Gideon God’s Chosen vessel!

One of the most profound mysteries of God’s method of deliverance is unveiled in the life of this chosen vessel of God. A historical story of a young man through whom the Lord brought glory to His name. A very familiar passage of the scripture spoken about in many occasions.

“Gideon” a very simple man of no great reputation, through whom the Israel of God was delivered from the hand of her most fierce enemy the Midianites. In this very interesting story we read many amazing concepts of God’s spiritual strategies being unveiled through His dealings with Israel and His faithfulness towards them, even in the midst of their worst periods of apostasy.

Studying this passage of the scriptures few evenings ago I came across a very interesting concept that I had no previous exposure to it in this dimension at former times. It was a very refreshing insight to the principals of God’s spiritual law’s of His heavenly warfare. The most pleasant thing is that God’s methods are so much different from ours, since they all belong to the unseen world where He always operates from. He is the invisible God who sees in the unseen realm what you and I only need revelation to see or even hear and understand. In this awesome story of God’s deliverance of Israel we first must acknowledge that the people of God were cast into the hands of their enemies by God’s unfailing love for them to just bring them to a place of repentance.

The 6^th chapter of the book of Judges explains their punishment and the reason for it.

Their guilt was apostasy from their God and worship of idols and foreign gods named Baal and Ashtoreth.

The chief Canaanite fertility gods were Baal and Ashtoreth. Baal (the son of El) was revered as the god with power over rain, wind, clouds, and therefore over fertility. Ashtoreth was a Semite goddess derived from the Babylonian god Ishtar. As worshipped locally in Canaan, she was the consort of Baal, and supposedly brought fertility to the people who worshipped her.

While temples are occasionally mentioned, Canaanite worship often took place in open-air sites at the tops of hills, referred to in the Bible as “high places.” Usually there was a masseba or stone pillar erected as a symbol of the male deity and an asherahrepresenting the female counterpart, some sort of wooden pole or image of the goddess. In front of these was a sacrificial altar. These were the gods of Canaanites as we just read, but Israel had defiled herself by worshiping them and that was why they were given over to the hands

Of their enemies for seven long years. Their punishment came in the form of famine and poverty and being killed by the sword of their enemies. The great thing is that when God called Gideon he was least aware of the apostasy of his people and why they were suffering from such predicaments. As the Angel of the Lord appeared to him he began to question Him for the reason of their abandonment and suffering and there the Lord only encouraged him in his faith and called him a mighty man of valor. However after being confirmed by the Lord’s Angel Gideon was asked to fulfill a task that was the greatest point of this historical event in the life of the people of God. The details of this act had always escaped my attention until couple of nights ago, when we were studying this amazing story again. I suddenly saw a spiritual principal not quite understood by me in times before. The first command of the Angel to Gideon was to go and destroy the altar of the Canaanite gods of Baal and Ashtoreth. The Bibles says the Angel of the Lord commanded Gideon to do the following  by saying  “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, 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”. Gideon did exactly as the Lord had told him, but he did this with help of the ten men the Lord have instructed him. However due to his own fears of persecution and death he did it by night. (Judges 6:25-27)  Although Gideon had built another altar right before this one, which there he called His God “Jehovah Shalom” or the Lord is Peace, this second altar had a totally different significance to the first one.

Here in this historic and heroic action of Gideon lays the mysteries of the strategies of God’s principals of the spiritual warfare. In this commandment of the Lord through His Angel, who many believe to be Christ prior to His incarnation, the Lord was first destroying the stronghold that was the main reason where the enemy had a hold on his father and all the apostate Israel. Because the erection and the worship of these false gods were the initial reason of their predicaments, his father’s house too was given over to the enemy and had become powerless against its forces. The bull of the seven years being sacrificed here meant the seven years of their captivity to this stronghold and therefore, first this must have been broken before they could fight the natural enemies. These foreign deities were being worshiped by his own father and his own household too, that is why these must have been destroyed first, before their influence and its stronghold

Would be totally destroyed too. The very first altar had to do with Gideon’s own reconcilement to Yahweh Who was the God of His forefathers, but the second one had to do with what his own father was deceived into worshipping. Gideon had many questions about the God of his forefathers, but personally he had no experiential knowledge of Him. His first sacrificed was the sign of his own recognition of Him as “The Lord is Peace” and then and only he could legally qualify to be the deliverer of his nation, and his own fathers house. Something many try to accomplish on their own merits today and unfortunately fail miserably.
Another mystery hidden in this awesome story of God’s election of grace is the requirement of burning the wood of the Ashtoreth pole on the altar of the sacrifice.

I trust this represented the complete forsaking of every false idol before one Could experience any power in combating the enemies surrounding our lives. Gideon’s own father upon awakening from his sleep saw that the gods worshipped by him and his people were rendered powerless. This gave God’s heavenly armies the power to destroy their unseen enemies first in the supernatural realm before they could win the victory over them in the natural. Like 2 Cor. 10^th chapter.

The insight received here for me was the following. Many of our people live in bondages of many kinds and they are not willing to let their idols go and some would not admit their true loyalty is not unto their God. These idols worshiped by God’s people have rendered them powerless in escaping their predicaments. They argue and question God’s blessings for them, yet they are still in strict attachment to their own or their father’s idols. Also no war is won, but first in the spirit. Men like Gideon were living in the caves and other strongholds the Bible says trying to hide from their physical enemies, but unless the Lord appeared to them like him and freed them first they are the victims of their own sin. God is the One that gives us over to our enemies and God is the One who would send our deliverance to us.

Jesus in Mark chapter 7 speaks to Israel about their blind guides who keep them in their man made traditions bond by them.

Jesus is still the only One who could free us from our attachments of these idolatries that we are in. But first we are to be willing to burn the traces of our idolatry on the true altar of our God. Many of us are bond right here. We are not intentionally willing to let go of what God has said not to follow anymore and every self effort in fighting any enemy in the flesh,  is useless  bondages  like alcoholism or drugs, or cigarettes or lying or gossip or fits of rage and anger or stealing or sexual lusts of many kind is because the root causes have heavy stronghold in us that first they need to be broken, by those who know their God. As the Lord speaks in Daniel “but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (Daniel 11:32) This is why the scriptures in the gospel of Luke verses 26 and 27 says” “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

²⁷ And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

This saying of the Lord ofcource was not breaking the second commandment, but was reestablishing the truth that the Lord said to His servant Moshe “Moses” in regards to holding anything or anyone as an idol in our hearts. ”Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4; KJV). Why?, because this would violate the first commandment of God and therefore bring a curse on us by allowing the enemies entrance in to our lives. Since the Lord had already said the following “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Look at Ruth the Moabites who turned from the gods of her people to the Lord and how she prospered in the end.

Yes and this is how we know all the wars we see in this fallen world they first originate not in the natural but in the spiritual, and there is where we need our insight.

This is why the Lord says “My people perish for the lack of knowledge” What is then this knowledge? It is the knowledge of the supernatural first.

God Bless you all. Just like in this story Gideon and His father must first abandon these false gods for the true God, before they could experience the relief they were looking for seven years. First they had to render these gods power less by forsaking them and knowing that “The Lord” was the true God. In doing this they had agreed to destroy the stronghold that was keeping them captive. That is why Gideon’s father called him Jerubbaal which means the one who fought  or contented with Baal.