“The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.” Judges 6:1
Israel is going through a horrible time. The days of Moses and Joshua are well past. God used these leaders to move Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the land God had promised them. While in the land they only partially obeyed God. They did not totally annihilate the enemy in the land and even though they placed them into forced servitude these evil enemies still influenced the people. What God warned the people about began to happen. Israel forgot God and began to practice the evil rituals of the nations in their midst. When that happened God sent the consequences of their sin. In the land
God had given them, God’s people became slaves to their enemies. Often they did not notice their slavery for years but they felt its consequences. They were not protected from enemy raids, nature did not send its rain, their crops failed or were stolen from them and
their children grew up not knowing God. Only after a painful period of time did the people come to their senses and realize they had turned their backs on God, His covenant and His promises. When they realized their need they cried out in grief and sorrow to God who always heard and always answered them.
During this time God would raise us a person as a judge to lead Israel back to God. The people would serve God and worship Him as long as the judge was alive but when he or she died, they would turn their backs on God once again, forget Him and His promises and embrace the practices of the evil world around them. Thus the cycle of sin, punishment, forgiveness and fruitfulness would occur once again. The people never seemed to learn from their own sins.
The theme verse of the book of Judges is “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). There is no better verse to describe the age we live in. The wicked world around us is increasingly lawless and reprobate. Right has become wrong and wrong is now right. Unfortunately God’s people have followed suit. The church now measures its faithfulness, not by God’s commands, but by the world around it The standard is “we are not as bad as they are”. The practices of the world have infiltrated the church which is no longer different or separate but palatable. God’s word is modified to make everyone feel comfortable. Rather than preach the forgiveness of sin.
Like Israel the church, at least in America, does not notice the discipline of God falling on it. The rains have stopped. The fruitfulness of the church is meager. The enemy is capturing the vitality and strength that should come from God through the church. We see foreign enemies at the doorstep. Our leaders try to tell us they are Godly and religious while condoning what God condemns. Yet most of the church sees what is happening as natural circumstances. Even God’s people are blind to the corrective hand of God’s punishment calling us to “remember from where you have fallen”. Once again God’s people are in the process of forgetting Him.
What can we learn? As we read the story of God dealing with Israel through a judge by the name of Gideon, we need to take this story very personally. If our reading of the “signs of the times’”is correct, we live in the very last few hours, possibly minutes, before Christ returns. We live in a world, even attend churches, that have the “form of God but no substance”. Some might argue but we praise God in our churches, we lift our hands when we sing, we feel deep emotion in our hearts to our Savior. Yet how many times has God looked on His church today and not seen the emotion or the raised hands but instead the dirty hearts that love this world? It is time to cry out to God for revival, not just national revival but personal revival. As the Lord tarries, it will get harder to stand true for the Lord. The demand to compromise God’s truth or be silent will grow and become vicious. It is in this kind of time God reaches out to the few faithful, pure hearts to stand for Him. It is a daunting call. It was to Gideon and it will be too us. Yet, like Gideon we must remember who is in control. Victory does not depend on us, it comes from God alone. He simply looks for a man or woman, boy or girl who is willing to stand alone for Him. There is much to learn from the life of Gideon, the greatest judge Israel knew. So as we read his story, if it is is a history lesson, we have failed. This is the story of God calling a fearful man to serve Him in a time of extreme wickedness. Be alert, your call may be next.