Heroes: Gideon

Speaker: Paul Brown

Notes

God calls Gideon (Judges 6:11-14). Being effective for God starts with God's calling. We need to know we are called, chosen and accepted by God. On this we can build dependence on God, find our identity and self-worth and achieve great things. This is the "cycle of grace". If we start with achievemnet we end up in a cycle of grief where identity comes from what we achieve, we become driven to do more in order to feel accepted.

Gideon recognises his dependence on God (Judges 6:15-16). Natural weakness makes us depend on God

Gideon's power encounter with God (6:20-22). An encounter God changes everything.

The Holy Spirit empowers Gideon and he musters an army of 32,000 (6:34-35). But he is still unsure about whether he has heard God right so he tests God with a fleece (6:36 &ff). Be honest with God. he loves it when we are full of faith, but it's more important to be honest with him.

The army gets ready to fight the Midianites, but God says they are too many. Of the 32,000 men, 22,000 are sent home and 9,700 are told to stay in the camp while 300 will drive out the enemy! (Judges 7:1-7) Bigger isn't always better.

Gideon goes spying (7:13-14), then the 300 men do what God asks of them even though it sounds crazy and the result is an amazing victory (7:22). Trust and obey God to see his victory.

Though Gideon refused to accept the glory for God's victory, he seems to have slipped into a lifestyle where God was not put first (Judges 8:27). It's important to stay faithful and finish well.

Application

Our sense of acceptance by God needs to come from his call not from what we do for him. How would you feel if God took away all that you do and all your natural abilities? Do you have any personal experience of this? How dependent are we on God rather than on our own strength?

Why did God have to reduce the size of Gideon's army so drastically? How does that fit with his recurring crisis of confidence?

Last week God described us as a group of commandos. Can we learn anything from how God used Gideon's small army?

What can we learn from Gideon about staying faithful to the end of our race?

Posted: 14 Jun 2009