Tear Down the Idols

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're going to be talking about Gideon. Gideon, an amazing but complicated person in the Bible. So actually maybe you've heard of a Gideon's Bible. So maybe you've been to a restaurant or a hotel or something like that and they've had one of these Bibles in the drawers, you know. Who was Gideon? How did he come about? What was going on there?
So we're at Judges chapter 6. We're going to just start getting into the story of Gideon today. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray. We'll get into God's Word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. Please help us to read your word, to understand it. We pray that your Holy Spirit would give us wisdom and insight, that we would be wise, Lord, and that we would learn what we are to believe and how we are to behave in Jesus's name. Amen. All right, here we go. Judges chapter six, beginning at verse 11.
Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree, which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abirazite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor.
Gideon said to him, O my Lord, If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.
Then the Lord turned to him and said, Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? So he said to him, O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.
Then he said to him, If now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who walk with me. Do not depart from here, I pray, until I come to you and bring you out my offering and set it before you. And he said, I will wait until you come back.
So Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket and he put the broth in a pot and he brought them out to him under the terebinth tree and presented them. The angel of God said to him, take the meat and unleavened bread and lay them on this rock and pour out the broth. And he did so.
Then the angel of the Lord put the end of the staff that was in his hand, and he touched the meat and the unleavened bread, and fire arose out of the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. And the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. Now Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, Alas, Jehovah God, For I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. Then the Lord said to him, Peace be with you. Do not fear, you shall not die. So Gideon built an altar there to Jehovah and called it, The Lord is Peace.
To this day, it is still in Ofra of the Abizrites. Now it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, take your father's young bull, the second bull of seven years, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the wooden image that is beside it. and build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement, and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down. So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as Jehovah had said to him. But because he feared his father's household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, He did it by night. Well, we're going to end there. It's somewhat of a cliffhanger. We don't know how his father or the people are going to respond. But what is this, A, about? B, what's the best verse? And C, what are we called to do?
So the Midianites have been swarming over like locusts and oppressing the people of Israel. They've cried out to the Lord. He's heard them. And he goes to a very unlikely person, a man who is hiding in Ophrah. Notice he's sat under the terebinth tree while the son of Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress. Why? Because he was afraid. He was hiding it from the Midianites.
And he says, God, the Lord is with you, mighty man of valor. And Gideon asks a very normal human question, doesn't he? Oh my Lord, if Jehovah, if the God of Israel is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where's his miracles? Our fathers told us of all these amazing things. Why is this happening? How is this happening? If this God is real, if the Lord is with us, why is any of this going on? And the Lord turned to him and said, go in your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.
Have I not sent you? He doesn't even answer him. He's gonna show him in a second, but he doesn't actually answer this objection of his right away. He just says, ho, er, back up, I'm sending you. Have I not sent you? I've given you command, and the response isn't to question me back, it's to say, yes, sir. And so how does Gideon respond to this? How? How can I save Israel?
This is not humility. This is fear. I'm weak and I'm from Manasseh. We're the weakest people. What do you mean I'm going to save? And I'm at least in my father's house. You get the sense that Gideon is not the type of man who is confident in himself. And the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. And this is the point. It's not going to be you. It's going to be because I am with you. I am with you.
I'm just going to say that's one of the things I have underlined in my Bible here is this interaction. Surely I will be with you, verse 16. Actually, I'm going to double underline this here. I think verse 16 is an amazing verse. How am I going to do this? I'm the weakest. I'm the least in my father's house. And he says, surely I will be with you and I will defeat the Midianites as one man. This is the Lord's doing. He's gonna do it. He says, where are all these miracles? And the Lord's saying, I'm gonna do one. I've sent you. You may think you're the weakest. But if the Lord is for us, who could be against us, right?
I think that's what this is getting at here. And then we have this whole situation of this preparation of a young goat. And so he presents this young goat. He brings the ephah. It's almost as if he's bringing this full sacrifice to the Lord. Now this is an angel of the Lord. Gideon is not a priest. So how is this happening, right? Hold on.
This is one of those difficult areas where people will say, is the angel of the Lord a theophany? Or is the angel such a messenger of the Lord that he's receiving this worship for the Lord? Or is this a Christophany? Is this somehow the pre-incarnate Christ appearing to Gideon? There's all sorts of theological debate that people have had over this. I'd encourage you, you can go look that up on your own.
But the point being here, right, the angels, the staff just touches the meat after it's laid out on the rock and it catches in the fire, right? And so he's, oh man, this is amazing. The Lord tells him, peace be with you, do not fear, you shall not die. You may have seen face to face the angel of the Lord, but you're not going to die. The Lord is mighty, the Lord is sovereign, the Lord is strong, but Gideon's not going to be undone. And now, here we get at the heart of it.
Why is all this happening? He tells him to go, and his daddy, Instead, he's got two idols. He's got a Baal idol and an Asherah idol. The Asherah idol is like a pole, a wooden pole that's an idol made out of wood. And he's supposed to go and to break down that Baal altar. And then he needs to chop down, cut down the asherah pole. These are fertility cult type poles, all sorts of nasty sexual immorality type stuff going on with it. He needs to cut that down. And then notice what he's supposed to do. Make an altar the way he's supposed to out of unfinished stones, no chisel touching it. And then he needs to take that idol, the asherah, cut it up and use it as firewood.
Take the second bull, right? The first would have been redeemed for the Lord, but the second one, that just goes to show you again the syncretism that's going on in Israel, right? Well, we're Jewish people, and I'm sure they took the first one to Shiloh and offered it to the Lord for redemption, right? The firstborn of all the flock and all the herd was supposed to go to the Lord to redeem. But no, here he's done that, so he takes the second bull. And he's supposed to sacrifice his father's second bull on this new altar to the Lord with the wood from the idol. This is essentially the Lord saying, I'm going to crush Baal, burn up Asherah and show you that they're nothing. They're absolutely nothing. I'm the God of Israel. And what did we find?
Gideon takes ten men of his servants. He must be a pretty decent, well-off man enough. He's got ten servants. But he's too afraid to do it at night. He's afraid of the townspeople. He's afraid of his father, and so he does it at night. To his credit, he does do it. But he does it at night.
How are the people going to respond? What's going to happen? We'll find that out next time. What's the best verse for this? Well, I have verse 16 double underlined, I have 13 underlined, and I have 25 and 26 underlined in my Bible. But maybe you would like something else for best verse to summarize this. Let's talk about real quick, seek calling. What are we called to do? Sometimes we wonder, why is all this coming upon us? Oh God, I don't know why there's this suffering. I don't know why these things are happening.
As if we're surprised. as if we're surprised by either one, that somehow the Lord is all of a sudden mad at our sins when we're engaged in idolatry, or two, because of choices that we've made that bring disrepute upon God and upon His covenant and upon the church.
And three, we just sometimes want to think that the world is super friendly with us and we don't take Jesus's word seriously, that there will be suffering and trials and persecutions. If they hated me, they will hate you also. And number four, sometimes we're caught off guard because we just forget that we're living in a fallen world. A world where the whole created order is groaning for the day of redemption, where things break.
I don't think every single car breaking down is necessarily because of sin, but sometimes the Lord is weaning us from this broken world to make us long for when things are whole again. And so what are we called to do, right? To not find satisfaction in this world. and not to turn our hearts towards idolatry or forget that we were not called for this place. Right?
If Jesus's kingdom was of this world, the world would love him. But his kingdom is from above. And so sometimes we may find ourselves afraid. Sometimes we may be the ones hiding ourselves away. I encourage you, turn away from your idols. Do it boldly. Do it brashly. Do it now. Tear down the ashrams.
Maybe you have sexual immorality in your life. The statistics are scary and it's not just men anymore. I know a number of people, if you've made it this far, very few will, but are you looking and engaging in sexually illicit things. Are you looking at pornography? And what we might not even consider pornography anymore, it's just normal television stuff. It would have been barred from TV just 50 years ago as lewd and obscene. I mean, you don't have to look very far on Netflix or Disney Plus or Hulu or whatever to find stuff that's just Nothing more than sensuality.
That's what the Asherahs were meant to do. That's what the temple cult prostitution was to do. We put it to death. We glorify God with your body. You've been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. You need not be afraid. You don't need to turn back towards sin. You don't need to turn away from the Lord, but you could seek Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And when you sin, you know that He sees you, but you can repent.
You can follow after Him. So go after the Lord today. Go after your idols. It's going well for you. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would please help us. Help us, Lord, to follow after you, to love you. Lord, teach us, show us where the idols are in our own hearts, and help us to turn, turn to love you, turn to seek after you. In Jesus's name we pray. Amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ. May he be such a love to you, such a Lord to you, such a Savior. that He would lead you into all truth, turning away from all sin. I'll see you next time.