40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 6:1-24 (Episode 203)

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

To the surprise of no one, Israel engages in idolatry again and finds themselves oppressed by their enemies. Jesus calls Gideon to deliver the people but Gideon is hesitant and wants a sign. Bad things happen when you refuse to listen to God.  Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Great Freedom Conference in Germany Freedom Conference in Stockholm Donate  

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. Also, go to the events page. Man, coming up real quick, Chad and I are going to be down in Houston, Texas. Not too far from where Chad is now. I mean, Chad's going to drive to this event.

So if you're where Chad is, I mean, Chad can do it. So can you. If you're in the great state of Texas, yeah, come hang out in Houston, Texas. February 22nd, we're going to be down at St. Mark, Houston. So I'll put a link in the show notes, or you can go over to the events page on 1517, get all the information. It's a free event. It's just all day on Saturday, and you can just register.

You don't have to register, but it gives us an idea of how many people are coming so we can tell those taco trucks how many people to expect eating that lunch. Come on down. Also, if you're in the Las Vegas area or maybe you're in Southern California, we're going to be in Las Vegas on March 21st. so that event also free sign up show up link in the show notes you can get the information on the website as well also if you're over there in europe we're going to be in germany and sweden the first two weeks of may we're excited about that two conferences so for our german listeners

and our swedish listeners we'd love to hang out with you don't worry they're going to have translators but i'm assuming if you're listening to this podcast you're good to go so uh you can get the information for that also in the show notes just scroll down to the to the bottom of the page here if you're listening on an app or if you're listening online and there's a link for both of those all right chad what is going on man we got an exciting guy yeah we do we have uh we have mr gideon coming up actually we're going to be talking about him for the next well three chapters for sure and even the the fourth chapter judges chapter nine has uh it's kind of the uh i don't if you want to call it the legacy or the fallout from from Gideon so really Judges six through nine

are either about Gideon or what happens immediately after his his death with one of his one of his sons and uh we were as we were talking before we actually started the the podcast Gideon's one of those interesting characters because you you read his life and you get to the end it's like things didn't really improve for Gideon yeah so well we'll get there we don't we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves but he's he's actually he's fascinated me for uh for a number of years now I did a research project on him back I think it was back when I was a professor just uh kind of comparing his life with Moses and we'll we'll get to this too because what he does comes up in a highly charged messianic section of Isaiah. So we'll take a look at that maybe

next podcast. But anyway, there's a lot of good stuff about Gideon. And we kind of get to know him as a person pretty well too, because there's a lot of explicit language about his fears and his hesitations. So we have to just kind of read between the lines and judge what's going on inside them on the basis of their actions but in the case of gideon it's actually made explicit some of his cowardice and some of his fears and some of his misgivings and hesitations so interesting interesting character for a number of reasons and that's certainly true of judges i mean really uh if gideon and samson are the guys that you get like a ton of backstory you feel like you kind of know these these characters a lot of these other judges you have a guy just pop up and you're

you're like or a woman pop up and you're like man i wish i had more colors to paint with here but it's you know it's it's 25 verses and that's it you know it's done yeah yeah so with both these characters with gideon with samson we have multiple chapters devoted to their their lives and their personalities so by the time we get to the end yeah we got we get a pretty good picture of what they were what they were like isn't it funny that the two guys that you get the most information about the more it seems that this is true in the bible the more information you get the more sin you get they do seem to go hand in glove don't they yeah like it's like more information has not served anyone well uh as as they as they're describing biblical characters

lives yeah yeah as i've said this somewhere before that's one of the reasons that i i'm very glad i did not live in biblical times because if somehow i was in like the wrong situation at the wrong time and i ended up becoming part of the story i you probably wouldn't be good and my my misdeeds would be recorded for for all posterity to read about so yeah i'm kind of glad that somehow i did not work uh work my way into the bible yeah okay so mr gideon uh he uh he follows on the heels of deborah and barack and jael which we which we talked about last time actually last two times because judges four and five are all about that story so the first prose the second poetry so when we get to when we get to chapter six the last thing that we've heard from chapter five

is that the land was undisturbed or the land had rest for 40 years. And anytime we see that, you can pretty much anticipate what's going to happen next. Because anytime the land has rest for any number of years, the verse that follows that is going to have something to do with the Israelites misbehaving again in order that that rest ends. And that's precisely what we encounter as we jump into chapter 6. It starts out with an actually fairly long section. It doesn't just say the Israelites did evil. It says that multiple different ways,

and it also describes in pretty graphic detail exactly what happened as a result of that. And on the heels of that, we have a very interesting section, which is verse 7 through 10, where this unnamed prophet shows up with a message of judgment, a prophetic rebuke that he delivers to Israel. So all of that's going to happen actually before we meet Gideon, kind of sets the stage for the calling of this judge. So we begin that the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hands of Midian for seven years. It says the power, the hand, literally the hand of Midian

prevailed against Israel, and because of Midian, the Israelites made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds. So we'll stop there for a second. So, you know, we've, of course, we've been at this podcast for a long time, and so we have heard about Midian on multiple occasions. It's kind of interesting to track Israel's relationship with Midian, because it kind of ebbs and flows. And it seems like the farther we get into the story, the worse the relationship between Israel and Midian becomes. The first time we'll hear about them is actually all the way back in the book of Genesis, because they were actually distant relatives of the Israelites, because they were the descendants of the second wife of

Abraham, whose name was Keturah. So we know that they're connected with Israel, as were a lot of these peoples around Israel, like the Edomites, for instance. So the Midianites, they had that connection with early connection with the Israelites. And most of what we hear early on is actually positive because you remember that when Moses fled from Egypt after he killed the Egyptian. He ended up staying there with Jethro, who was a Midianite. He married one of his daughters, Zipporah. And then, of course, once Moses gets back with the Israelites to Mount Sinai, they're in that land of Midian. And, you know, Moses' father-in-law, he kind of helps to organize the civil framework of Israel. You know, he tries to take some of the burden off of Moses.

so early on it seems like yeah there's a yeah there's a pretty good kind of working relationship between the israelites and midianites and then everything begins to kind of go downhill because the uh the incident where israel at bel power you know in israel the israelite guys got to hanging out with the uh the non-israelite girls and then you had idolatry taking place and then you had uh the zeal of uh phineas you know comes in and he catches the the couple he kills phineas you know he catches them uh in the act and puts a spear through both of them well the man was an israelite and the woman was a midianite and because of that god uh kind of decreed uh some destruction against the midianites and from from that point on things weren't weren't

very good between Israel and the Midianites for understandable reasons. So what happens here in Judges chapter six is kind of the ongoing tension that happens between Egypt, between Israel and this distant relative of theirs. So for seven years, it says that Israel was being plagued basically by not just Midian, because it goes on to say that the Midianites would, they'd cross the jordan where they'd come up from the negev and it wouldn't be just them and it says would also be the the amalekites and then we have this kind of generic reference to the beneketim which are the the easterners more or less the sons of the east so it's just kind of a general description of people who lived east of the jordan so you have at least three possibly more people groups

the midianites the amalekites the amalekites being the ancient enemies of israel all the way back from the exodus days and whoever these sons of the east are so they would they would come across the jordan and they basically invade the land of israel not so much to not so much to kill people but just to destroy everything so it said they would camp they would not just like send in a raiding party and bring their tents and their and their livestock they'd camp and it says they would destroy the produce of the earth as far as gaza so gaza being one of the philistine cities on the mediterranean coast kind of the southwest part of the land of israel so all the way in other words from the jordan all the way to the mediterranean from coast to coast from sea i mean from from

river to sea we might say and it says they would come in and i like this simile that's used it said they would come up with their livestock in their tents and they would come in like locusts without number. Now that particular choice of language is significant because, of course, locusts are associated with plagues. And so these people were, it's kind of like the situation's been reversed. Instead of God plaguing Egypt, for instance, he's now bringing a plague upon Israel in the form of these enemy peoples who are invading them. They come up, they camp, they bring all of their livestock and the livestock is basically eating up all of the produce of the ground. So it's springtime, maybe late winter, the crops are growing, the animals are devouring all of this

and they devastated the land. And the long and short of this, verse six, is that Israel was literally, they were made small, belittled, we might say in English. My translation has, they were brought very low because of Midian. And as a result of this, the Israelites do what they always do. They cry out to the Lord. And probably what they were crying out was like, oh, woe is me. Why is this happening to me? All the while disregarding the fact that everything happening to them had already been built into the covenant, right? God said, listen to me and worship me only. And if you don't, well, here's what's going to happen. Enemy peoples are going to invade you and you're going to lose your crops and all this bad stuff is going to happen to

you and lo and behold that's precisely what happens here for uh for the israelites it seems like every time this happens it's idolatry at the root right always yeah yeah i think this is one of the reasons why like when you have you know luther say that and he's just riffing on on the new testament when he says this but that you know like all all the breaking of the commandments are the breaking of the first commandment that's where everything else stems from because it's not like you get a text that says uh and the people weren't doing great uh keeping the sabbath and then god you know sold them into slavery or something or people were people you know then then certain people in the nation of israel uh started coveting their neighbor's stuff and you know so god

they were swept away into captivity or something like that you know it's always like you worship with some other gods not listening to my voice anymore listening to the voice of someone else and then everything goes to hell yeah yeah it all it always begins there throughout the well throughout the scriptures but we see this over and over in the old testament and it's it's a good reminder i mean you do have of course prophets speaking out against those who abuse widows and orphans and do other things like that but it's all traced back to a false worship so breaking the first commandment becomes the the gateway to the breaking of all the other commandments and if you notice all of the kings once once we get there all of the kings are evaluated not on how well

they did with the economy or how well they did with building projects or how well they did with military campaigns it all goes back to one thing and one thing only how well they did with regard to first commandment issues did they support the worship of yahweh and yahweh alone or do they try and mix in the worship of Baal and Asherah or Phoenician deities or whoever, whoever it might be. I mean, it's, it's the old Testament is, is it's just as clear as clear can be that every single, all sins in the plural begins with one sin. And that one sin is always trying to sleep with other deities, always abandoning the worship of the one God, making him jealous. And then all hell breaks loose and this makes sense because when you abandon god as your god what goes along

with that is you abandon fashion of sin and then and then you've you've run away from absolution at this point right so so like now you have the the compounding of sins going on so uh if you're no longer listening to what god has to say and you're substituting him with some other god or you're substituting him with some other god who hasn't promised to forgive your sins in this way, and now you have a real disaster on your hands. I mean, this might sound—I don't know, maybe I'll get in trouble for saying this, but the real danger of worshiping some other god—this goes for us too—is that when we worship some other god, we're not worshiping a god who has the ability to remove our transgression. Oh yeah, that's absolutely it. This is the problem,

them and then and then what do you then what do you got well then you got to pay for your own transgression yeah oh i think that's exactly right yeah i mean it all goes back to that uh and we see we don't have to look in the old testament we can just kind of pay attention what's going on around us right yeah yeah i mean this is this is something that uh david's all made abundantly clear in his book on secularity right that we you no matter what your particular small r religion might be what that is is your guilt management system, right? That's your religion. So what are you going to do? You got all this guilt. Well, you no longer have a God who freely forgives you on account of Christ, but you still have a God who requires sacrifice, right? So it's going to be up

to you to administer your own kind of self-atonement as soon as you abandon the God of grace. And that in turn is going to lead to even greater despair, um, and self-loathing and worry and, and all the other things that come with not being sure that God actually loves you and forgives you. Yeah. Anyway, uh, that's, that's, that's the story of Israel. And, uh, God wanted to make abundantly clear to them. They cried out. Okay. Verse six, and God's going to have a few words of his own to say he's gonna he's gonna cry out something too verse 7 through 10 says that they cried out to the lord on account of midian and so what did god do it's kind of interesting he didn't we would expect at this point this because of the the overall cycle of the book of judges

that okay people would sin this bad stuff happens they cry out god raises up a deliverer but before we get to that deliverer, we have a prophetic announcement. So God's going to make abundantly clear that what we were just talking about is the case. So he sends this prophet, we're not told his name, and he says kind of a basic kind of prophetic sermon. He says, this is what God, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all your oppressors and dispossessed them before you and gave you their land. Let me pause it for a second. In other words, I did all this for you. You didn't do it for yourself. I did all this because that's

the kind of God I am. I'm the God of Israel. I'm not the God of Egypt. I'm not the God of Edom. i'm not the god of the canaanites i'm the god of israel i've claimed you as my own and you are in this covenant with me and i did all this because i love you and i've chosen you and you're precious in my eyes okay so that's kind of the general message i did all these things for you verse 10 is the is the the conclusion of this short prophetic announcement and i said to you i am the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites and whose land you live, but you have not listened to my voice. Which, of course, is usually translated, you have not obeyed me. But in the Hebrew, you haven't listened to my voice. And when it says you shall not fear the gods of

the Amorites, you should take fear here, not in the typical English sense of be afraid. Usually, not always, but usually in the Old Testament, when you talk about fearing a God, that is another way of saying worship. So in the Old Testament, very frequently, to be one who fears God just simply means that you're one who worships him. It's a posture of faith which is expressed through worship. That's how you fear the Lord your God. So anyway, that's, in other words, what just we were talking about, right? God did all this, and he says, I'm the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods, you shall not worship the gods or the Amorites, and that's exactly what they've I love the language of did not listen to me. It's better than the language of didn't obey me, because obedience, it's not this shocking thing that someone would be disobedient at times.

But I remember growing up, I think I've done this with my daughter as well, there'd be sometimes my disobedience was so flagrant that it's shocking, so that my dad wouldn't say, don't disobey me. like there'd be times where he would tell me something and then i would go do that thing and he would say did you hear what i said like it's so shocking to him that like deafness is must be the the only explanation for how absurd i'm acting do your ears not work yeah did you ever have your dad say this or ever say this to your kids like did you not did you not hear what i just said right yeah we should start translating it

that way god's like i said all these things were you not listening did you not hear what i said well yeah well you see this language too where it talks about people stopping up their ears and this kind of stuff it's just like this refusal to listen and sometimes you know as a parent you know this when anyone god is these are the children of israel and god the father and yeah it seems that there's times that god's like i can't believe that this is even happening right yeah right yeah oh israel uh what okay so here that's the situation we're in uh they're not listening and uh they're they've they have the the basic point of this prophetic announcement is they should have seen this coming right god told them this is part of the covenant

and they're crying out to the lord uh but you know it's it's like okay you're crying out in the midst of a situation for which there is only one responsible party and it's you this is not the this is not the fault of midianites or the amalekites or the sons of the east or the devil or whoever you want to blame i mean this is squarely on israel's shoulders and uh they're just kind of reaping the fruits of their misguided labor. So, verse 11, what's going to happen? Well, finally, we get to our friend Gideon. And this is such a great narrative. Right away, there's something, even though Gideon has a lot of really kind of not admirable qualities, There are things that I kind of like about him.

And one of these is kind of his blunt honesty, which we're going to hear right away. So here's how the story goes. First of all, it says the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it for the Midianites. That's one verse. I mean, the whole, the biblical writer has really painted the whole scene for us, right? So you've got, you've got all the people involved.

You've got the whole scene, not only the whole scene described to you, but because of the way it's described, you understand why he is where he's at. So you've got him in space and time in a certain kind of situation. You know who his dad is, you know what tribe they're from. and the angel shows up. All this is compressed into one verse. So what's going on? Well, first of all, this is the angel that we have talked about off and on all the way from the opening chapters of Genesis. This is the Malak Yahweh, the messenger of the Lord. So this is not a created angel. Instead, this is the father's messenger, the father's word. This is his son who comes down very frequently in the Old Testament to talk to his people. So he doesn't wait for Christmas to

finally show up. He's always been there, appearing and reappearing, talking, leading, sometimes judging and rebuking. But this is Christ, the Son, coming down in this particular case to have a conversation with Gideon. So Christ is there, this messenger of the Father, and he takes a seat under this tree, this oak tree, which is in a place called Ophrah, which we're not really sure where that's located. I mean, there's some pretty good guesses, but it's in the Jezreel Valley anyway, kind of a little bit halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean, a little bit closer to the sea of galilee probably but anyway uh gideon is this gideon's dad is named joash and he's from this clan called the aviez rights and as we'll find out in a minute they're from

the tribe of manasseh and he's he's in a wine press beating out wheat this is not where you're supposed to do this right if you're if you're threshing wheat you don't know the threshing floor of course that's why they're called that and you separate you know as much as that you can that the stalks and whatnot from uh from the grain and the chaff and then once you kind of move the straw away then you wait for a good wind and you you throw what's uh what's the remainder up into the air and the wind blows the chaff away and the grain falls to the to the threshing floor that's the way you do it but they can't the problem is they can't do that because most of these threshing floors were out in the open where they'd be getting plenty of airflow right maybe they're

up on a small hill or something well if you do that then you're going to give away your hiding place from the Midianite to the Midianites and they're going to come and they're going to take away all your all your grain so he's in a very bad place to be doing this particular activity I mean he could like do the threshing he could do the separating of the of the wheat from the chat or the straw from the chaff and the grain, because kind of the way these wine presses were set up, you had two depressions, one a little bit lower than the other. And in a wine press, you put the grapes in the upper depression and stomp them, and then the liquid would run down into the lower one. So he's down there. There's no way that he can separate the wheat from the

chaff down there, but I guess he's doing the best he can do. And Jesus shows up, the Son of God shows up while this is going on. Verse 12, he appears and he says to Gideon, the Lord is with you, O valiant warrior. First of all, we don't know why he's called a valiant warrior because there's no indication whatsoever that Gideon has any kind of military experience. Maybe this is like a compliment, or maybe this is like a forward-looking, like you're going to be a valiant warrior. But anyway, whatever the reason is, that's the way he addresses him. And he does say, the Lord is with you. But listen to Gideon's response. Gideon is just like right back at him. Oh, my Lord. Well, if the Lord is with us, then why 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 out of Egypt. But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian. See, you kind of got to appreciate Gideon. At least I do anyway. I mean, I like his honesty because he doesn't really know who this person is first. I don't think he realizes it's an angel. But he says the Lord is with you. And Gideon's response is kind of like to look around and say, you know, I'm in a wine press. threshing grain because of Midian. So if God is with us, then I need some evidence of this because it sure seems like he's just abandoned us into the hand of Midian. Yeah. There's nothing like saying to Jesus, the Lord has abandoned us.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. When he says the Lord is with you, there's a lot more packed into that than I think Gideon realizes. yeah like i actually am the lord so i am with you yeah like there's two of us down here one of us is the lord right right yeah well i mean i like getting his honesty but at the same time you have to acknowledge that well the lord hasn't abandoned you and given you into the hand of midian because you were like these models of faithfulness to the covenant or something the reason all this has happened the reason that you are faced with all these difficulties and the

Midianites are oppressing you is precisely because of what the prophet said a few verses prior to this anyway that's that's how the conversation begins but the it seems that that the son of God isn't really interested in having kind of a theological debate at this point because he verse 14 just looks at him and says go in this your strength and deliver israel from the hand of midian have i not sent you so this is uh there's a lot of parallels between what happens here with the call of gideon and what happens in exodus 3 and 4 with the call of moses i mean they're not like perfect parallels but there are some there are some parallels between these And this is where we kind of begin to see the connections.

And that first one is verse 15. So God is calling Gideon to do this, but Gideon objects. And his objection is based upon his own sense of not being strong enough or not being old enough or not being experienced enough. He says, oh lord how shall i deliver israel behold my family is the least in manasseh and i am the youngest in my father's house i mean there's some there's some parallels you could draw here with moses because of course moses makes all these excuses you know i go to egypt i have to tell them what your name is and they're not going to believe me and i don't know how to talk and just

send somebody else so moses has this whole string of excuses and of course this whole uh complaint about being like from a small family and being young that fits with Saul that fits with David as well so this is pretty typical kind of response when an individual in the Old Testament is called to do something Isaiah is kind of the only I guess he's the only exception to this at least the only exception that I'm aware of you know Isaiah's all gung-ho you know here am I send me send me uh but this is the way of getting response and then god responds back surely i will be with you and you shall defeat midian as one man that's another parallel to uh exodus chapter three because that phrase surely i will be with you is almost verbatim what uh god tells to moses and in exodus

chapter three when he says i will be with you in fact here's my name and he gives him his name as as uh as i am in exodus 3 so i'm gonna be with you and not only am i gonna be with you like to help you out but the fact that i'm with you is going to be enough so that as one man just as an individual you would be able to to defeat midian yeah so he's he's sort of he's working his way to persuading gideon but as we're about to see gideon is is not convinced he wants a sign And this is another aspect of Gideon that we're going to see repeatedly. He's always asking for signs. He's for double signs.

He wants multiple affirmations that God is with him. So God is going to give him a sign in just a second. They're going to have the whole, you know, fleece later. Then when he's about to attack the camp of the Midianites, we have the example of the dream that he hears. So there's a lot of kind of like, you got this Gideon that has to go on between God and Gideon. So he says, if I found favor in your sight, well, then show me a sign that it's actually you. Presumably that it's you, the angel of the Lord, who's speaking with me. And he tells him to stay there, and he's going to come back and bring an offering.

And so he says, yeah, I'll wait here for you. so Gideon goes and he prepares unleavened bread all this flour ton of flour and he gets meat in a basket broth in a pot and he brings us all back to the messenger and presents it before him and he kind of lets the angel the messenger take over from there he says the messenger says take the meat and the unleavened bread put them on the rock pour out the broth and he does that and then the messenger put out the end of the staff that's in his hand and touch the meat and unleavened bread and fire springs up from the rock and consumes the meat and the unleavened bread and then he just disappears the messenger vanishes from his sight so this was i mean

i don't know about you dan i mean if i saw that that'd be that'd be pretty uh pretty confirming sign for me i think that'd be that'd be pretty convincing yeah i think i would do it i mean i mean the next verse is and then my translation is uh then gideon perceived that it was the angel of the lord and i'm like i would say so yeah right yeah it's probably a pretty good indication yeah i mean he has the same fear that a lot of people do when uh when they're confronted with with uh this kind of divine appearance he says alas the lord god for now i have seen the malik yahweh the messenger of the Lord face to face. So we have this quite frequently, of course, where people think they're

going to die when this happens, which is just not really congruent with everything that happened because he just told him, you're going to be the man, right? You're going to be the guy who delivers Israel. So you're not going to die, but it just shows you, I mean, I suppose if I was in that situation, I'd be kind of scared for my life too. I mean, you just saw this guy stick out his staff and flame leaped up consumed everything on the rock and the guy just vanishes like that so i can't slight gideon from being a little bit uh a little bit fearful for his life it seems that there's a correct you know theology that says if you if you see the face of god that you're gonna die now probably gideon's trinitarian theology is like not real up to snuff at this

point yeah i don't think he had that he hadn't had that class yet no he hadn't taken that class so he doesn't understand that uh there's there's only one way for you to see god and certainly live and this is to this is to see christ and so but this is not these aren't categories he's working with he's not like ah i've seen the messiah great yeah well chances are uh and we're about to i don't know if we'll get to it today but next time we're about to see that he wasn't he wasn't exactly raised in what we might call a in orthodox theological household yeah i mean he we we know that he knew about yahweh because he says that right i mean he said that back in whatever whatever verse that was uh right after they the angel appears to him yeah he says yeah we're all

these miracles which our fathers told him told us about so it's it's kind of one of these it's just a strange situation in Judges, where you have Gideon, whose father is Joash, and Joash and other men, it's not like they haven't told their children about what God did. That's a strange thing. It's like, you know, these stories were told and retold. So Gideon, and presumably all the kind of the kids of that community, they'd grown up hearing stories about, oh, yeah, you know back in the day when when our fathers were slaves in egypt yahweh sent moses and he uh sent all these plagues and he part of the red sea and gave us man in the wilderness and you know all these stories were still it's not like they weren't being told or had been forgotten

they were still being told so but but they're being this is the this is kind of the the strange situation in Israel. They're being told while, you know, a stone's thrown away, there's an altar set up to Baal that's like the property of Joash, and there's a big Asherah pole that's right beside the altar of Baal, and as if there's no contradiction between all of this. That's the kind of the schizophrenic nature of the theologically schizophrenic nature of Israel in this time so they know these stories they know Yahweh they know what he's done and at the same time they think it's just fine and dandy to have an altar to Baal and an Asherah pole and to be offering sacrifices to this God and this goddess as well so that's I say all that because yeah I

mean who knows what Gideon actually knew I mean he wasn't exactly uh he wasn't taught by a father who was really communicating everything as it needed to be and certainly wasn't living and worshiping as God had commanded. Anyway, to wrap this up, this particular section, it says that the Lord said to him, kind of three phrases,

peace to you, don't be afraid, and you shall not die. So don't think that you're all of a sudden going to perish just because you've seen me. So shalom, peace to you. Don't be afraid. You're not going to die. And then Gideon responded. It says he built an altar there to the Lord and he named it Yahweh Shalom. The Lord is peace. And then the author adds a little bit, little note, says to this day, it's still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites. So we start out here with, you know, getting a pretty good picture of Gideon as a person.

and know a little bit about his family, know about the situation. And what we're going to encounter next time is that right away, in fact, it's going to be that exact same night, God is going to begin to school Gideon on exactly what he's going to have to do to be able to deliver Israel. Because as it turns out, the very first task has got to begin at home. He's going to be commissioned with the destruction of his own father's altar, and we'll see how he reacts Judgment begins with the household of the God, right? Yeah, that's precisely what happens here with Gideon Yeah, well that's it, man

That's 40 minutes, man We didn't even get through a chapter But this is a long one And we had to set up this guy Set it up first, yeah We're going to get into some altar-destroying activity next week Guys, if you would like to support the podcast If it's been helpful to you

You can do so by going over to 1517 And go into the donate page You can become a contributor Thank you so much to those of you who do that Also, if you've never rated or reviewed the podcast on iTunes, man, that would be great if you would do that. It gives us more visibility. That's how they work, man.

The more ratings and reviews you get, the more that podcast pops up when people are searching for stuff. So we'd appreciate it if you would do that. Chad, I'll see you next week for some altar destroying. All right. Can't wait. See you then. We'll see you next time.