Well, lesson three is entitled the Decline of the Judges. And I have entitled it that way because that's exactly what we're going to start seeing is the Decline of the Judges. We're looking at chapter 6 through 12, which covers the judgeships of Gideon. There's an anti-judge of Bimalek and then Jephthah, who arguably might be the absolute worst or most scandalous judge of them all, Jephthah.
Now last time we talked about the initially good judges, right? You've got the good judge. Remember, if you're in Judah, you start with Judah and you're moving northward, you're going to see things go from good to bad to worst, right? So that's what we're beginning to see in the Decline of the Judges.
Othnail was great, so if you remember going back to chapter 3, and then Ehu'd, and then Deborah, those three judges, major judges, and we're not talking about the minor ones at this point, but the major ones were all really good. I mean, Othnail is from Judah, so they were going great. And then you read their stories and you know what? There aren't really a lot of things scandalous about what they do.
There aren't really anything negative to set about them. Well, that's changing out here in lesson three, and the Decline of the Judges with Gideon, especially. It always cracks me up too because people will always point out, and the Gideon Bibles are in every single little nightstand in hotels all throughout the country of America. You don't have any hotel.
More than likely, there is a Gideon Bible sitting there, and they named the Bible after Gideon because of his great faith and trust in God. Well, that's not exactly the story. I know he's like, you should have named it like a Deborah Bible or the Othnail Bible or something like that if you're to pick a judge, because Gideon is definitely not one of my favorites. And anyway, still a lot to learn from his story, and as we'll see.
So with all that said and done, that's why we're calling this to the client of the judges, because things are going from, you know, best in Othnail to better to good and now. Whew, it's not so good. Alrighty, we are in chapter six in Judges with my Bible. We get to that point.
Chapter six verse one is where we left off. Chapter five was the famous story of Deborah and her song, her great hymn that she sings and praise of God for deliverance. So now we're getting into Gideon's story. Now, I always try to remember to tell you the name of the judge, what the name means, I should say, as well as where they're from, as we progress from south, in Judah and south, all the way up to north of Dan.
That's going to be next lesson with Samson. He's from the tribe of Dan. So Gideon means something like destroyer or chopper, he were like a chopper or he were as well as warrior. So he's from the tribe of Manasseh and remember, Manasseh is one of the half tribes of Joseph.
So he is a descendant of Joseph. And at this point here, as you read, you've got the cycle of sin and mercy taking place as always with every single judge. Let me just read this for you here. In chapter 6 verse 1, the telltale verse is, the sons of Israel did what was evil in the side of the Lord.
That's when you know you're going through another cycle. They do what was evil in the side of the Lord and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years. So that's sin. Like I have here in your notes here, we have that recurring cycle, sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, and then down the line will be a little bit of rest or silence.
Well, sin is in verse 1, they do what was evil, then servitude says they were in service. The Lord gave them to the hand of Midian for seven years. And then you have interestingly the longest description of their oppression and servitude in the book of judges. Things are pretty bad.
You all just go on and read it for you in verse 2 and following. You can prevail over Israel and because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which are in the mountains and the caves in the stronghold. So they're hiding, they're running away with the tail between their legs, hiding away from these Midianites and hiding in the mountains in caves and whatnot. Then the oppression continues in verse 3.
For whenever the Israelites put in seed, the Midianites as well as the Amalekites and the people of the east, so basically the Midianites are kind of in charge. They have support from some other peoples to ransack the land. They go and attack the Israelites. They would camp against them, destroy the produce of the land as far as the neighborhood of God and leave no sustenance in Israel, no sheep or ox or donkey, etc.
And they would come up with their cattle and their tents coming like locusts for number. By the way, parenthetically here, it's not in your notes, but locusts is a really important concept, an image in all of scripture. Starting with the book of Exodus, you've got the plagues of locust and later on you go to Joel and the book of Revelation, there's always this concept of plagues or pestilence or really punishment and judgment coming in the form of locusts. So I think that's a really important connection.
You can just store that away in the back of your brain there. We can go back to Exodus and look at that Bible set if you want to. But in other places of scripture, this whole concept of judgment and punishment coming in the form of locusts, especially in a foreign oppressor, that's a very, very important image going on. So they come before locusts like locusts in number and then the sons of Israel cry for help to the Lord.
That's the cycle right there. So it's pretty bad here with the Midianites forcing Israel to flee for the mountains and hide and the Midianites destroy the crops and destroy the seed and take all their cattle and they're trying to starve them out. They're trying to really utterly annihilate them. Not just oppress them and make them pay tribute, but to really kill them off by sword and by famine and by starvation.
So it's pretty brutal stuff here. Now, who are the Midianites? The Midianites, interestingly, are related to the Israelites because you go back to Genesis 25, you got the story of how Abraham got married again after Sarah died. The dude was like over 130 years old.
It was insane. He's a really old man. He gets married again, has six more sons. One of them is named Midian.
He's the father of the Midianites through his second wife, Katura, and go back to Genesis 25 and check that out. So the Midianites really are related to the Israelites, which always blows my mind as well because so many other relatives of Israel are at close relations, like the Midianites, the Ammonites, and the Edomites, you know, are descended from Esau. It's pretty crazy stuff how sometimes the worst enemies come straight from your family. I don't know if you see that reflected in things giving dinner or anything like that, but that's kind of what's going on here.
Now, the Midianites are doing all this work. Israel cries out to God and God sends a prophet to admonish and chastise Israel kind of much in the same way that he did back if you remember in chapter 2 verses 1 through 5. When you're looking at the prologue, you kind of see the political and secular and military state of affairs contrasted with the religious and theological state of affairs and how God reprimands Israel at Bohem if you remember, which probably was Beth or something. I just argue that it makes a lot of sense.
Now, same kind of a thing is going on here. A prophet comes in at verse 7, and the prophet says, the Lord, the God of Israel, I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you. I drove them out from before you and gave you their land, and I said, I am the Lord your God, you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Ammonites and whose land you dwelt, but you have not given heed to my voice.
So this prophet says, pretty much more or less the same thing that the angel or messenger did back in chapter 2. The only difference is back then in chapter 2 they wept in some kind of shallow repentance or at least it's not long lasting repentance. Here there's no indication that there is even repentance. Yet nonetheless God says in salvation in the form of Gideon.
We're going to see this later on here, how God is always telling them. He always helps them, but he's telling them the reason why things are going badly for you is because you've broken your covenant with me, you've served the gods of the Canaanites and Ammonites and all these people, so they don't really get the point. Alright, so here Gideon is called, like I said his name is Destroyer, Shopper, Warrior, he's from Manasseh, and we have his vocation or his calling here in verses 11 and following. And as you read the story you see the theme that I pointed out to you before about the inversion of norms, about how these people really are not who you would expect to be leaders and the same thing is true of Gideon.
People will say, if they don't really know his story, it's crazy. He does have moments of faith, fullness and trust, that is true. He does obey God in many respects, but his life as we're seeing in the decline of the judges, especially leading up to Samson, is full of things that you would not, stories and situations that you would not expect of a leader. He really is faithless and cowardly and weak in so many instances and violent as we're going to see later on as well.
And the point behind all of that is really this quote that I have for you here from the of our Bible saying God's choice falls on a man who never would have expected a vocation. He receives the call in the course of his ordinary workers. We're going to see he's in a working threshing grain. So he's doing ordinary work and the Lord did not pick this man because he deserved it or because he came of a distinguished family.
He comes from a wealthy family is on an argument moment, but it's still nevertheless, he's just an ordinary bloke, an ordinary Joe Styx pack doing what he's doing hiding from the midi nights and trying to make a living. So it's an aversion of norms and God is going to take this very weak man, a cowardly and many instances faithless man and show God's glory through him. Okay. So 11, the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak of Oprah.
It's not Oprah, by the way, Oprah, which belonged to Joash. That's his father's name, Joash. His son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the midi nights. Now, why is he doing this?
Because he's afraid, he's cowardly. You could argue that I suppose, but I think in his favor, he's being smart because remember I just read to you how the midi nights are going through and then just burning down everything that they can trying to make these are like starve. And so by threshing the grain of the wheat and the wine press and hiding it, that's actually kind of kind of a good, good tactic there because wine presses were placed in the center of vineyards far back from the roads while threshing floors were located in public places or quote here says, okay. So going to go to a threshing floor, it's going to be very easy for a marading band to come and just kill you and take your stuff or burn it or whatever.
Wine press is going to be in the center of the vineyards, so it's easier chance to hide. So that might actually be a good thing in his favor as he's trying to survive with the midi nights of pressing him. So there's where he is. When the angel says, I was reading a number of verses here, then I go through my points now and share with you.
In verse 12, the angel Lord, and said, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. And Gideon said to him, please serve the Lord is with us. Why then has this all befallen us? And where all his wonderful deeds which her fathers were counted to us saying did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt.
But now the Lord has cast us off and given us into the hand of Midian. And the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Do I not send you? And he said, please Lord, how can I deliver Israel?
My clan is the weakest in Manasseh. I am the least in my family. And the Lord said, but I will be with you and you will strike them down. All right, excellent.
So there he is in the threshing grain out hiding in the vineyard doing this. And it's really interesting here because the angel of the Lord also called the Lord himself speaks directly to him and saying, go and do this, the Lord is with you. And his first response about well then if the Lord is with us, first off the God said, the Lord is with you and then Gideon says, well the Lord is with us. Why are all these bad things happening?
There's why I think he's a bit of, you know, a bit of a thick skull here. He doesn't really, he's not really paying attention because the reason why all these bad things are happening is exactly the further reasons what the prophet had just said in verses prior. The prophet comes and admonishes Israel saying, it's because you are serving the gods of the Amorites and the Canaanites. That's the reason why all these things really are happening to you.
We've already gone through the cycle of sin and mercy a number of times. So hello, Gideon, are you paying attention? The reason why bad things happen and you fall into the oppression of various peoples and foreigners is because of your infidelity. It's because you're going after their gods and you're forsaking the one true God.
That's the reason why. The prophet just told you that. So then the angel says, well, you're a mighty man of valor. Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel.
And Gideon rightfully says, I'm the weakest and the simplest and the smallest of my clan. Our clan isn't even very big. I'm not the man for the job here. And that's the precise of the point.
You're right. You're not the man for the job. It's precisely because the Lord is with you, which is repeated twice and really three times. The Lord is with him is repeated twice and God sends him once.
That's the reason why you have might. You are a mighty man of valor if you cooperate with God's call. Yes, you are weak. Yes, you don't have the qualifications.
You're a farmer for crying out loud. You're threshing wheat right now in a vineyard, hiding for your life. So yeah, you don't have the credentials, but God is with you. And that's the reason why you will succeed.
Okay. And so I love this little line here from your commentary on your industrial testament saying the Lord is intent. I love this. The Lord is intent.
Dead set on gaining glory by defeating Gideon with almost the weakest human instruments possible. So if you want to do something great for God, just in humility, admit your weakness, admit your simpleness, despite whatever talents you may have, they'll always come from God precisely to give them glory. This is a big lesson here. I'll always call is the weak and the simplest.
And if you are truly humble, not fearful, I think fearful is a bad thing. But if you are humble and confident in God, knowing that God is going to do all the heavy lifting, God is going to do great things for you. I love that. God is dead set on choosing the weakest human instruments possible.
I love it. All right. Well, he is pretty weak. So he's going to ask for a sign immediately.
He says, I need a sign for verse 17. Show me a sign that as you who speak with me and as the story goes on, Gideon brings some bread and some meat and some broth and he's instructed to pour it on the rock and pour the broth over it. And then the angel of God touches the meat and the cakes and there's a big old barbecue that pumps up and it just consumes all of it in this massive, I was thinking like a grease fire and I don't think that once upon a time, I didn't clean my barbecue very well. In fact, it's just happened a few weeks prior to this recording.
I didn't clean my barbecue for a long time. And so I put some barbecue on there and we set a timer and go off and working in the yard and all of a sudden man, there's like so much smoke coming out of this barbecue. I kind of think of that when I think of this angel accepting the sacrifice of Gideon where that food is just consumed in this massive like grease fire or something like that. Well, that's the sign that Gideon was looking for.
He realizes that the Lord has been speaking to him and he, you know, said, I've seen the angel Lord face to face and Lord said, do not fear. Be peace be with you. We're going to do great things. Okay.
So that will happen. In here now, as you read this, it should sound pretty familiar because it echoes the story of Moses's call and various commentators appointed this out to various degrees or another. I got some footnotes here for you to take a look out. I guess it sources, but that's there's a point to this.
There's not just a bunch of parallels between the call of Moses and the call of Gideon. Oh, how cool and exciting is that the lesson behind this is the fact that Gideon is a new Moses because I shared with you in the introductory remarks to this book. All of these cycles of sin and mercy of sin and servitude, supplication, salvation and silence and round and round it goes is like a little mini exodus story. Just like I said, that describes Israel's bondage and the whole story of Israel being in Egypt.
Are there committing sin? They're worshiping the Egyptian gods, which is what I would maintain is the reason why they fall into slavery. Not the only reason, but it's very clear they're worshiping the Egyptian gods. I think they fall into sin.
They say they commit that sin, so therefore they fall into servitude and they cry out to God and God sends the Moses the Savior and they're delivered. Okay. That's what's happening here. So it's no surprise therefore that Gideon is a new Moses figure.
And so I've got some of these parallels for you in your notes and you can go check out the commentaries for some more. But both stories involve Midianites. Now, there are parallels, they're similarities and dissimilarities. This is one example.
The Midianites are involved in the story of Moses because Moses lives in the land of Midian. Remember, he flees there in exile after he kills that Egyptian soldier. And for Gideon's story, it's the Midianites who are oppressing the Israelites. So that's really, really interesting.
And I think every single one of these you can spend more time and just ponder that about how Moses is in the land of Midian, but he's subject to Midian. You see? Kind of like how Israel is now subject to the Midianites. So while there are differences, if you kind of continue to dig a little deeper, you might find some more similarities.
So it's all great to take us to prayer. So number one, they both involve the Midianites. All right. Number two, both stories, both men receive their call from the angel of the Lord.
It's actually really interesting. And your natures have studied Bible, we'll talk about the use of the angel of the Lord. It's really, really complicated. And people will be like, well, isn't it an angel or is it God?
Because in both stories, it's introduced as an angel of the Lord, but then it's a Yahweh who speaks and it's kind of really hard to iron that out. But nevertheless, you could say the angel of the Lord is the one who gives the call and it's also Yahweh himself in both instances. Number three, both are called to deliver Israel from enemy oppression, right? Egypt and the Midianites, clearly.
And both, number four, are reluctant to go. Both make excuses, raise objections, say I don't really want the job or I choose someone else. I'm the weakest. I got a stutter or whatever it might be.
But then in the end, in the end of the story, they both kind of reluctantly accept the job. Number five, both are told that God is with you. I will be with you. And that's again the main point here in the spiritual life as well, the spiritual moral sense of scripture God is with us in order for us to conquer our spiritual enemies, to conquer our vices and our sins.
All right, so we do want to take deeper on that point there, you know, we're reluctant to conquer our spiritual enemies, our vices and our sins and we raise objections and be like, why can't do it? It's too difficult or whatever. And then hopefully we accept and God is with us. And so we have victory.
I love that too. Okay. Both are told that the Lord is with him and then finally number six, both are given miraculous signs as proof, especially fire. God speaks to Moses from the fire and then the angel God here accepts the sacrifice of Midian or rather the food, the banquet of Midian in this kind of consumption, like I said, this Greece fire is accepted by God.
And so that's all great. And one difference here and one of your comments here is that in terms of the miraculous signs that are given, God really gives that to Moses, but it's Gideon who is the one who requests the miraculous sign, a little bit of a difference there, but nevertheless, it's in both stories. So really awesome stuff here. Yeah, Gideon is a new Moses and throughout the first half of Gideon's story, he is a deliverer like Moses.
He, Moses of course began with weak faith and Gideon has weak faith and he gets confident. The problem is the second half of Gideon's story, he is no longer a Moses. He definitely declines and falls into graves in as I'm going to share with you as we move on here. Okay.
All right. So the point is it's a new Exodus story. It's a little mini cycle of sin and mercy just like the Exodus was the, like the grandiose example of great deliverance. All right.
Very good. So moving on here, now that Gideon realizes that it truly was God who called him, God is going to give Gideon his first assignment, his first co-op task that he's going to have to do, operative forces here. So he calls him, let's see here, we are in chapter six still verse 25 now. Says to him that very night, take your father's bull, the second bull of seven years old, and remember you always have to pay attention to numbers when they pop up.
So take the second bull seven years old and pull down the altar of Baal, which is in your father, but your father has cut down the asharabbat as beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on top of the stronghold here with stones laid in order, etc. If in offer the burnt offering with the wood of the asharabbat you cut down. So Gideon does this in verse 27. He took 10 men with the servants and did as the Lord had told them, but because he was too afraid, yet again, there he is, he's afraid of his family in the middle of town.
He did it by night. So he obeys, but he's kind of does it with a bunch of fear. So hey, I think we can all relate to that. So number of things to point out here is that Gideon is given instructions to cut down the altar of Baal in his family's house, his father's house.
And later as you read on in verse 20 and following when he does accomplish this, the men, the people of the town of the city are very upset about it. That was their altar. So I think this is indicative of the stature or the status of Gideon's household. His father has got to be wealthy to some degree to have an altar to Baal at his house that the town's people are using for worship.
He also has authority, I'm going to share with you in a moment here. He defends his son and threatens the people. So clearly, my point is that his father, whose name is Joash, has authority, has stature, probably has wealth. And for some reason, this altar is in his own house.
Okay. That's the first point. Now Gideon has got to chop down this altar. In fact, by the way, he's fulfilling the purpose of his name, right?
Destroyer, Chopper, Hugher, Warrior. It's kind of cool how names mean something has something to do with your vocation. So his name is say, Hugher, Chopper, or Destroyer. That's exactly what he must do now with this altar.
So he's got to go. And there's a choice. Is he going to go and obey his heavenly father in this book, in this task? Or is he going to obey his earthly father and leave it standing?
Right? So if he's going to obey his heavenly father, his earthly father may get very upset with him. Okay. Luckily, he doesn't.
And we'll see that in just a second. So he's got to choose who he's going to obey. All right. Now he does this as we read.
He does it at night. A couple of things here. It's a seven year old bull that he sacrifices. It's seven is the number of covenant, right?
Always covenant. And so that tells me that this symbolizes some sort of covenant renewal, the repudiation of the false covenants, the false worship of Baal, and then the re-establishment, the renewal, the reset button for the new covenant with Yahweh. I think that that's very clear. And it also says, in verse 27, he took 10 men to do this task.
And is the number of completion, perfection, totality. So maybe that symbolizes a couple of things that perhaps all of Gideon's men totally, completely, perfectly follow him and obey him. He is the leader. He is the judge that God has called and also it gives symbolized that he perfectly, completely, totally accomplished the task of destroying the altar.
I think maybe both might be true there. So numbers always mean something. Every reading scripture and you see seven or 10 or whatever, you have to ponder, like, okay, what's going on here? That makes it a little bit more exciting.
So I have here, he destroys the altar. Now, the next morning, everybody's freaking out. Right? What is it?
What's going on? Who did this? It turns out, oh Gideon was the one, the son of Josh, he's the one who did it did it. He's doing this.
Luckily, his father defends him in verse 31. Joash says, all who are arrayed against him, will you contend for Baal or fight for him, defend him, will you contend for him? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning.
That's what I mean, like he makes a threat. So clearly, I mean, you don't make a threat unless you're willing to follow through. So he's got to be a man of authority in the town. Let's see here.
If he is a god, let him contend for himself because his altar has been pulled down. Therefore, on that day, he was called Jarubba-ball. That is to say, let Baal contend against him. So his father, or rather the town, could be starting with his father, give Gideon a nickname.
I can never pronounce this right? Jarubba-ball. It's kind of a double B's right there. It was kind of a bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu.
This is the labial sound. This is his nickname. Let Baal contend against him. So if you're reading scripture and it refers to his rubber ball, or his rubber ball, then you're going to see that that's Gideon that they're referring to because of this story right here.
So his father has a choice. Just like Gideon had a choice to obey God or to obey his early father. Now his father has a choice, interestingly enough. Is he going to defend his son or stand with the townspeople and punish his son?
Well, luckily he chooses his son. In the same way, is he going to defend Yahweh or is he going to defend Baal? Luckily he chooses Yahweh. So this is actually a good thing I would argue for the household of Gideon and his father, Joash, they choose Yahweh by allowing the altar of Baal to be torn down and then clearly pointing out that if he's a God, then he'll defend himself.
But clearly he's not a God, so forget about it. Nothing's going to happen. He's a false God. Alrighty.
So that's the first moment there in Gideon's little career as judge. The first thing is to destroy the idolatry. And then after that, you can go out to battle.