a long discussion over why the candles should be there. In the course of the conversation, I ask this very nice couple why they thought the candles should be there, and they replied that they gave light. The chancel was in fact lit more than adequately by two powerful flood lights over the communion table. This couple were in total ignorance about what the candles were all about, but their religious heritage was all tied up with them, and emotionally and spiritually they felt deprived without them, not realising that this spiritual prop was leading them to trust in something that was hiding from them the place where true joy and spiritual life is to be found.

These things grip us, as Gideon's ephod gripped the Israelites, and soon we find that we are committing spiritual prostitution by giving worship and honour, due only to God, to something else. But such is the hold of these things have upon us that if we are deprived of them, we feel we have lost something vital. So once these things have crept in, it is most difficult to take them away, and correct the error and wrong they have created.

In dealing with these things, however, we need to deal with them in love, if we deal with them at all. But it is better if they never enter the church in the first place.

Lastly, let us notice how important it is to keep strictly to the Word of God in all our worship.

Gideon knew the commandments - Thou shalt not make to yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the water below.

Although he was not trying to make an image in the ephod, if he had meditated on the commandments he would have known how easy it is to make images of almost anything. Also Gideon knew what the Ephod was for. God had ordained that an Ephod should be worn and be used, not to be hung up. It was something to be used, and not just to look at. If he had recollected these two things, he would not have hung the ephod up for all to come and venerate.

In two ways, you see, he had departed from the Word of God, though quite unintentionally, and that was the problem. We need to have our spiritual minds continually informed and reformed and nurtured by the Word of God, so that the Word of God fills us, and so that when we come and evaluate things and when we worship, we do it scripturally.

Also we need to be so careful how we introduce things into the life of the church in whatever sort of way. If we have things in the life of the church, we need to ask ourselves, is it scriptural? and why do we do it?

In closing I would just say to you - the Old Testament has much to tell us, for here we have a good man, seeking to do a good thing, finding it turn sour, and so corruption coming into the church of God. How we need to be humble. How we need to soak ourselves in the Word of God. How we need to expose all we do to the Word of God, so that in our lives we may be God honouring, and escape these things which can bring so many problems and so much corruption within the church.