The Book of Judges: Hearts of Iron, Feet of Clay
Gideon: The Man of Faith Who Doubted
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: My message title today contains something of an oxymoron. We’ve always been told that faith and doubt are antithetical to one another. How can I speak of “a man of faith who doubted?” Yet it’s amazing how many great heroes of the faith went through periods of significant doubt before, and even occasionally after, they earned their reputations for courage and confidence. One thinks of Abraham, Moses, and Peter, to say nothing of the apostle who for centuries has been known as “Doubting Thomas.”
The author of the NT book of Hebrews makes a terse reference to some great men and women of faith in chapter 11 of his book, where we find what is often called “God’s Hall of Faith.”
“And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.” (Hebrews 11:32‑40)
Though the author of Hebrews does not discuss the lives of these heroes in detail, our excursion through the book of Judges allows us the opportunity to examine some of these lesser-known Bible characters and to learn from their experiences with God. The very first one mentioned is Gideon, and we are going to camp on his life for the next three Sundays.
What we are going to find is that Gideon did not start out as a great hero of the faith. In fact, he was just the opposite, demonstrating grave hesitation and doubt before God turned him into a valiant warrior. The message I want us to catch today is that if God can change Gideon from wimp to warrior, He can do it for us, too.
As has been stated over the past several weeks, there is a cycle evident in Judges which can be expressed in four words—sin, servitude, supplication, and salvation. Over and over this cycle repeats itself, but each time it gets worse, so that the cycle becomes a downward spiral. The people take their eyes off the Lord and disobey Him, so the Lord disciplines them by allowing some pagan enemy to conquer them and turn them into slaves. They then cry out to the Lord and He saves them through some deliverer, only to have them fall into sin once that deliverer is off the scene, and sometimes even while he is still around.
As we come to Judges 6, we are already in the fourth such cycle. The first verse says, “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.” Let’s read the rest of the paragraph to capture the flow:
“Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help.”
The Midianites were a huge tribe of desert people who had discovered a devastating new military weapon—the camel. Camels were ugly enough to strike fear into the hearts of the Israelites. If you’ve never been up close to a camel, you don’t understand ugly. Several months ago—I think it was at the Dead Sea—I came face to face with a camel being ridden by Bud Blossfield. You talk about a frightening experience! I still have nightmares, and I suspect the camel has had them, too.
Using these animals, who could travel nearly 100 miles a day with a heavy load and no food or water, the Midianites developed a unique strategy against Israel. Rather than occupying the land, they waited in the desert until the harvest was ready. Then they invaded like a plague of locusts, stripped the land bare of grain, fruit, and livestock, and, with their camels loaded, crossed back into the desert. This happened for seven years and left the Israelites in a desperate situation, reduced to hiding food in mountain dens and caves. They wre so defeated and helpless that they finally called out to the Lord for help.
That brings us to the first major point in our story:
The consequences of sin often cause people to cry out to God for help, but is their concern just for relief or for repentance?
We’ve all heard of the proverbial foxhole conversion. Many an unbeliever, even an occasional atheist, has been reduced to crying out to God when trial is stacked upon tragedy. Believers, of course, are quicker to cry “uncle,” since we recognize more readily the truth that pain is sometimes a megaphone that God uses to get our attention. But the question is, are we crying out to God just to escape the pain or from a heart of repentance? There’s a huge difference. In the book of 2 Corinthians Paul speaks of two kinds of sorrow. In 10:7 he says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Worldly sorrow is sorrow over consequences—that you got caught, that your gambling has left you destitute, that your promiscuity has left you with a sexually transmitted disease, that your selfishness has destroyed your marriage.
Godly sorrow is sorrow over the sin itself—that you have offended almighty God, that you have failed to treat your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, that you have dishonored the wife or husband of your youth.
What was the nature of Israel’s sorrow here in Judges 6? Why were they crying out to God? Undoubtedly some just wanted relief, but a few of the faithful, including Gideon, were willing to bow the knee before almighty God.
Now the second thing we discover in our story is that …
The Lord responds to His people’s cries with revelation and a redeemer.
This is the normal way God operates. He sends His Word, and He sends a deliverer.
The revelation comes through an unnamed prophet and identifies the real source of the pain—idolatry and disobedience. Let’s read the next paragraph (7-10):
“When the Israelites cried to the LORD because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: “I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. 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.”’”
God sent a prophet because they needed to know that their desperate straits were not just a coincidence of history or bad luck; it was divine discipline. Now let’s make something very clear here: not all pain and suffering is due to personal sin on the part of the sufferer. Nothing is clearer in Scripture than that sometimes we suffer because of the sin of others; sometimes we suffer just because we live in a fallen world; and occasionally our suffering is so God can get glory from our lives. You may not like that idea, but John 9:1-3 and the story of the man born blind clearly teaches it.
Nevertheless, a lot of our pain and suffering is due to our own sin. But even when we know that is true, we tend to throw pity parties, stew in our juices, and complain that life isn’t fair. God wants us to own up to the cause of our pain, for that’s the quickest way to find relief.
But God does more than simply reveal the source of the trial; He also raises up a deliverer.
The redeemer, in this case, is a most unlikely candidate—Gideon. God has always been unpredictable in his choice of men. He rarely chooses those who have great natural talents or show immense promise of leadership. Listen to 1 Cor. 1:26:
“Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
Gideon is a paradigm example of this truth. Look at the story as it unfolds beginning in verse 11 of Judges 6:
The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
“But sir,” Gideon replied, “if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.”
The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
“But Lord, ” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
We find Gideon a defeated, discouraged young man, filled with doubts and fears. A simple farmer, he is secretly threshing wheat in a winepress. That wasn’t the normal place to thresh wheat. Standard procedure was to use cattle to do it on the top of a hill so that the wind could blow the chaff away. But that would be dangerous, so here is Gideon threshing alone, by hand, in a winepress.
The angel of the Lord comes to him and addresses him. Gideon doesn’t immediately recognize him as an angel because there is nothing supernatural about his appearance. He doesn’t have wings or a halo or a harp. He addresses Gideon in a fashion that initially sounds like sarcasm: “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” I suggest that rather than sarcasm, the angel is speaking prophetically of Gideon’s potential—what he will become if he allows the Lord to use him.
After all, this is God’s normal opus operandi. He looked at Abram, a childless man who was already 99 years old, and called him Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude.” He looked at a scheming, conniving herdsman named Jacob and called him “Israel,” the prince of God. He looked at a brash but essentially cowardly fisherman named Simon and called him “The Rock.” And in each case God turned the man into what He called Him. I praise God that he focuses more on what we can become than what we are now.
But more important than the affirmation of Gideon as a mighty warrior is the promise that is made of the Lord’s presence: “The Lord is with you.” Unfortunately, Gideon can’t quite square that with what he sees around him.
Gideon is assured of the Lord’s presence but can’t square that with what he sees around him. “But sir,” he replies in verse 13, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Why don’t we see any of the miracles our forefathers told us about? Why has He abandoned us?” Ever felt like that? Some of you feel like that this morning, don’t you? You’ve heard stories about how God has answered prayer for others, you’ve heard about how He has healed someone miraculously, you’ve heard about great movements of revival and spiritual growth, and you’re asking, “Where is He now?”
Well, He’s still here, it’s just that His fingerprints are often obscured by the apathy and evil of the day, and sometimes by our own coldness of heart. Gideon fails to see that the Lord hasn’t abandoned His people at all; rather His people have abandoned Him. But God doesn’t reprimand him. Instead, He says, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” Here we see secondly that …
Gideon is assured of the Lord’s authority, but he can’t square that with what he knows about himself. God gives Gideon an incredible responsibility, but at the same time He promises him divine authority: “Am I not sending you?” “But Lord,” Gideon asks, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” Sounds like Moses, doesn’t he? “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? I have never been eloquent. O Lord, please send someone else to do it.” (Exodus 4:9-10)
But more to the point, it sounds like a lot of us. Do you ever have feelings of inadequacy, strong feelings that you just don’t have what it takes to make a significant contribution to God or His church? Join the club. You’re in good company. Actually, that is exactly where God wants you. In 2 Cor. 3:5 the Apostle Paul himself says, “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is of God.” Our inadequacy does not hinder God’s work, only our unavailability.
In verse 16 the Lord continues His recruitment of Gideon:
The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”
Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.”
And the LORD said, “I will wait until you return.”
Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so. With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared. When Gideon realized 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 Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it The LORD is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
Here we find thirdly that …
Gideon is assured of the Lord’s power but can’t square that with his inner doubts. God doesn’t make some ambiguous offer to Gideon here; He promises Him in no uncertain terms that He will be with him and that the result will be defeat for the Midianites. But Gideon is from Missouri and his philosophy is “show me.” He wants to be certain that this One speaking to him is really God’s messenger. God graciously responds to this request, turning his meal into a sacrifice. Gideon is frightened: “Ah, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” The look on his face must have been one of terrible foreboding, for the Lord responds, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.” So, Gideon builds an altar right there and worships. Faith is developing, but slowly.
So far, we have seen that the consequences of sin often cause people to cry out to God for help, but sometimes their concern is for relief rather than repentance. We have also seen that the Lord responds to their cries with revelation and a redeemer.
We come now to the third major point of our text:
The Lord requires His servants to deal with personal sin before trying to address corporate sin.
Let’s pick up the story with verse 25:
That same night the LORD said to him, “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.”
So Gideon took ten of his servants and 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 daytime.
In the morning when the men of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!
They asked each other, “Who did this?”
When they carefully investigated, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”
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.”
But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” So that day they called Gideon “Jerub‑Baal, ” saying, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he broke down Baal’s altar.
There is a constant emphasis in Scripture on the fact that godliness begins at home. God’s people must examine themselves before they judge the world around them. That is the theme of this section of our story. Gideon must deal with sin among God’s people before trying to deal with sin among God’s enemies. And He must deal with sin at home before trying to deal with sin in the nation.
In Gideon’s own backyard there is a vivid example of the reason God had allowed Midian to overwhelm and enslave Israel in the first place. Joash, Gideon’s father, had apparently built an altar to the pagan god Baal on his own property and with it was an Asherah pole, a wooden pillar representing the Canaanite goddess of fertility. And this was not only a personal idol for the family’s private use, but it also apparently served as a village shrine. Until Gideon is willing to put things right at home, God would not use him for a greater assignment. So, God tests his resolve and his integrity by requiring him to use a seven-year-old bull (remember, Israel had been plagued by the Midianites for seven years) to tear down the shrine to Baal.
Before anyone can be a success in his spiritual life, he simply must come clean in his personal life. If we don’t surrender the sins and habits that are defeating us to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we will never be used greatly by God. Furthermore, if our commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ does not first affect our home, it is going to be superficial and hollow.
While Gideon’s main assignment is yet to come, in some ways God is asking Gideon to fight his most difficult battle first. The very hardest place to represent Christ is in your own family and with your closest friends. Quite frankly, it is much easier to share the gospel with strangers than with your fellow workers or classmates. It’s a lot easier to preach God’s Word in front of a large church than it is to teach it to one’s own relatives. Midian is a lot less intimidating than Joash. After all, Gideon must live with Joash every day.
As it turned out, Gideon’s father comes to his son’s defense. I think he must be shamed and convicted in his own heart by his son’s courage. And he wisely tells the riffraff, “If Baal is a God, let him defend himself.” Of course, he wasn’t, and he couldn’t.
Now the final vignette in our story is, in many ways, the strangest. The theme that I see here is that …
The Lord responds graciously to honest doubt and weak faith.
Let’s finish the chapter, starting in verse 33:
Now all the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples joined forces and crossed over the Jordan and camped in the Valley of Jezreel. Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet them.
Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.
Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.”
Gideon is filled with the Spirit of the Lord and calls upon all Israel to join him in battle against the Midianites. However, even now God does not supernaturally remove all of Gideon’s anxieties and fears. It is important for us to realize that faith is not demonstrated by fearlessness but by obedience. But even Gideon’s obedience is halting as he tests God twice by “putting out a fleece.”
It is not uncommon for Christian people to speak of “putting out a fleece” to determine God’s will in some matter. This passage is where they get that notion. But I personally think we should not assume God’s approval of Gideon’s tactics just because He responds so graciously. In fact, in my estimation …
Putting out a “fleece” is not normally an appropriate means of finding the will of God. Let me offer four reasons why it was inappropriate for Gideon:
Gideon already knows what God’s will is. Please look at verses 36 & 37. Gideon speaks to God and says, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” Gideon doesn’t need a fleece for he already knows exactly what God’s will is because God has already told him in no uncertain terms.
Fleece‑setting is more evidence of doubt than of faith. God has already promised to deliver Israel through Gideon and He has already done a miracle to prove that He means what He says. So, by using the fleece Gideon is in effect saying, “I know your command and your promise, but I am not sure I really believe You.”
Fleece‑setting is putting God in a box. Gideon says, in effect, “God, here is my program. You do this and this, and I want it looked after by tomorrow morning. Please alter the whole course of nature because I ask you to.” Don’t misunderstand me. It’s always OK to come to the Lord and say, “Lord I am afraid. I have lots of doubt. Please reveal Yourself again to me.” That kind of request is always appropriate. But we have no right to demand that the Lord act on our terms.
Fleece‑setting does not produce the security one is looking for. The morning after Gideon sets out his first fleece, he finds the fleece wet and the ground dry. But notice that he doesn’t say, “Thank you Lord. Now I know for sure that you will do what you promised.” No, instead he begins to second‑guess himself. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe someone washed their mule with that fleece during the night. Maybe this, maybe that. Doubt continues to plague him.
Suppose you want to know God’s will and so you set a “time fleece.” You say, Lord, I’ll do such‑and‑such if I get a phone call by 6:00 pm. The phone rings at 6:05. Is it God’s answer? You check your watch against a clock. You begin to wonder whether heaven is on mountain time, so it’s really only 5:05. Or you think that maybe Satan was hindering the call, as he once delayed a message for three weeks in the book of Daniel. Maybe this and maybe that.
It is far better to simply take God at His word. That is the biblical definition of faith, by the way. God said it, I believe it, that settles it. I recognize that such an attitude is viewed as primitive in our postmodern world. Shouldn’t we use our reason and our privilege of personal choice to decide what’s right for us? How can a book written 2,000 years ago serve as any sure guide for those about to enter the third millennium after Christ?
All I can tell you is that God’s revelation is as reliable today as ever. I have yet to find a single issue regarding which it has spoken falsely. I have yet to find a single person who hasn’t suffered consequences when violating its precepts.
Conclusion: That same Word tells us that God has sent a Redeemer greater than Gideon to do a task greater than that given to Gideon. That Redeemer came with God’s presence, God’s authority, and God’s power. He lived a life of perfect obedience—starting at home. And then He did battle against sin and Satan and death. Jesus defeated these enemies when He died on the cross. He purchased redemption for you there, but the salvation He offers is not automatically yours—He requires that you acknowledge your guilt and receive Him into your life by an act of your will.
DATE: July 12, 1998
Tags:
Faith
Doubt
Repentance
Fleece