During a time when the Hebrew people were being oppressed and impoverished by the Midianites, the angel of the LORD came to visit Gideon. This heavenly messenger appeared to Gideon and said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” He didn’t feel very mighty. He was subject to the same conditions as everyone else. He was living in poverty. He was under the Midianite oppression. He didn’t look much like a mighty warrior.
Listen, God sees more than we see. God saw what He was about to make of Gideon, and God was going to give Gideon an opportunity to see it for himself.
Gideon didn’t realize at first that he wasn’t talking to an ordinary angel. He was literally talking to God, Himself.
God said to Gideon, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
Listen, if you are sent by God, the condition or quality of your strength isn’t important. If you have the strength to “go,” go, and God will give you the strength to conquer.
Gideon was going to need some convincing. He argued that he was from a weak family and called himself the least of the family. That wasn’t a faith-response. It was a flesh-response. Any excuse you offer God about why you can’t do what He is calling you to do is evidence you aren’t living with an activated faith. Even though Gideon didn’t have an activated faith when God called him, God worked with him to lead him to a place of full dependance upon God. He wants to do the same for us.
God came back with, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.” Gideon was hesitant to believe any of it, and he asked God for a sign that it was really God speaking to him.
Gideon brought an offering to the Lord, and the Lord consumed it with fire. That was a pretty significant sign. God asked him to bring a second offering to him and in the process to tear down his father’s pagan altar to the false god, Baal, and to cut down something called an Asherah pole that was used in pagan goddess worship. He instructed him to build a proper kind of altar to the Lord and to offer the second offering to Him.
Activating our faith starts by setting our own houses in order. Before God can use us mightily, He must first be magnified in our own hearts and homes. Our private worship will precede any public power from God. God had to tear some things down before He could build up Gideon’s faith and before Gideon could truly become the mighty warrior God was making him into.
Gideon did what God asked him to do, but he did it at night, under the cover of darkness. He wasn’t sure what other people would think about him tearing down the pagan symbols.
Listen, God is calling us to live out loud, unashamed of who He is and unashamed of what He is calling us to do.
Judges 6:34 tells us that the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon. He blew a trumpet and summoned different groups to join him. I want you to notice that the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon after he had obeyed the Lord and gotten rid of the symbols of pagan worship. Because Gideon did what God commanded, the Holy Spirit fell on Him and caused the Israelites to be favorable toward him.
Gideon asked for two more signs that God would be with him and would enable him to succeed. Sometimes we need some reassurance, don’t we? God came through with two more signs.
Well, so many men showed up as a result of that trumpet call and that request for troops that God said, “You have too many men.” When have you ever heard an army commander say, “There are too many of you. We need fewer people to fight so that we can win this war?” Never, right? But God said, “Listen, what I am going to do through you is for My glory. No person, no group, no army is going to get the credit for this victory because the reason for this whole mess in the first place is the result of relying on self instead of relying on God. The Midianites aren’t going to see what you are made of, they are going to see what I am made of.”
God whittled their ranks down to 300 men. 300 to 135,000 Midianites! It wasn’t about the number of fighting men Israel had. It was about the God who was fighting for them that would make the victory possible.
We see a real shift in Gideon here. His faith was fully activated. He went from making excuses to asking for signs and following God quietly under the cloak of darkness to blowing trumpets and fully obeying commands that defied all human logic. There was no longer any hesitation, no longer any fear of man. His faith was fully engaged in who God is and in what God could do. He knew he couldn’t defeat the Midianites with 300 men, but He fully believed God could and would, and God did! Read Judges 7 to see how God used Gideon to deliver His people!
In faith you can resist fear. You can listen to the voice of God who is calling you out of hiding and out of oppression.
In faith you can accept what God says about your identity. God had called Abraham the “Father of Many Nations” when he had no children. He called Moses the “Deliverer of Israel” while Moses was still living on the backside of a desert, trying to lay low from a manslaughter charge. Jesus called Peter, the guy who was arguably the least reliable disciple, He called him a reliable, steady, and unmoved rock because he had confessed Christ as Lord. Start activating your faith so that it begins to reflect who you really are in Christ.
People of faith will renounce, reject, and refuse to put confidence in the false gods of this age.
People of faith will grow in faith as they take steps of obedience. God only expects you to do what has been revealed to you to do, but until you do it, you won’t get the next step given to you.
People of faith will be empowered by and propelled forward by the Spirit of God.
People of faith will see God rout their enemies with God’s help.
God is still choosing fear-filled, flawed, fleshly people and turning them into giants of faith. Mighty Warrior, the Lord is with you. Gideon eventually believed it. Will you?
