"The choices of Gideon - Are we on the right track?"
Knox, 27 March, 2011 © Scott McAndless
Judges 6:33-40, Psalm 74:1-17, Isaiah 7:10-17, Romans 12:1-2
So we have Gideon, a man with a passion to do something about the very real problems being caused in his homeland by the constant raiding and looting of the Midianites. And more than that, he has become convinced (as we saw last week) that this is not only something that he is passionate about but also something that God is calling him to do for the sake of the whole people. But is Gideon ready yet? No, it is not enough just to have the passion and the sense of calling. You need to have a way to go about it. You need a plan and you need to know that your plan is truly blessed by God.
This is the step, I believe, where we sometimes make our biggest mistakes as Christians. You see, we are supposed to be people of faith – people who believe. But for some strange reason, modern people seem to have confused faith with certainty. They think that having faith means that you are never allowed to doubt or question anything and the more certain you are about everything, the more faith you have. This is not what real faith is about, of course. It is actually a parody of faith. Real faith can only flourish when the questions are asked and the doubts are struggled with because real faith is about working out your life in relation to God, not just about believing a bunch of things about God or about the world sometimes without any evidence at all.
When you forget that, you fall into thinking that faith is about being certain. And so when you come up with a plan of action, you have to stick with it no matter what. You don’t change your plans in the light of new information and, in fact, when you run into something that would indicate that it is not working, you double down and commit yourself to the strategy even harder.
It is not just Christians who have this problem, of course. Politicians and other leaders often seem to struggle with it as well. For some reason, everyone expects leaders to be people of such conviction that, when they start on some course, they are not allowed to make any changes or adjustments. If they do, they are accused of being indecisive or of waffling. They have to face charges that they just want to cut and run. And so they just stick to whatever plan they have – they “stay the course” even if that course leads to an unmitigated disaster.
But is that what faith is really about? Is it only about certainty? And is leadership only about being so decisive that you cannot consider any other possibility than total victory by using the plan that you have? I don’t think so. Even when Gideon knew that he was doing the right thing by taking on the Midianites and was absolutely sure that God would be with him, he still felt the need to put his plans to the test.
“Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised – look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And a lot of people look at that and say that that is a sign that Gideon lacked in faith. If he really believed God, they will say, he wouldn’t have had to ask.
That’s probably what King Ahaz would have said. He was in a very similar position – his kingdom was threatened by the invasion of two powerful kings and their armies. The Prophet Isaiah promised him that God would save the nation and even offered Ahaz the opportunity to ask for a sign that God would do this. But Ahaz refused: “I will not ask;” he said, “I will not put the Lord to the test.”
But Isaiah didn’t take Ahaz’s refusal as a sign of great faith. On the contrary, “Isaiah said, ‘Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also?’” And then he told Ahaz that God would provide the sign in spite of his refusal to ask for one. You see, Isaiah understood something that I think that Gideon also got – that faith is not a matter of false declarations of certitude. It does not mean that you have to throw away your mind and its capacity for critical reasoning. It doesn’t mean that you can’t ask sensible questions or look for reasonable understanding and confirmation.
Faith is a matter of trust. It is not about assenting to certain beliefs. The question you need to ask if you want to know if you have real faith is not, “Do I believe this,” or “Am I certain about that.” I mean, sure, what you believe is important, but it is not the key. The question you need to ask is, are you willing to work through the whole process with God which means that you bring your beliefs but also your doubts, you bring your certitudes but also your questions. God wants to work with you as you are and not some sort of false image of you where all the questions and doubts are hidden inside and you just pretend they are not there.
So Gideon speaks to God and proposes a way to work out his doubts and questions as he prepares to face the Midianites. He puts out a piece of fleece and asks that, in the morning the fleece be wet from the dew while the grass is dry. Now, the thing that usually stands out to people when they read this story is the miraculous nature of what Gideon asks for by way of a sign. But, actually, initially anyways, what Gideon asks for really does not take much in the way of a miracle. If you try such a test with a piece of fleece, it might actually work because the fleece, being more porous than the grass, can retain the water in it even after it has evaporated from the surrounding grass. But Gideon’s second test – when he asks for the fleece to be dry and the ground wet – is a lot harder to explain how it might happen by ordinary means.
But I think that the key thing about this test is not the supernatural nature of it but rather how unmistakable the result is. What Gideon is looking for is the clear contrast between the wet and the dry to be the indicator. He wants to have an answer that doesn’t leave anything up to interpretation. And not only that, but once God has answered him one time he even requests a confirmation with the whole thing turned the other way around just to make sure that he hasn’t missed something. This second time Gideon does seem a little nervous about asking, “Do not be angry with me.” he says. “Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece.” But God is not angry and he responds with the clarity that Gideon is looking for.
So what are we to take away from this story – that we should ask for and expect miraculous signs from God? Is the point that we should just wait around for such miracles to happen before we do anything? No, I don’t think so. Although I do believe in miracles, they are, by definition, not things that you can predict or that will happen at the times when you are expecting them. Our God just doesn’t operate that way and so waiting for miracles is just a Christian way of procrastinating. So, if we are not to be constantly looking for miracles, what are we supposed to look for?
The key thing that Gideon is looking for is confirmation. He needs to know that he’s on the right track and the point of the fleece and the grass is that these are real world things – objects that Gideon encounters everyday and wants to be able to look at to find that confirmation. And I think that is where we need to look for confirmation too. As we work our way through the projects and plans that God gives to us, things will happen that do confirm that God is in them.
Now, that doesn’t always mean that there will be pure unmitigated success or that we will never run into any roadblocks or have any trouble, but it does mean that God will find ways to get that affirming message through to us. The piece of fleece may come in the form of a certain financial need being met at just the right time – I don’t know how many struggling ministries who have seen that kind of fleece show up when they needed it most. The confirmation may come in the form of someone whose life is transformed for the good or someone who receives just the help they need at just the right time. And, yes, sometimes that confirmation will even come in the form of something that just defies explanation – kind of like some bone dry fleece in the midst of a soaking field. But, strikingly miraculous or not, the signs will come and we should be on the lookout for them.
Like Gideon, we also ought not to be afraid to look for them repeatedly. To look for such confirmation is not a denial of faith, it is an essential part of it.
I have known churches where what they were doing just wasn’t working. They were carrying out the ministry in such a way that it was keeping people away, making them feel unwelcome and unwanted and so the membership was declining, the financial situation was getting worse and worse. They were accomplishing nothing of any lasting value but they stubbornly refused to change anything about what they were doing because they figured that they were being faithful. And, in a sense, they were being faithful. They were being faithful to certain theological ideas, or to certain practices, or leaders or they were just being faithful to the way that things had always been done. The only thing they weren’t really being faithful to was God.
Perhaps if they stopped for a minute and looked around to see whether God was leaving them any little pieces of fleece with messages on them to indicate whether they were being faithful to the right things, they would have realized how far off track they were getting, but they didn’t. Instead they started to act is if their very ineffectiveness and their failures to connect with the world around them proved that they had faith. Surely it must be faith, they reasoned, because aren’t people always supposed to suffer for their faith. And so they only got more stubborn and more inflexible. It never ended well.
No what you need to do is go out and be ready to trust in God but also to have your mind open. When you have doubts discuss them with God – he didn’t mind when Gideon expressed his doubts and he won’t mind when you do either. When you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask them. These are the things that make faith strong, not false boasting of certitude.
So Gideon – a wise man, a thinking man, a man who is not ashamed of his doubts and question – lays out his fleeces. He seeks and finds God’s confirmation and now he knows that God will be with him. He is finally ready to go to work. But no one can go out and take on such a great task entirely alone. We all need others. So the next question is who will help Gideon in his work? How will he know the ones who will help him from the ones who will just get in the way? That is the next big question that Gideon will have to work through on his way down God’s path.