4 Enriching Lessons From Gideon
He served as Israel’s fifth major judge, and his destruction of baal, the pagan god, earned him the name Jerub-Baal, meaning the destroyer of Baal.
Gideon embodied a rich history of faith that is as edifying today, as it was many thousand years ago. In this piece of content, I share 4 central lessons that can be gleaned from the life of Israel’s fifth judge.
4 Enriching Lessons from Gideon
1. God Looks Beyond You
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon in verse 12 of Judges 6, he gave him a reference that exceeded the limits of his physical reality. He called Gideon a mighty man of valor. Another version refers to him as a mighty soldier.
But, one would have asked how these labels of strength applied to a man who was clearly hiding in the bottom of a grane press from members of the enemy’s camp. How afraid could Gideon have been for him to hide under the bottom of a grane press? And how could the angel of the Lord call a man as timid as this, a mighty man of valor?
You see, there’s how God sees men, and there’s how men see men. There’s how God sees you, and there is how you see you. When the angel of the Lord revealed to Gideon, what God wanted to achieve through him, he timidly responded with a profile of all the reasons he would not make a good fit; a poverty-stricken family, his own social ignobility, and maybe a number of other excuses.
This is to establish the fact that, even Gideon had a quite limited view of himself. Spiritual myopia is only characteristic of men, but never of God. He knows you better than you do. So, when He calls you the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, even in the midst of your struggle with addictions, you better say yes to Him. When He says you are the head and not the tail, even after an F grade in school, you better say yes to Him.
When He calls you the father of many nations, even after a medical report of infertility, like Abraham, you better believe Him.
This is not to say God is oblivious of your present struggles, He is in fact in them with you. But He does not do the calculation of your life in the confines of your weaknesses. He does it according to His grand design, because He looks beyond you.
There was a hiding Gideon, but God saw a mighty man of valor. There is a failing student, but God sees a Nobel Laureate.
God looks beyond you. And I think you should, too!
2. He Qualifies the Chosen:
If you are an active student of the Scriptures, one of the things you must have noticed about God is that, He bursts a natural bubble every time He wants to achieve a mandate. God does not fit into natural boxes. He accomplishes His purposes through unlikely vessels, the most unnoticeable of men. A stammering Moses, an aged Abraham, a young David, and here in this case, a timid Gideon.
The first words God said to Gideon in the fourteenth verse of Judge Chapter 6 is, I will make you strong. God does not use strong people. He makes weak people strong for His own use. He does not have to meet you strong. But He really will make you strong.
God does not choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen. He does things His way, because He does not share His glory. Maybe the feat God achieved through Gideon would not have been prominent as it is now, if He used an already strong man. Because what would have been historic about the conquest of an already strong man, a qualified soldier? God is a buster of bubbles.
3. His Strategy for Victory is Often Different:
Gideon, probably after weighing in his mind the magnitude of the assignment God committed into his hands, amassed an arsenal of men, lots of them. He must have been a proponent of, ‘the more the merrier. He must have thought victory was a direct consequence of quantity. But God had his bubble to burst again, when He told him that his soldiers were too many.
If I was Gideon, I would find this instruction funny, and I am sure you would, too. Gideon himself must have. God ordered a reduction in his troops, because He did not want the Israelites to have something to brag about, when they won. Gideon’s troop went from a whooping 32,000 to 10,000, and then to 300.
And how were these 300 men picked? God told Gideon to divide the 10,000 army into two groups, and watch the way they drank water. The first group comprised of men who cupped water in their hands to lap like dogs. The second group comprised of those who knelt, and reached for the stream with their mouths.
Ultimately, only 300 men drank from their hands. The others drank with their mouths to the stream. This, if you ask me, passes an important message of etiquettes, and good manners. It took a lack of self-control for any man to put his mouth into a stream directly, rather than using a cup. While the goal was that God wanted a significant reduction in Gideon’s troops, an understanding of ethics and manners puts us at a competitive advantage.
How on earth did Gideon conquer the Midian with an army of 300 men?
4. Victory Comes By Obedience to Instructions:
In this Kingdom, we rise and fly by instructions. We do not do autopilot here, neither do we do self-government. Adherence precedes emergence. Every feat God achieved through Gideon happened because there was an instruction, and he obeyed it. He was first instructed to cut down the wooden idol of the goddess Asherah, replace with an altar for the Lord, and sacrifice the best of his father’s ox on it, using the wooden idol for the fire.
What Gideon did after the receipt of this instruction is what we should always do as children of God, whenever God instructs us. Judges 6;27a, So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord had commanded!
Another instruction got to Gideon in the seventh chapter of the book of Judges. Judges 7:9, during the night, with the Midianites camped in the valley just below, the Lord said to Gideon, ‘Get up’! Take your troops and attack the midianites, for I will cause you to defeat them. In verse 10, God told Gideon to go to the enemy’s camp with Purah, if he was afraid. Gideon was a timid man, and he confirmed he actually was afraid by going to the enemy’s camp.
On getting there, he heard them discussing the interpretation of a dream they had, which pointed to the conquest of the Israelites. There and then, a well of confidence surged up in Gideon, and he announced to his men, the conquest of a battle that had not yet began. See, when the movements of your life are dictated by instructions, you win your battles before the fight.
Instructions, and complete obedience to them, are pivotal for conquest in the kingdom. The Believer is designed to win battles unscarred. How did Gideon and his troop of 300 men conquer the Midian armies without lifting a sword? Obedience to instructions! How could an army go to the enemy camp, and rather than launching an attack, begin to blow trumpets and chant words? It made no sense. But God doesn’t do sense, He does signs. He does wonders.
Take it or leave it, the world is full of wars. Maybe you do not have to go to a physical war like Gideon did, but there are contentions against your rising, that need to be confronted. Experience is not an exclusive precursor of expertise. Revelations can make a yielded man, too. Sometimes, you can choose between the two.
You do not always have to learn by experience. Rather than doing life in the finiteness of your failing strength, why don’t you surrender your will to the instructions of the One who has nothing but your best interest at heart?
Think about it: what if Gideon didn’t receive and obey those instructions? He would not have destroyed the wooden idol. He would have gone to war with 32,000 soldiers, instead of the chosen 300. A whole nation would have lost an opportunity to regain their place in God’s purpose.
Instructions are progressional in nature. Obedience to one, leads you to the other, and on and on till the result is yielded.
Your life is too precious for a trial-and-error approach, and does not have to be another experiment with the vicissitudes of life. Yes, you can know the end from the beginning. There’s light for you, in you, on you, and around you.
Are you about to set out on a consequential journey in life, embark on a huge project, or make a long-term decision? If yes, please wait on the Lord for specific instructions. If you are a child of God, then light is your right. Take it!
If you have not received the Life of Christ, but will love to experience the clarity that comes with this Light, kindly send a mail to theferanmioyedele@gmail.com. I will be more than honored to pray with you.
I have been blessed writing this content. I hope you have been blessed reading it, too.
I will see you soon,
Your Friend and Brother,
© The Feranmi Oyedele.
Thank you for sharing, Sir TFO.
ReplyDeleteI was blessed and instructed