The sword of the Lord! ...and of Gideon

 

I Started Judges this week and it turns out it's not about judges. It's about military heroes. There has been one passage in particular that I just can't stop thinking about and its judges 6:11-16

Basically its Gideon's call to become a Judge. 

An angel comes over to him and is like “hey Gideon, the Lord is with thee”

And Gideon is a little confused and asks the angel

“If the Lord is with me, then why do I have trials? Where are all the miracles? The lord has forsaken us!”

And the angel is like “Go and save Israel! The lord is with thee”

Gideon still has more concerns and says “but I'm a nobody! And my family is poor!”

And the angel says “I am with thee. And becuase I'm with you freeing Israel will be super easy”

I love how the answer to “why do we have trials?” Taught here is “Go.”

Like go, act, be faithful and do something. I have definitely received that answer during some of my trials before. 

The other important thing is how often the message “the Lord is with you” is stressed. He really is with us always, especially during our trials because he went through all of our trials. 

Gideon's words here at the beginning of his story look very faithless. But through small steps of faith he became an absolute legend, a Judge. 

The first thing Gideon needed to do was destroy a altar used for worshipping a false God and build a correct altar in its place. He was a little hesitant but still set on obeying God. So he got 10 of his friends and one night they destroyed all if it! The people that liked the fake God wanted to Kill Gideon but his dad was like “if Baal is real then he'll kill my son himself and he didn't so turns out baal is fake” so Gideon got a cool nickname and taught us all about repentance. Gaddda remove the sins and fill in the holes left behind with God. This is mega true with addictions- remove your fake God and replace the habit with things that bring you closer to God. Like old Testament sacrifices. . .kinda (reading about them)

Later when God asks him to send 22,000 of his soldiers home he doesn't even hesitate and boom he's left with 10,000. 

Again, when God asks him to send home 9,700 there's no hesitation. He didn't say “God- that's a lot. That'll only leave me with 300! Don't you know how many Midianites there are?!”

Actually, he did have one little moment of weakness in chapter 7:10-15. But this shows he was human. Actually, maybe it shows even more faith in Gideon. Because he was a little scared but still obeyed all of God's commandments because knew it would turn out well in the end. What happend was God was like “BTW, I'd you're scared just go talk to your friend, Phura. Turns out Phura was dreaming about a loaf of bread and a tent falling over. After Gideon heard this he knew he was gonna win and wasn't scared anymore. 

I know that when we have trials one of the most important things we can do, like Gideon, is to ‘Go’ to act in faith, trust God, and keep going. 

We will always come off conqueror when we choose to ‘Go’

Just for the sake of the story I'll tell you what Gideon and his 300 do. Through instruction from God, Gideon splits the 300 into 3 groups of 100 and they all get their own trumpet, clay pitcher, and a lamp. Gideon says “do as I'm doing follow follow me”(J 7:17) he tells them were gonna chuck pur pitchers so they break and then blow the trumpets and yell “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. 

Simple easy plan.

So they surround the enemy camps at about 10:00 pm and they do it. And just like that everybody kills everybody else. Not a single one of the 300 were injured in any way, except maybe a piece of a pitcher hit one of them lol. But they were all 100% ok. 

In chapter 8 some people refuse to help him continue his conquest (they were scared he was going to lose the war and the midianites were gonna come punish them for helping) so Gideon promises he will win and promises to throw some thorns at them and then he wins and he does throw thorns at them…

And that's it.

I know that God's way is always better. Even if it means getting a band of 300 to all play the trumpet to fight a legit war instead of an army. God's way is always the best. I know when it gets tough we just need to “Go” and everything will be ok.