THE RISK OF FAITH, PART 6: GIDEON'S FAITH

Judges 6:25-7:22 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
6 February, 2005
All Rights Reserved

The people of Israel were miserable. Spiritual life was at a low. In fact, many people openly worshiped pagan idols. God had taken his hand of protection off of Israel in the land of promise. As a result Midianite and other invaders regularly crisscrossed the land terrorizing the inhabitants and taking all of their food and valuables. God sought out a man to raise up as a judge and military leader, and found him hiding in a cistern carved out of the rock, threshing a little pile of wheat. His name was Gideon and his is a story of unlikely faithfulness. The angel of the Lord approached this man in his hole and said: "The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior."

Has God ever done that to you? Perhaps he did not ask you to rescue an entire nation, maybe just a group of kids in your neighborhood or even your own family. Maybe he asked you to intervene in the lives of abortion-minded women, or to stand up for the moral rights of kids in school being required to read evil things. Maybe God wanted you to be a warrior for the inerrancy of the Bible, or for true ecclesiology. Or perhaps your seemingly impossible faith challenge is simply to turn yourself over to him with nothing held back. He brings that last challenge to everyone.

It must have seemed impossible to Gideon that God would use him in spite of his fears and uncertainty. His story is a goldmine of truth about how God works when he asks us to embrace some risky thing by faith. What should we expect when we choose to follow God into a venture of faith?

1. We should expect to have to do things we never wanted to do. Once Gideon was ready to follow the Lord he became the Lord's instrument to confront pagan practices in Israel: "Now on the same night the LORD said to him, "Take your father's bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down." Then Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the LORD had spoken to him; and because he was too afraid of his father's household and the men of the city to do it by day, he did it by night" (Judges 6:25-27).

It has been said that leaders are people who are willing to do things that others are not willing to do. By definition, God's faith challenge invites us to move into things we would have chosen not to do, if possible. Gideon was afraid of the reaction from the compromised Israelites and with good reason, but here we see him choosing to trust God. When he took his men and chopped down the abominable phallic Asherah and then set up an altar to the One True God Gideon had turned the corner and thrown himself upon the Lord. I guarantee that he did not know how it would turn out, and neither will we when we launch a venture of faith. He was, in fact, still filled with fears. That means we should not wait till our fears are gone until we choose to trust God. We should not wait until all the arrangements are in hand and there is no longer any uncertainty. God asks for a naked act of faith: trust him alone, no matter what you fear. Gideon did a thing no one wanted to do by confronting the evil of idol worship in Israel, and we'll have to do the same.

2. In a venture of faith we should expect to put our lives on the line. By his act of faithfulness Gideon had his life threatened immediately: "When the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was torn down, and the Asherah which was beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar which had been built. They said to one another, "Who did this thing?" And when they searched about and inquired, they said, "Gideon the son of Joash did this thing." Then the men of the city said to Joash, "Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has torn down the altar of Baal, and indeed, he has cut down the Asherah which was beside it" (Judges 6:28-30).

Would you risk your life to save a life? How about your bank account? your house? your car? If you might do one of those things, what would you do to save people from eternal destruction? I mean, what good is it to save earthly lives and leave people to go to hell?

Sam and Diana Fritz were church planters in our district and spoke in our church. Diana's sister, Kathi, went recently with a short-term medical missions team to Nepal. As we speak the government has collapsed, martial law has been instituted, and people are being slain in the streets. The team is in a small village away from the capital, but to get out they have to get back to the capital--which they cannot--and anyway all flights have been cancelled. Do we say that Kathi and her team were foolish to accept the risk of that ministry? We cannot. It's the only way the ministry gets done. The question is not whether there is some way to move in faith which has no risk attached because there isn't. The only question we have to answer is whether we will move in faith or try to sit quietly in unbelief.

3. We should expect only a few people of great faith to stand with us at first. Gideon found a staunch defender in Joash: "But Joash said to all who stood against him, "Will you contend for Baal, or will you deliver him? Whoever will plead for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because someone has torn down his altar." Therefore on that day he named him Jerubbaal, that is to say, "Let Baal contend against him," because he had torn down his altar" (Judges 6:31-32).

Thank God for Joash who supported Gideon in doing what was obviously right. When you are the one stepping out in faith you must remember that you do not need a people movement to prove that you are following God. You should expect to be fairly lonely, at least at first. And if you are the one who sees someone else stepping into the risk of faith you should support them. You be the Joash who refutes the critics and reminds everyone of spiritual reality.

I have a vivid memory of learning about the loneliness of doing a work of faith as I led the steering committee and later board of directors of the Rockland Pregnancy Counseling Center, now called CareNet. It seemed odd to me that my own denominational leaders not only did not support me, but spoke against me. A long-since departed leader at our seminary treated me as an undesirable person who was doing something illegitimate by seeking volunteers among those training for ministry. Another leader told me that if I was founding a crisis pregnancy center that I was probably failing my church. Was that faith venture worth it? Almost two decades later hundreds of babies' lives have been saved and hundreds of people have received Christ. What do you think?

4. We should expect God to meet our faith by sending his Spirit on us in a special way. Gideon experienced the Old Covenant version of the filling of the Holy Spirit: "Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the sons of the east assembled themselves; and they crossed over and camped in the valley of Jezreel. So the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon; and he blew a trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called together to follow him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, and they also were called together to follow him; and he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet them" (Judges 6:33-35).

One of the distinctives of our movement is the teaching that when the Holy Spirit comes upon you he seeks to empower you for ministry. Gideon needed to do something supernatural, and so God sent his Spirit upon him in the Old Covenant way. I suspect that you may not always recognize when the Spirit comes upon you to do a work of faith because suddenly the supernatural seems normal at that moment. Somehow Gideon went from hiding in a cistern for fear of the invaders to thinking: "Now I'm going to call some guys together and we're going to kick the Midianites out of here!" The people whom God has anointed for specific supernatural tasks often seem to think that what they are doing is normal when the rest of us can see different.

This is why I think David was moving in the Holy Spirit when he confronted Goliath. The whole army of Israel was in terror and David said: "Who is this who taunts the army of the living God?" While every normal person was shaking in his boots David was thinking: "Why doesn't somebody just go out there and defeat this guy?" And then he did! The key is that David had learned to trust the Lord for protection in the wilderness as a shepherd, and so he thought it was normal to trust the Lord for protection from Goliath. Moving in faith had become a way of life for him. When we embrace the risk of faith we open the door for a filling of the Holy Spirit.

5. When we embrace the risk of faith we should expect to find our faith wobbling and to have God encouraging us to go forward as Gideon did: "Then Gideon said to God, "If You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken." And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, "Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground." God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground" (Judges 6:36-40).

One of the things which always perplexed me about this passage is why, after all of the signs from God, did Gideon ask for more? Why wasn't his sense of uncertainty vanquished by all the encouragements God gave him? I think I know the answer. Faith doesn't make the risk go away! The Midianites had not yet been vanquished. So when you and I move into a work of faith we should not assume that our trust in the Lord will make our feelings fall totally in line. The Lord may give that to us as a gift, but most of the time there is a battle to walk by faith and not by sight or emotions.

6. We should expect to be forced to trust God's resources, not our own, as Gideon did: "Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him, rose early and camped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moreh in the valley. The LORD said to Gideon, "The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, 'My own power has delivered me.' Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, 'Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead.'" So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the LORD said to Gideon, "The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, 'This one shall go with you,' he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, 'This one shall not go with you,' he shall not go." So he brought the people down to the water. And the LORD said to Gideon, "You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink." Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The LORD said to Gideon, "I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home." So the 300 men took the people's provisions and their trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley" (Judges 7:1-8).

This is hilarious! Instead of lowering the risk of faith God increased it by cutting down the army to an impossibly small number. Why did he do that? Because God is jealous for his own glory, and he wanted to make sure that no one would steal it. That means that God may not choose to affirm our stepping into the risk of faith by giving us an abundance of earthly resources. In the five years in which I was actively overseeing the Rockland Pregnancy Counseling Center we never knew from month to month if we would have to close our doors. It is more to God's glory that the ministry continues saving babies and souls to this day with a history like that. The place of that ministry on the landscape is not fixed by dollars but by the Lord. The only reason it's there is because the Lord wants it to be there. When we launch a work of faith we should expect to have to trust God's resources, not our own.

7. We should expect God to give dreams, visions, and revelations as he did for Gideon: "Now the same night it came about that the LORD said to him, "Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hands. But if you are afraid to go down, go with Purah your servant down to the camp, and you will hear what they say; and afterward your hands will be strengthened that you may go down against the camp." So he went with Purah his servant down to the outposts of the army that was in the camp. Now the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore. When Gideon came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend. And he said, "Behold, I had a dream; a loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat." His friend replied, "This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given Midian and all the camp into his hand" (Judges 7:9-14).

Don't tell me that God does not meet faith with dreams, visions, and revelations any more! We have a missionary in Guinea, West Africa, named J.D. Dueck who was traveling on his motorbike in a brightly colored shirt and stopped in a small village. He greeted the chief in the Pular language who stared back at him with wide eyes. The chief replied to the greeting by explaining that his wife had a dream that a white man would come wearing a colorful shirt and greet them in the Pular language! The people decided that J.D. was a messenger from God and so they all came to hear him tell them the story of God beginning with Abraham. Gideon was given a dream through another, J.D. was given such a dream, and when you and I step out in faith we should expect God to do the same for us.

8. In a venture of faith we should expect to be doing things other people think are stupid: "When Gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. He returned to the camp of Israel and said, "Arise, for the LORD has given the camp of Midian into your hands." He divided the 300 men into three companies, and he put trumpets and empty pitchers into the hands of all of them, with torches inside the pitchers. He said to them, "Look at me and do likewise. And behold, when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I and all who are with me blow the trumpet, then you also blow the trumpets all around the camp and say, 'For the LORD and for Gideon'" (Judges 7:15-18).

This was a crazy thing for Gideon to do--crazy like a fox! The Midianites probably thought that they were surrounded by a giant army. What is crazy in the eyes of those with no faith may be the very thing God wants us to do. Get used to it.

9. Finally, when we follow God by faith into a venture which looks foolish we should expect to discover that God is faithful as Gideon did: "When the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers, they held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing, and cried, "A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!" Each stood in his place around the camp; and all the army ran, crying out as they fled. When they blew 300 trumpets, the LORD set the sword of one against another even throughout the whole army; and the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the edge of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath" (Judges 7:20-22). Gideon was not disappointed by God. You will not be either. What God promises he will do. What work of faith is before you? What ministry? What risk? Perhaps you should go into full-time ministry, take a missions trip, or fund something visionary. Maybe you should take on some regular church ministry or open your home for a p-group. Or perhaps the point of this message is that you are long overdue to simply commit your whole life into God's hands with nothing held back. Christ has already given everything for you. What is holding you back? Take the risk of faith. God will not disappoint you.