Thursday, January 28, 2016

In our last visit we discovered that Gideon received about 42 pounds of gold from the bounty after defeating the Midianites. When he got back home he “made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town” (Judges 8:27). An ephod was a garment that the priests wore over their chests. It appears Gideon created a replica of an ephod out of gold in memoriam of their victory over the Midianites. His motives were likely good, but the ephod turned into a religious relic that the people began to revere, then they religiously prostituted “themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.” After Gideon died “the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They set up Baal-Berith as their god and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side” (Judges 8:33-34). Between the end of the war and the death of Gideon Israel lived in peace for 40 years. During that time Gideon had 70 sons from many wives, and another son by a concubine from Shechem. On the surface it appeared as though everything was ok, but the snare to Gideon and his family and the gradual return to idol worship led to the fact that this great man of God, Gideon, didn’t finish well. It says in Judges 8:35, the Israelites “also failed to show kindness to the family of Gideon for all the good things he had done for them.” In former president Richard Nixon’s book, Six Crisis, he wrote that the most difficult time is preparing for a crisis, the easiest time is the crisis itself, the most dangerous time is after the crisis, when you relax and let your guard down. That’s when you’re most vulnerable to temptation and compromise.