ESSENTIAL RELIGION
We come now to the beginning of Gideon's work for God, and we are going to look at verses 25 to 32 in chapter 6 of the book of Judges. The focus of our thoughts are in verses 25 and 26, but it is the whole incident that we are going consider. These verses read as follows, "That same night the Lord said to Gideon, 'Take the second bull from your father's herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering'".
We have looked at the state of Israel, and that is the key to this particular incident. Of the Israelites, if you remember from verse 10 of this chapter, God said, "I said to you, 'I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me." That was the problem in Israel, and now Gideon is sent to address himself to that problem.
We saw in the last study that God calls, not great men necessarily, nor strong men, but those whom he, in his sovereignty, wills to call, even if they are weak. To these he gives grace, even to the weak, and to those who, humanly speaking, are unfit for the task. It is God who delivers, and it is God who fits his chosen servants for the task. I am sure that in this case God chose Gideon because he was weak. In the whole of Gideon's history, and specially in the big incident when he overcame the Midianites to which we shall come to later, God always emphasises the weakness of Gideon and His divine strength working in him. This is in order to enhance the fact that it was God's power, and by God's power alone, that the victory was won. In choosing Gideon, God got to himself the glory.
We need to realise that it is God who gives the power, and that God is sufficient in our weakness to give the victory. When we pray to the Lord that he may revive his church, we must remember this. At the heart of all God's saving work, at the heart of the matter, and what God addresses in his servants, is this matter of whether we put God in his proper place.
What was so offensive to God was this fact that Israel had given their allegiance to, and had gone after, other gods. This is far more fundamental than sins of the flesh, or sins in a temporal sense, for it is the apostasy of God's church. This addresses, very much, the situation in our country today. We seem to be adjusting ourselves, in one way or another, to fit in to the cultural patterns of our contemporary society in all sorts of different directions. Because things have moved in a certain way in our culture, we seem to be molding the Word of God, and molding the truth of God, molding God even, into a pattern which fits that cultural pattern.
Because we find it difficult to stand out in this, there is confusion, as everybody seems to be saying something different. If we stand out, it is difficult, for we find we are marginalised. We are put to one side. We are laughed at. We have difficulties. This was, no doubt, why no one had been prepared to stand out for God in Israel in Gideon's day. But God wants us to stand up, and be willing to stand for him as he has revealed himself in his Word. This is what Gideon had to tackle, and it was no easy task.
Look at the task, first of all. You notice straight away in the Scripture before us that no sooner had Gideon been called, he was put to work. He was given no time to come to terms with what the future may hold. "That same night!" Poor Gideon! He had been called by God in this way, and you would think, well! give him a little bit of time to adjust himself to this new post, but God didn't do that. He knew that this work had to be addressed straight away. For Gideon to have had time to think about it, would have only increased the difficulty and increased his nervousness. So at the moment when he was called, God sent Gideon to start this difficult task to put God back in his proper place in Israel.
Although it was very hard it was not something that was impossible, because God was going to exert his strength on Gideon's behalf. Gideon could not have done it on his own. The very fact of the way Gideon did it, is an indication of that. In his action he was all fear and trembling. When God gives us these tasks our flesh cringes, doesn't it? We don't want to go. We know a little of this experience when we go knocking on doors in house to house visiting, and things like that; but in evangelism God says, 'go and do it.' I don't know about you, but when I go visiting sometimes, I ring the bell and hope the people are out, so that I can then go away and feel that I have at least done my bit, and so, as it were, escape being put to the test.
Then there are places when we have to come before Synods, and similar institutions, and there stand up for the truth. We know the reaction we will get. We know we will be misunderstood, but we have got to do it. And this was the task that Gideon had. He was told to go to the very place at home where Baal had been erected, with the Asherah pole beside it. We too are called to challenge the very heart of any apostasy within the Church of God.
I don't know exactly how they went about their worship, but Baal was the male deity, and Asherah was the female consort, and the Asherah pole seemed to be a pole that was put beside the altar of Baal. I am not sure what they did, but it was offensive to God whatever it was, and much of immoral practices went on with it.
I am not sure that Gideon was particularly fond of Baal worship, but because it was the practice in his culture, he had gone along with it. He had not got the courage to stand out. Now he had to find the courage. The insidiousness of the actualities of life is all there. We may not like the things we see in the church of our day. We may in our heart of hearts know that we would rather have them different. We may long that they may be conformed to the truth of God, but we go along with them because it is much more difficult to stand out and be counted, and so suffer rejection and abuse.
And isn't it the way Satan works so subtle. He did not tell Israel to renounce Jehovah. What he did was to say, 'Well! let us add a bit to Jehovah.' And what happens is, of course, that apart from the sin of adding something to the worship as God has appointed it, the thing we add, soon becomes the thing that is important, and Jehovah, our God, is left to one side.
But God meant Gideon to make this powerful declaration, and pull down the altar of Baal. He was to take the second bull. I am not quite sure whether the 'second' has any particular significance, but the idea behind the choice was this, that the bull was to be one that was perfect. It had to be at full maturity, and a perfect specimen of his particular breed. That was important. It must be perfection that is brought to God when we bring a sacrifice which is to atone for sin. Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God, the sinless Lamb of God. In all these sacrifices throughout the Old Testament, the perfection of them was to portray Christ in his holiness dying for us. Only a sinless victim can die for the sins of others. So Gideon was to offer this bull, perfect of its kind, on this altar that he was told to build in replacement of the altar of Baal that he had been told to pull down.
And this was not just to be a declaration to Israel that this is what God demanded, but was also a test for Gideon; a test where the affection of his heart was, and whether he would put God first. It was so hard for Gideon. Let us not think it was easy.
It was a test, secondly, of his faith and obedience. Gideon knew, as soon as he had been told to pull down this altar to Baal, and God knew, that it was a dangerous thing to do to destroy this shrine to the worship of Baal. It wasn't just that he would suffer the hate of the people directed against him in anger, he might even lose his life. This is something he trembled over.
Let us not be ashamed of our fears, and let us take them to the Lord. We all have them. I think, perhaps, that we do not share enough in this aspect of our Christian life. These things are not easy, and we need to share together and pray together, and support each other together, for that is what membership of the family of God is all about.
Total allegiance to God will bring opposition from those even within the church. It was not the Midianites who were going to attack Gideon, but the people of his own town. He didn't even know whether his father would stand by him. In the New Testament we find the story of the man born blind, which we read about in John chapter nine, illustrates this possibility. When he was healed, he was taken to task by the Pharisees. He, poor man, experienced rejection by his parents. They were so frightened of the Pharisees that they feared to support him. They said, 'He is of age, ask him, we don't want to be involved'. They stood back. Sometimes we have to face that.
Gideon had this test of faith, and God calls his servants to such faith. But God is always there. This is what the Scriptures are meant to help us to see, that God is always near to protect his people, if we are ready to prove his faithfulness.
Thirdly, God, I believe, understands our fears. Isn't Gideon a very human person. We see in verse 27 that Gideon took ten of his servants. He needed some help. The Asherah pole, if he was going to use it for fire wood, needed chopping up. The altar of Baal had to be pulled down, and the altar to the Lord erected in its place. Gideon desperately needed, not only support, but help also. We are not meant to do things on our own. We should get the support of those who will walk with us in the Lord.
So he did as the Lord told him, but because he was afraid of his family, and the men of the town, he did it at night, rather than in the day time. You can see him getting up after everyone had gone to bed. You can see him and his companions meeting in whispers. And you can see them going off. They did it, and they did it very secretly, and nobody knew until the morning. But there it was, and you couldn't escape it. If we do God's will properly and stand for God, the effect can't be escaped, and God means it to be so. However much we try to hide, if we have been faithful in doing God's will in attacking Satan's work, it will come out. Gideon was soon detected.
But lastly, in going through this passage and before we apply it, we find that God defends his servant. God was faithful. Out of this experience Gideon became much stronger. Gideon found that things turned out much better than he had expected. We read in verse 30, "The men of the town demanded of Joash, "Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal's altar, and cut down the Asherah pole beside it." And surprise, surprise, Joash - and Gideon was surprised because he was frightened of the reaction he expected from his own family in this - Joash replied to the hostile crowd, "Are you going to plead Baal's cause? Are you trying to save him?" Then he says this, "Whoever fights for him shall be put to death before the morning!" You are, in fact, in danger of death from God in your support of Baal. You see even Joash had been brought courage and faith by Gideon's action. And then this tremendous statement, "If Baal is really a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar."
What a challenge! There were these people demanding that Baal should be honoured, and Joash throws it at them, "You think he is a god. Well, if he is a god, surely he can defend himself. It doesn't need you to defend him." So that day Gideon was called 'Jerub-Baal' - Let Baal contend. Our Bibles are helpful here. They put the meaning at the bottom of the page. Jerub-Baal is the Hebrew for 'Let Baal contend'. By that, the fact that Baal could not retaliate, and could not stand up for his altar, proved him to be no god, and Gideon's hand was thereby strengthened. See the wisdom of God. He challenges us to do these things. He in his strength makes it possible. Out of it, we find that our hands are strengthened, and for future tasks we find we are stronger.
So let us apply this briefly for ourselves. We have more or less applied as we have gone along, but let us re-emphasise it.
When God comes in saving power to his church, he is concerned that we put him first. And by that he means that we should submit ourselves to the Word of God, and believe in him as he has revealed himself in the Word of God. I think one of the tragedies of the church today is that we are not so committed to the Word of God as we used to be. We talk about hermeneutics and things like that. At least you may not, but theologians do. They talk about understanding things in the terms of the culture that existed at the time described in the writings, and what was meant and what was understood at that time. This is proper, and this is hermeneutics. That we understand that meaning first if we are to understand what God is really saying, is essential, but in doing that, so often, the Word of God is emasculated, and watered down. We find the things in the Bible which people outside, or science, or so called science, thinks difficult. These prove a problem, and so hermeneutics is used to alter these in some fashion, so the world finds them more acceptable. We desperately want the Bible to be commendable to the world, so we look for ways of making it so, not realising that in our eagerness, we are being carried away into diminishing the actual truth that is there in God's Word. We are so terrified to come out and say, 'I believe because God has said so in his Word.'
In this sort of way we hold the Word of God with less definiteness. We feel that we must not be obscurantist in any sense. We hate to be thought silly. I remember a fellow in a village where I was minister. He did some preaching locally. When the first moon shot took place, and men landed on the moon, he said it could not have happened, because God would not have let anything happen like that. And he said his opinion was founded on the Word of God. Now this is foolish and quite rightly condemned as foolish. But we are often fearful of publicly believing the Word of God when we should, in case we are condemned as silly also. The landing on the moon did happen, and the man who denied it was doing the Word of God a disservice by pretending the Bible was saying things that it plainly does not say. He was doing the Bible dishonour by saying a thing that was so stupid. Such use of God's Word weakens our position before the world, but we must not let this deter us from being faithful to God's Word, even though it must teach us to be careful that we do not use the Bible in such a detrimental way.
Even if Christians have in the past been like that, still we need to be faithful to God's Word, and apply God's Word, and not be afraid to do it. We must not be afraid of the difficult doctrines, the doctrines we are tempted to fight shy of, where God is God, where we find with our fallen human nature we do not like God as he has revealed himself. We must be faithful. There is a tendency in us all to hold on, in some sense, to our ability to do things and be masters of our destiny. That is what the world wants. So we have a tendency, to water down God's revelation of himself. We must not do it, and we must put God first, and take out all false religions and opinions from our worship.
If we see things in the church today that are false to God's revealed truth, we must pull down that false religion. This is what the application is here. We must stand up for the truth in our day. We must support those hands, the Societies who are seeking to stand for the truth. We need to contend against governments who live and govern without any consideration for the Word of God. When Parliament debated Sunday Observance they did not consider the Word of God. We should, whatever the response, say that in these things we need our country to be ruled by the Bible.
What we need to have firmly in our minds, is that if we are not ready to do this, we cannot expect God to come in salvation. God did not expect in a moment for Israel to turn back to him and renounce Baal, but he did expect Gideon whom he had chosen to do it, and he expects us, his representatives, in the same way to stand for him.
Lastly, we must face this challenge, which is no easy one. It is easy enough to discuss it here. It is when we have to challenge things in the Synods, or whatever other meeting of the wider church that we may be in, that we need strength. It is easy enough to talk now, but as we face this challenge and feel our fear and weakness, we can take to heart what Gideon's history assures us of. This passage tells us that we can trust God to honour those who stand for him. In this way we strengthen our hands in the battle. We need to be so strengthened, for I believe if the church, God's people, those who stand for the truth, do so in our day, God will be pleased again to come and bless us as he did through Gideon.
But perhaps we also need to take on board the fact that Gideon did not stand up for the truth until commanded by God. Gideon was commanded when it was God's strategic time, and so we learn that we have to be sensitive to God's time and God's command. We must be ready at all times to stand for God, but it is unwise and foolish to blunder into it in our own strength and wisdom. In our concern for the cause of God, we need to first wait upon God and seek his time and his way. Then like Gideon we will find that God is our strength, and that he has gone before, and the way, though not easy, does bring its success, and God is glorified.