Gideon

Dave and I have been part of a couples Bible study for the last two years. It started out as purely a Bible study and slowly we have turned it into a Community Group. In the Fall of 2004 we started through Romans. Wowee was the ever intense! We had three couples who were Reformed, one couple who had just become Christians, one couple who was into Open Theism. There were some heated discussions, as you can imagine! Once we finished Romans we lost two couples and added two more, and we went through James. Last fall we started through a series called Gospel and Heart. Currently Dave is leading us through the book of Judges. And let me say Judges is fascinating! Again we have a wide variety of couples/people (we have several women whose husbands are in Iraq). We have Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Wesleyan, and so on. It always makes the discussion lively. And I think that for the most part people feel comfortable to disagree and state their opinion.

The study has some key themes and asks us to look through these themes as we study Judges. This is the intro from the study:

1. God relentlessly offers his grace to people who do not deserve it nor seek it nor even appreciate it after they have been saved by it.
2. God wants lordship over every area of our lives, not just some.
3. There is a tension between grace and law, between conditionality and unconditionality.
4. There is a need for continual spiritual renewal in our lives here on earth, and a way to make that a reality.
5. We need a true Savior, to which all human saviors point, through both their flaws and strengths.
6. God is in charge, no matter what it looks like.

This is the place for a first word of caution. One commentator summed up the book of Judges as “despicable people doing deplorable things” and as “trashy tales about dysfunctional characters.” As the history unfolds, even the “heroes”, the judges, become increasingly dysfunctional and flawed. They do many appalling things, and their efforts have less and less redemptive effect. It is a dismal story. The reader will be led to ask, again and again, “what in the world is this story doing in the Bible?” The answer is an important one--it is the gospel! Judges shows us that the Bible is not a “Book of Virtues;” it is not full of inspirational stories. Why? It is because the Bible (unlike other faiths) is not about emulating moral examples. It is about a God of mercy and long-suffering who continually works in and through us despite our constant resistance to his purposes.

Last night we read Judges 6 which begins the story of Gideon, and it was amazing. To basically sum-up of the first 5 chapters…God tells Israel to go into the land and drive out the other nations. He tells them that he has given them the land and that victory is theirs. Of course, Israel goes in, becomes lazy and doesn’t drive out the nations. Because of Israel’s disobedience God says “OK dudes, because you disobeyed me I am not going to drive out these nations, but I am going to leave them there and they will be a snare and a test for you.” So, the people do evil in the sight of the Lord, the Lord gives them over to be oppressed by their enemies, and then the people cry out to God, and God raises up a deliverer or a Judge. The Judge saves the people and then usually when he dies the people go back to doing evil and the cycle continues.

In this chapter we noted in v. 11-24 that God starts the deliverance even though the people did not show signs of repentance. This was incredible to realize and pointed me back to the first point that God offers grace to people who don’t deserve it…God is going to do what he wants to regardless of whether I cooperate or not. Sometimes he will act when I ask him too, and sometimes he will act even when I don’t ask him to. That to me is so comforting because he is not bound by me, and I can’t do anything to earn his mercy or grace. He will show mercy and grace when I don’t deserve it.

It was also interesting to see that God’s assessment of Israel and Gideon’s assessment of Israel were drastically opposed. God said they were evil and unrepentant…Gideon said that God had forsaken them. But Gideon was wrong, God had not forsaken them because He doesn’t forsake his people. Israel had been disobedient to God, but Gideon didn’t see that, he just saw that things weren’t going the way he thought they should. He failed to see his sin and Israel’s sin of worship gods other than the true God. This was just another reminder to me that I cannot measure myself. I might think that I am good, or that I know what is going on, or that I don’t need to repent. But I usually measure myself against myself or against other people, and since God doesn’t grade on a curve, it doesn’t really matter if I think I am better than so and so. God’s standard is perfection, and I am measured against Jesus, and I don’t come within a stones throw of that. Therefore regardless of my best work apart from Christ I am still under the wrath of God. But when I was saved God justified me. My sin was imputed to Christ on the cross and Christ’s righteousness was imputed to me. As we read and studied about Gideon it reminded me that I need to be ever aware of my sin and need to repent, as well as a reminder that I need to use God’s measuring stick and not my own when assessing my spiritual walk.