Bible Study #3: Gideon - God's Mighty (Fearful and Insecure) Warrior

This Bible study, entitled "Gideon - God's Mighty Warrior" is the first new (current) lesson for the blog. We missed my friend's great insight on the Bible, but God allowed this to be an incredibly powerful study. We met on April 10, 2008.

The Bible passages upon which this lesson is built are Exodus 3-4 and Judges 6-8 (it's a little bit of reading, but such amazing histories of God's faithfulness to His people). The premise of this lesson is that God does not see potential in us through our lens of fear and insecurity - God sees what we can be for Him.

Throughout the Old Testament of the Bible, the Israelites have become a perfect picture of humanity (from Adam and Eve to present day); we make a really big mess, God cleans it up, we turn our back on God and make another really big mess, God cleans it up, rinse and repeat. God brought the Israelites out of Egypt through His own power and the obedience of Moses. But why would God pick Moses for such a monumental task? Moses was a man who had fled from Egypt after murdering a man in his anger (the leaders of Egypt were seeking to kill him in revenge), intermarried in the foreign lands to which he fled, and was self-described as one who had "never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue" (Exodus 4:10). But God didn't see Moses through the same scrutinizing lens - God saw Moses as the man that would lead His chosen people out of Egypt and on the way to the Promised Land. Moses wasn't perfect - he made a lot of mistakes - but God equipped Moses to achieve the unachievable. Take a closer look at Exodus 3:11-12: "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?' And God said, 'I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.'" God didn't say that He was going to make Moses an intimidating physical presence or transform him into an amazing orator. God simply says, "I will be with you." What else do you need? If God is powerful enough to create the entire universe and personal enough to have a individual relationship with each one of us, this is an incredibly powerful promise Moses receives.

In Judges 6-8, we pick up on the next chapter of the Israelites' "big mess, God cleans it up" cycle. Judges 6:8-10 summarizes their situation perfectly: "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." Because the Israelites had opened themselves up to the godless foreign peoples surrounding the land God had given them, they were living in caves and shelters because of the oppression of the Midianites. Judges 6:3-5 says, "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." Only then did the Israelites cry out to God for help. Rinse and repeat.

What an incredible illustration of how we let sin into our lives, and only when we have run out of ways to fix it (which, incidentally, is a lie because Jesus Christ is has the only remedy for sin), do we turn to God for help. And although Israel had ignored God for seven years, the minute the Israelites called upon the Lord, He answered by raising up a leader to end the oppression of His people. But God didn't choose the most handsome, brave, or intelligent Israelite - He chose another "great leader" like Moses who, well, didn't see himself as much of a "mighty warrior."

Another passage, 1 Samuel 16:6-7, clearly describes God's selection process, "When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, 'Surely the LORD's anointed stands here before the LORD.' But the LORD said to Samuel, 'Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.'" God doesn't need our strength or wisdom - He is far too powerful to rely on our undependable abilities: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Just as God has used so many humble men in the Bible to do great things, even Nathan as he confronted King David about his sin with Bathsheba, He chose Gideon to free His people from the oppression by the Midianites and Amalekites. In fact, when God approaches Gideon, he is threshing wheat in a winepress because he is so scared of the Midianites. Nevertheless, God addresses him as a "mighty warrior" instead of the seeming coward he might appear to be upon first sight. Gideon's got the same kind of list that Moses had for God (a number of disqualifying conditions that would prevent them from effectively accomplishing God's purpose for their lives) - he comes from the weakest clan and he is the least in his family. But God gives him the same answer He gave to Moses so many years before, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together" (Judges 6:16). Please continue to read through Judges 7-8 and witness that God is just as faithful to Gideon as He was to Moses. Gideon's first task is to strike at the heart of the matter - the idolatry of the Israelites. But the Israelites move from wanting to kill him for destroying their idols (what was standing between them and God) to following him into a battle that ends in the total destruction of the Midianites.

What is standing between you and fulfilling God's purpose in your life? If you don't know what your purpose is, or if you think God doesn't have one for you, I would challenge you to open the Bible and pray that God will focus you on his purpose for your life. At a bare minimum, we must fulfill the great commission found in Matthew 28:16-20. But knowing how God wants you to accomplish this is essential to your growth as a Christian. Are you afraid of what people will think? Are you worried about the future (how will everything work out)? Will I fail? God has the same answer for you as he did for Moses and Gideon, "I will be with you, and you will ________." Fill in the blank and you will never look back.