Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 4-6.

A month or so back I had trouble reaching the “The Bible.net” website to get my passage for the day, so I started copying it from last year’s post.  Which means that I see the “headline” I gave the post and that influences my thinking about the passage.  I have yet to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I love the story of Gideon because there is so much there.  As a result, we rarely pay attention to the beginning of his story.  Gideon’s story begins with the preaching of a prophet who is never named.  That prophet called the Israelites to put aside their idols and return to worship of the Lord.  The context of the story leads me to believe that it was this prophet who made Gideon open to the message from the angel.  Before I write my next thoughts I want to point out that the Hebrew word translated as “angel” means “messenger”.  So, I sometimes wonder if Gideon had felt called by that prophet and began talking about how if the Israelites would only turn back to God, God would perform mighty deeds for them.  Then, one time when he was going on one of his rants, a friend of his, presented here as a “messenger of God”, challenged him to act on what he claimed to believe.  Or maybe his friend was the one who was inspired by the prophet and went on rants, telling Gideon he should act.  Perhaps the “angel” was indeed a supernatural messenger as one would conclude with a casual reading of this passage.  I created that scenario because, while I believe that sometimes God sends supernatural messengers to deliver His messages, I know that sometimes God’s messengers are ordinary people (well, OK, not ordinary in that moment, but not supernatural, or necessarily someone who stands out as righteous).

That last paragraph concluded with an important point, but that’s not where I was going.  When Gideon felt God’s call, he started out local.  He did not start out by raising an army to drive the foreign oppressors out of the land.  He started out by calling his family, friends, and neighbors to stop worshiping Baal and return to worshiping God.  Gideon started in his backyard with the people who knew him best and called Israel to give up its idolatry and return to worshiping God.  It was only after they did so, that God called Gideon to drive out those oppressing the people.  Today people are crying out because of the terrible things going on.  The answer is not to mount a political movement to change our government, although that may come later.  Step one is to mount a spiritual movement by tearing down the altars at which we worship “gods” other than God.  For most of us those altars are in our hearts, not physical manifestations, but there are physical manifestations as well.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.