Saturday, March 03, 2012

The Lesson of Gideon

And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. (Hebrews 11:32-34, NKJV).
The chronology of faith in Hebrews 11 continues its crescendoing march through human history and arrives at the time of the Judges in ancient Israel, a time when anarchy and aimless evil prevailed, a time book-ended by this characterization: In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 17:6, 21:25 NKJV).
Sounds a lot like the world today.

Gideon is famous for ram's horns and lamps, fleeces and fierceness, and Midianite mayhem, but he started his career as a young man hiding in a cistern threshing his grain in secret so the bullies (the Midianite and Amalekite oppressors) wouldn't kick him to the ground and steal it - for oppression by its enemies was what God allowed to happen to Israel when the nation turned away from Him (Judges 6-8).

This man was also another example of this fact: God looks at the heart and sees us from the perspective of what He knows we will become, and not what we are at a given point in time. For those who believe in Him, that is a very good thing, for in us He sees His beloved Son. For those who will not believe, that is a death sentence that could be carried out summarily and without warning.

His view of Gideon in hiding? And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him, and said to him, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (Judges 6:12, NKJV).
Make no mistake, God unapologetically uses people for His purposes, and has done so throughout human history regardless of what we might think about it. He uses some for evil and some for good. In everything He implacably advances His will, for that is inherently part of His unequalled an unassailable sovereignty. He has that power, and there is nothing in Heaven or earth that can obstruct His plans.

Imagine if He were not who He has revealed Himself in Scripture to be: long-suffering, slow to anger, merciful, gracious, forgiving, and the embodiment of love. Imagine if He had that kind of power and were like us!

Humans who reject Him, either through outright unbelief, covert rebellion, or ridiculously imposing upon Him their own paltry conceptions of divine nature, question His right to perform His will and carryout His purposes, but that is a little like standing on the shore and shaking your fist at a crashing tidal wave.

God does not seek your approval. He seeks your faith. To even begin to understand His nature necessarily results in both love and fear, for our God is a consuming fire.

Gideon, doubted the visitation by the Angel of the Lord, and proposed several tests to determine its validity. You might think this unbelievably presumptuous, and God unbelievably and uncharacteristically indulgent in granting him these tests, but I think that would be two mistaken conclusions.

Remember, God sees the heart. While we can only guess at someone else's (and often even our own) true motives, God does not guess. He knows. That is why Jesus, who is God With Us, would often appear to respond inconsistently to those He encountered. For instance, He rebuked Martha, but wept with her sister Mary, both of whom said the very same thing: Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.

Gideon doubted himself, I think, and not his God. He wanted to make certain that he was not imagining things. He was, in fact, following Paul's and John's later commands to test all things, hold fast what is good, and to not believe every spirit, but test the spirits.
Motive is the determinant of intents and actions, that which distinguishes true good from true evil. God knows our motives perfectly, and sees us not only for who we are, but for who we will become if we live a life of faith.

That is the lesson of Gideon. With all his imperfections and doubts, with all his human failings, in the end he was a man of faith, and because of that, he had the privilege of being used by God.

For weak, sinful and frail creatures such as ourselves, that is the highest goal of earthly life.

It cannot be attained by effort, but by faith alone, in God alone.