Alrighty, let’s get on with the third golden nugget to be learned from Gideon’s story.
It is this:
Anyone who accepts a leadership role in the Kingdom of God is going to be tempted to abandon that position.
And what makes matters worse is that very temptation may come from fellow brothers and sisters inside the Kingdom.
Which is exactly what we saw happen with Gideon when his adversaries allowed personal ambition and petty inconveniences get in the way of them seeing the bigger picture.
Unfortunately, that’s what we also saw happen with Gideon at the end of his rulership.
Gideon made the right choice when he declined to become a king over the people.
Yet at the end of the day his decision meant nothing because he ended up fully embracing the lavish and lustful lifestyle of a gentile king and he also passed that desire onto many of his sons.
And things didn’t stop there.
He also tried to set himself up as a sort of quasi-High Priest.
He created a fake Ephod and even built a worship center in his hometown Ofrah that competed with the God-ordained one located in Shiloh.
We can see echoes here of what the Samaritans would do later on when they built their own temple outside of Jerusalem.
There were serious consequences to what Gideon did.
In a nutshell, his behavior led the people right back into the pit of rebellion and idolatry.
Wow, talk about irony.
God chose Gideon to save Israel from oppression because of their idolatry.
And then the very man who saved Israel because of their idolatry led them right back into idolatry because of his behavior.
We’re told the people ended up making an idol out of the false gold ephod Gideon had built for himself.
Because of this, Gideon, his family and all of Israel would pay a terrible price.
There’s a ton of takeaways here folks and we should take them to heart.
NEXT TIME WE BEGIN JUDGES CHAPTER NINE
It’s like the old analogy of a bucket full of crabs, and when one tries to climb out to freedom, the others pull it back in.
Often people want someone else to take charge because they don’t want to be responsible. But, when someone does take charge and becomes popular, the ones who didn’t want that responsibility are now envious of the popularity, so they try to being that person down, because they can’t raise themselves up.
Exactly. Human nature doesn’t seem to change.
Well done boss
Thanks for reading and your comment…as always.