I used to think the book of Judges was really boring. Then I read it a few times and changed my mind. It is full of exciting stuff. And there are some serious lessons on how history works, but you have to dig for them . . . and think.

Judges records the cycles of Israel.

As long as they served God and kept His commandments, there was peace in the land, but when they turned aside and worshipped Baal, God would hand them over to an oppressing enemy, a king of one of the heathen nations around them. When they repented and cried out to God for deliverance, God would raise up a judge to deliver them.

In the book, The Fourth Turning, by William Straus and Neil Howe, the authors explain how history goes in cycles of 60 to 100 years known as a saeculum. There are four stages or turnings in a saeculum. A society starts out with a high, a time when everything is going well. There is prosperity and people live morally. Gradually then, society disintegrates as moral norms are abandoned and everything is unravelling. The society then recognizes that, if it is to survive, they need to return to the principals that made them great in the beginning.

These cycles have occurred over and over again throughout history.

Well, the same cycles are in the Bible, as it tells us the history of God’s people, the Israelites. In the first five chapters of Judges, there are three cycles or saeculum that occurr. Israel goes from right living, obeying God and experiencing peace and prosperity, to straying from God to the point of worshipping the gods of their heathen neighbors. The first five chapters of Judges covers over 200 years. That would mean each saeculum would average roughly 70 years.

I believe in my lifetime, America has gone through one saeculum, or cyle.

For example, in the fifties and sixties, roughly 65 percent of the population attended church. Today it is barely 20 percent, and the bar has been lowered. If you go to church once a month, you are considered a regular attendee. Two thirds of the 20 percent never read their Bibles. So we have descended into a state of chaos and unraveling of society. Will we recover? I believe we will. Voting out the party of the far Left, who are Marxists, is a good start.

Chapter six brings us to Gideon, one of the most interesting characters, perhaps the dominant figure, in the book of Judges.

Again, the nation of Israel was in bad shape. They had descended into a place of disobedience to God. The Midianites were overrunning the country. They were destroying the Israelites’ crops and many of the Israelites had retreated to dens, caves and strongholds in the mountains. The Midianites came like locusts to destroy the Israelites’ land. The Israelites were impoverished and cried out to the Lord.

God sent a prophet who basically said that they should remember how God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt and gave them this promised land. Then he stated the grissley truth, “But you have not obeyed Me.”

The Angel of the Lord came to Gideon while he was threshing wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. The first thing the Angel did was to call Gideon a “mighty man of valor.”

A foot note here . . . the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is none other than Jesus. Later in the narrative, Gideon exclaims, “I have seen God face to face!”

Gideon didn’t see himself as a mighty man. He protested that his family was the weakest in the tribe of Manesseh, and he was the least in his father’s house.

Sound familiar?

Remember when the prophet Samuel went to Jesse’s house to anoint the new king of Israel? All the sons of Jesse were paraded before Samuel but the king was not among them. “Is this all,” Samuel asked? He was told that there was one more son, only a young boy, who was out tending sheep. The family didn’t think David was important enough to bring to the prophet.

Ah, but he was God’s choice . . . the youngest, and only a boy of about 15. God chooses the foolish and the weak things of the world to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Gideon, like David, was also the youngest son. God knew his heart, that he was a man of great courage.

The Lord told him that He would use him to deliver Israel. Then he was given his first instructions, to tear down the Baal idol that was on his father’s land. Then he was to build an altar to the Lord, and sacrifice one of his father’s bulls on the altar.

Gideon did the task by night because he was afraid. If you are afraid, it doesn’t mean that you are not brave. If you are not afraid, maybe it indicates that the task is not that dangerous. This task was extremely dangerous. By tearing down the Baal, Gideon was risking his life. Wouldn’t you be afraid?

When one is afraid of the consequences and obeys God anyway, that is called “courage.”

In the morning everyone was asking, “Who did this?” Someone said that it was Gideon, and the people demanded Gideon be brought out so they could kill him.

Gideon had a lot of guts. He evidently tore down the Baal without telling his father, and he knew the family and towns’ people would want to kill him. But he feared God more than man. He was greatly afraid, but he did what God told him to do. Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man is a snare.”

Why in the world did Gideon’s father have the idol, Baal, on his property?

Well, over time, the Israelites intermarried with the heathen nations around them, which God had told them not to do. When an Israelite man married a heathen girl, she usually brought her gods with her, which were idols. This may have happened with Godeon’s father.

One commentator suggests that there may have been a remnant of Caananites living amoung the Israelites, and it may be that they secured permission from Gideon’s father to build the baal idol on his land.

Do we see compromise among Christians today? Definitely.

Much of the church has turned a blind eye to abortion, or they say it’s okay. Abortion is murder. Martin Luther plainly stated that abortion is murder, yet many of his followers vote for the party that murders babies. About half of evangelicals say there are other ways to heaven than through Jesus Christ. Not true? In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” About half of evanglicals also say there is no absolute truth. Another untruth! The Bible is absolute truth. If you’re not sure the Bible is true, then how will you unreservatively believe the words of Jesus, who tells us plainly how to get to heaven? In other words, how will you get to heaven based on something that may or may not be true? I go into more detail on these issues in my new book, Is This The End . . . Or Just The Beginning? It is available in the store on our website, georgeandlorraine.com.

Compromise, letting lies penetrate your thinking, will lead to bondage, and your loss of liberty in Jesus Christ. Galatians 5:1 NKJV says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

Gideon’s father, by allowing a Baal altar on his land, allowed Satan right into his life and the lives of his family. The end result was bondage, the loss of freedom, and oppression from a heathen nation.

Where do you stand? Have you let lies and evil ideologies penetrate your thinking and your life? If you have, it will lead you into bondage.

Gideon’s father had an idol, Baal, on the family property, in clear sight, a clear violation of God’s laws and principals. Gideon’s first assignment was to tear down the Baal idol, which he did, at the risk of his life. That took genuine courage!

The Lord called Gideon “a mighty man of valor.” God saw in Gideon what he didn’t see in himself . . . real courage!

When we are tested to obey the Lord, or not, we find out what we are really made of. What would you do in Godeon’s situation? Would you obey God at the risk of death?

Come back next Tuesday morning to find out what happens next in, Courage – Part 2, posted right here. Have a good week!

Photograph Designed and Taken By Lorraine