8/10/2004 01:15:30 PM|||Laura|||

Judges 6-8:
A few qualities I've noticed about Gideon to this point:

He was hardworking. (threshing wheat by hand)
He was polite. (the angel makes a seemingly preposterous statement - that Gideon is a mighty man of valor - and Gideon politely asks why, if the Lord is with them why are they starving and oppressed. As opposed to that days variation on a snort and a Yeah, right.)
He was generous. (Whether this person was a human or a messenger from God, Gideon brought him food with the expectation that it would be consumed. And food was scarce.)
He had initiative. (Upon realizing that he had seen God's angel face to face, he built an altar to God without being told to.)
He was obedient. (When God told Gideon to take his father's livestock without authorization to kill it, and destroy the altar his father had built to Baal, which was used not only by his family but by the rest of the community, Gideon did not ask God if he was going to protect him from his father and the rest of the town. He did what God told him to do. When God pared the army down to less than 1% of it's original size, Gideon still attacked.)
He was humble. (When the men of Ephraim - obviously the ancestors of the French - rebuked him for doing what they would or could not do for themselves, he was patient and humble in his response.)
He kept his word. (He punished Succoth and Penuel as promised.)
He loved his family. (He avenged the murder of his brothers.)
He did not love glory. (He gave his son the opportunity to execute Zebah and Zalmunnah.)
He was frail and fallible as the rest of us. (He made an ephod but should not have.) Wesley's comments on that say it better than I could:
Though Gideon was a good man, and did this with an honest mind, and a desire to set up religion in his own city and family; yet here seem to be many sins in it; Superstition and will - worship, worshipping God by a device of his own, which was expressly forbidden. Presumption, in wearing or causing other priests to wear this kind of ephod, which was peculiar to the high - priest. Transgression of a plain command, of worshipping God ordinarily but at one place, and one altar, Deu_12:5, Deu_12:11, Deu_12:14. Making a division among the people. Laying a stumbling - block, or an occasion of idolatry before that people, whom he knew to be too prone to it.

This is a story of God taking a ordinary guy and doing extraordinary things with him. What could he do with me if I stopped kicking at the goads and just proceeded as He tells me?

|||109215443032628824|||Gideon - an extraordinary ordinary guy