Foreign this morning comes from the Book of Judges, chapter 6, beginning at verse 25.
He’ll turn with me please. That night the Lord said to him, Gideon, ‘Take your father’s Bull and the second Bull, seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asharah that is beside it. Build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here with stones laid in due order. Then take the second Bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asharah that you shall cut down.’
So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.
When the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold the altar of Baal was broken down and the Asharah beside it was cut down, and the second Bull was offered on the altar that had been built. They said to one another, ‘Who has done this thing?’ After they had searched and inquired, they said, ‘Gideon, the son of Joash, has done this thing.’
Then the men of the town said to Joash, ‘Bring out your son that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asharah beside it.’ But Joash said to all who stood against him, ‘Will you contend for Baal or will you save him? Whoever condemns or contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a God, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down.’
Therefore, on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, ‘Let Baal contend against him because he broke down his altar.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you give us stories, you give us the history of God’s people. Let us be an encouragement for us in faith. Let us see the good and the not so good, the mistakes that are made and the acts of faith and devotion that are done, and let us be encouraged to follow in their example of faithfulness and avoid their examples of mistakes or their flaws. Help us to remember that our ancestors of scripture are not perfect people just as we are not perfect people, and let us be comforted knowing that even still they had faith; they had a given faith just as you have given us faith in your son, Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.
Israel sinned; they fell into idolatry again. They yoked themselves to the gods of Canaan, the gods of those who considered Israel an enemy. They became subject to the seductive but false promises of idol worshipers that offered a feeling of control over their own lives, a sense that they could influence divine wills through their sacrificial offerings, and perhaps as a means of fellowship with their neighbors.
We can only guess at the particular motives for Israelite adoption of Baal worship at this time, but considering their past transgressions with Midianite women and Baal worship, it is not unreasonable to assume that their religious syncretism may have been an active appeasement towards their oppressors, demonstrating similarity with them by adopting their ways while still trying to retain their own unique Israelite identity. There is nothing to suggest that Israel turned wholly away from worshiping the Lord God Almighty; instead, they just added another God and other gods into their worship team, because that is what all the other nations and peoples did in worshiping whole pantheons of different gods.
But no other deity of the time except Yahweh had a requirement for their sole worship and absolute obedience and faithfulness. Over and again, Israel’s problem with idols reappears, and it remains a constant threat to us even now. Rarely did Israel turn away wholly from the Lord; rarely did they forsake Him entirely, for they continue to identify themselves as His chosen people.
However, they just added in the worship of other gods alongside their worship of the Lord. We too risk adding different idols to our worship of God, of Jesus Christ. But Christ plus anything is always idolatry and false religion. Whenever we add anything, any additional requirements for one’s salvation beside faith in Christ alone, or whenever we add additional requirements for fellowship or other identification as being Christian, like works of piety, no drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no clapping, no card playing, no hand raising, or by calling for the adoption of certain political positions—masks or no masks, vaccines or no vaccines, being Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, pro-life or pro-choice, supporting reparations for past slavery or not, or mandating that people attend every church event on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday evenings—or rather our knowledge of scripture or doctrine, or arbitrarily determining whether our personal journey of faith measures up to an impossible standard that the Apostle Paul couldn’t reach—that is idolatry.
And we risk adding all sorts of things as idols alongside our faith in Jesus Christ. It’s so easy for anything or everything to become an extra idol for us. The most insidious ones are those things which should otherwise be benign, things which are good, beneficial, and helpful, but which may be taken to the extreme and accidentally elevated in worship.
So it should be easy for us to understand and forgive the ancient Israelites for their transgressions because we are just as guilty as they were. While the remedy for our own personal and corporate idolatry remains the same, and this is something which the lessons of Gideon may help us to better remember.
So Gideon, a young guy from Ephraim Manasseh, found himself commanded and sent by the Lord to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. But what do we know about him so far? The angel who had greeted him called him a mighty man of valor, and last time I suggested that according to some scholars, this could have been a reference to his occupation; that he may have already been a soldier—an idea they derived from his name.
Recall that Hebrew names often carry an important meaning, frequently saying something about the person by describing a physical attribute, something reminding us of something they have done, or the hope of something that they will do. Now Gideon’s name comes from a verb meaning ‘to cut down’ or ‘to break into pieces.’ While they think it suggests something about his present vocation, I believe it more foreshadows what he’s called upon to do in today’s lesson in tearing down the altar of Baal.
After he encountered the angel of the Lord that night, the Lord said to Gideon, ‘Take your father’s Bull and the second Bull, seven years old. Pull down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the Asharah that is beside it, and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here with stones laid in due order. Then take the second Bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asharah that you shall cut down.’
This is where we start to get a better picture about the religious life of Gideon and his family; a picture that also sheds more light upon the religious life and thoughts of wider Israel during the same time. When Gideon encountered this angel, he asked him, ‘Where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers reported to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?”
This shows us that Gideon at least knew the history of Israel’s deliverance and about the Lord’s great work of salvation in leading them out from bondage in Egypt to dwell in their own land. He knew who the Lord Yahweh is and what He has done for His people, knowing enough to wonder if God has finally forsaken them.
He knew the stories of deliverance that were told to him by his father or grandfather, perhaps by a clan elder or a local Levite—certainly members of a more faithful and obedient generation. Regardless of who exactly it was that taught Gideon, we see that the worship of the Lord is still present, and that He is being actively worshiped by at least some of the people in Ephraim.
Meanwhile, we find that Gideon’s father has a communal altar dedicated to Baal and an Asharah on his property. The angry response of the townspeople to what Gideon does suggests that Gideon’s father probably had some authority in the town regarding this worship of Baal, perhaps even serving as a priest. Thus, Gideon was clearly raised in an environment encouraging the syncretic worship of Baal and Asharah right alongside the worship of the Lord, the God of Israel.
But we find that following his encounter with the angel, his heart was only on fire for the Lord. Now the Lord gave Gideon very specific and significant instructions to begin his work in ministry: use a pair of Bulls to tear down his father’s altar to Baal, cut down the Asharah pole (a tree planted beside the altar which represented Baal’s goddess consort), then he was to build up a new stone altar to the Lord on the top of the stronghold.
Basically, God commanded Gideon to build the Lord’s altar on top of his own house, where it would be highly visible to everyone, making this socially controversial action highly public. The altar he would build is visually distinct from Baal’s altar, being built with stones laid in due order; those do orders described in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 27, instructing the Israelites how to construct an acceptable temporary altar. If not sacrificing at the Tabernacle, Moses writes, ‘If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane it.’
Altars to Baal were constructed of square-cut stones mortared together, whereas these temporary altars to the Lord were constructed of naturally weathered stones built up in a pile. No tools or crafting artifice of man were allowed to be used to prevent our sinful human nature from corrupting and defiling the altar.
Next, Gideon was commanded to consecrate his altar with a burnt offering sacrifice, using the wood from the Asharah pole and offering the entirety of a Bull from his father’s cattle herd. Gideon destroyed one idol as fuel for his fire, then he burnt up the number two Bull—the runner-up, the Lesser bull—as an effigy of a defeated Baal, because the common image used for Baal was a grown male Bull.
Thus, Gideon consecrated his altar to the Lord by desecrating pagan altars and idols. This was a symbolic act of religious warfare. This is no different than the Philistines placing the captured Ark in their temple of Dagon or King Nebuchadnezzar taking the gold from the temple and other objects and placing them in his God’s temple.
Or the sixth century, the Roman Church, when they converted the Athenian Parthenon into a church or the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, the famous Byzantine church which has vacillated from being a church to a museum and is now presently an operating mosque.
This was a belligerent act of extreme and radical defiance against Israel’s idolatry. There is no greater sign or symbol of the new birth of regeneration than a person casting down the vestiges of the old man and burning them upon the altar of the cross, making a definitive and clean break with who they once were, so that now they may move forward fresh and new in Jesus Christ.
This is like the radical transformation of Saint Paul following his trip to Damascus. This is like the changed life of Augustine after he heard the children singing, ‘Pick up and read.’ This is like Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, humbly declaring, ‘Here I stand, God help me!’ There was no turning back from this. Gideon was just acting in what is a long-standing tradition and practice of religious triumph, proclaiming before all the world to see, ‘My God is greater than your gods.’
So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.
Called by the Lord, Gideon had no choice but to obey Him. However, the choice remained as to how he would obey. Gideon obeyed God—which was great—and he got others to help him: ten servants belonging to his family, in fact, further suggesting his father’s local social or economic importance.
But this does not speak well towards Gideon’s wisdom. Gideon feared the Lord enough to obey Him, but he also feared his family and the local townspeople, so he tried to take precautions. He did not really want to declare his newfound zealotry quite so publicly.
Yeah, he did as God commanded him at night, which was fine, but he used ten servants as accomplices, which was not so good and not very wise. He tore down the altar and Asharah, but he did not do it in the precise manner the Lord prescribed. His intention was good and his heart was apparently in the right place, but just as things always seem to go south when we do not precisely follow a recipe when cooking, or we do not follow the doctor’s orders and their directions concerning your prescription, so it is when we change or ignore or go beyond what God actually commands.
Even the Garden she told the serpent, ‘You shall not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden; neither shall you touch it lest you die,’ adding ‘do not touch’ to God’s prescription. So that when she touched the fruit at Satan’s urging, doubt formed in her mind, causing her to perhaps think, ‘If I did not die from touching it, then I probably won’t die from eating it either.’
Why did the Lord kill Uzzah? They were not carrying His ark properly, not carrying it in the way He prescribed. Most of us would wonder what’s wrong with the idea of moving the ark on a cart. Exodus 25 explains about the rings that were placed in the side of the ark through which wooden poles were to be put through, and Numbers 4 explains how the ark and all the Tabernacle implements were to be transported specifically by members of the Levite clan of Kohath.
Now Uzzah was only trying to help. He was just trying to help and defend God, but as R.C. Sproul was fond of reminding us, his sin was not being too zealous in trying to protect the ark; his sin was the presumption that his hands were cleaner and that he was more ritually pure and sanctified than the natural earthen ground that the Lord God had made. Uzzah died because the Lord and His ark are holy, and he was not.
So when we do what God demands of us but we do not do it how He commands, things never seem to go the way we should like or as well as they ought. Bringing ten servants along with him to tear down the local popular altar to Baal was not a very wise thing to do if he was trying to keep his involvement secret because he was too afraid of his family and the men in town.
Clearly, Gideon had never read as Benjamin Franklin, who famously wrote, ‘Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead,’ wrote that in Poor Richard’s Almanack. So Gideon could not have been surprised at what happened next, for there is exactly what he feared.
When the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asharah beside it cut down, and the second Bull was offered on the altar that had been built. They said to one another, ‘Who has done this thing?’ After they searched and inquired, they said, ‘Gideon, the son of Joash, has done this thing.’
Naturally, the townspeople were upset, so of course they wanted to know who had done it. After just a little bit of asking around, somebody talked and gave up Gideon, who tore down Baal’s altar. It was Gideon in the dark of nights with a pair of bulls—like some ancient game of Clue, Gideon’s secret was out. After only one act of religious vigilantism, he certainly would not have survived very long as someone like Batman!
But why were all of these Israelite people, who were supposed to be the Lord’s, upset over what Gideon did? The worship of Baal and Asharah was common to most Near East peoples in one form or another. Baal was associated with fertility in both people and out in nature, and he was further associated with storms and weather in general. Asharah was a mother-type God associated with human fertility and the harvest, also possessing a heavenly aspect and influence over the weather.
To our Gideon, well, Gideon feared what his friends and neighbors might do to him because of his act of obedience to the Lord. The people of Ephraim feared their pagan superstitions more than they feared God. They feared calamity Baal or Asharah might bring down against them because of Gideon’s desecration. Maybe a drought, lost crops, stillborn or miscarried children—especially if his affront was left unavenged.
They did not trust in the Lord to protect them or preserve them against the false gods of the nations. They trusted more in the idols and the fantasies of men than they did the living God, and their response proves exactly for us why the Lord called Gideon to do what he did.
They may have offered lip service worship to the Lord, but when trouble came, they gave more credit to and put more hope in Baal of the nations than the God whose people they actually were.
We’re not so very different from them. We also will say that we love, obey, and trust the Lord; that we trust Jesus Christ. But when the chips are down, who do we often turn to first? Who do we rely on, and who do we trust to get us through times of trouble first?
We want to rely upon ourselves, our own efforts and actions. We might trust the law, the Constitution, or our government to protect and defend us. We blindly trust our doctors and the pharmaceutical companies to heal our bodies and rescue us from every disease.
Then, after every worldly and human option has finally been explored and exhausted, then we will turn to Jesus. We will begin to pray to Him as our last hope, as an action of last recourse and desperation instead of our first response in faith.
We are all guilty of this in some way, shape, or form, and it’s an area where we can each become better through discipline and intention. By being more conscious of ourselves and our own hearts, by choosing the response of faith first rather than last so we may watch the Lord providentially working through the hands of people like those doctors and lawyers, or through our families or even our own efforts, and give Him the glory that He is due.
And I know that there are many of us here today who are very intentional about this and who have plenty of stories and examples to share about how when they look to Jesus first, they see God’s hand in all things better, and they’ve become witnesses or the recipients of miracles which we might otherwise have missed. When you keep a God-centric worldview, you will see the Lord’s hand in everything.
So then the men of the town said to Joash, ‘Bring out your son that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asharah beside it.’ These people were so mad, frightened, and fearful of their boogeyman Baal fantasy that they wanted to kill Gideon. They thought that to turn aside Baal’s wrath, they wanted to kill him as an atonement sacrifice.
If they believed Gideon deserved to die for his blasphemy against Baal, then how much worse punishment do we deserve for our sins against the Lord? If we consider how much greater, how more terrible our offenses are than Gideon’s offense of knocking over a pile of stones, of tearing down nothing more than an over-glorified barbecue grill.
You know, a grill where the meat’s always overcooked and the people put sauce on their steak—I mean, really, he was doing them a favor!
Then is it any wonder that our spiritual redemption could only come through the perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who by His life and death atoned for all the sins of His chosen elect? But Joash, he said to all who stood against him, ‘Will you contend for Baal or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself because his altar has been broken down.’
Joash, Gideon’s father, a man who may or may not have left sacrifices to Baal as priests but who possessed an altar and an Asharah, defended his son against the crowd. His defense and argument were really quite reasonable and apparently convincing since the crowd let Gideon live instead of killing him.
They renamed him. Actually, Joash’s argument is rather sound and applicable today. Our modern society has become so irreligious, finding faith—any and every faith—offensive to its sensibilities.
Modernity denies faith, it denies religion, it denies our need for both, especially the true faith—the only faith worth believing—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we Christians, as peaceable as most of us tend to be, still will like to fight, and we want to fight and defend the risen Lord.
But we should also listen to Joash’s words and then apply them to our faith as well. Because if He is a God, let Him contend for Himself.
Now before you get concerned, thinking that I’m blaspheming, please consider that scripture says we’re called to be ready in season and out of season, meaning that we must always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that’s in you.
We must be able and willing to defend our faith in Christ—what about and why we believe and trust in him. But not necessarily to defend him since Jesus did not defend Himself against their false accusations when He stood before the Sanhedrin, and Pilate, or Herod—then why should we defend God when we know that the Lord actually does defend Himself and His holiness when and how He sovereignly chooses?
Once before, He sent a flood to cleanse the earth of sin and wickedness, promising the family of Noah that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
One day, still yet to come, we know that the Lord will rise again and take to His own defense, judging the wicked and consuming them by fire. God does not need us to defend Him before the republic, before those who will not believe until it’s too late. The Lord will contend for Himself.
However, we do still need to defend our faith as witnesses to Christ Jesus, since we’re called to and commanded to do so by scripture. Our apologetic, our defense, is a form of evangelism, because it is a way that we share the Gospel.
So just as Joash challenged Baal to defend himself if he really is a god, to defend his own honor, his worthiness, his power, and his divinity, then we should challenge our own idols and all the false gods which we raise up and honor the same.
We ought to be like Gideon, tearing down their altars from their places in our hearts, tearing them down over and again as fast as our sinful nature tries to raise them up. But before we can do that, we need to examine ourselves and we must identify them before they can be overthrown.
This is what John Owen meant when he wrote about mortifying our sin, putting it to death within our hearts, our minds, and our lives. That is something we’re only able to do if the Holy Spirit has first renewed our hearts, giving us the desire to repent and turn away from our sins.
Then, as we cooperate with Him in this spiritual housekeeping, we may only achieve this lasting success if we go to prayer to Christ first, asking Him to illuminate our hearts and show us everything that needs to go, and beg Him for the strength to throw out all the refuse and to guard our hearts against its return.
Every one of us has idols in our lives that need their altar to be torn down. It’s always easier to identify and point out the idols and sins of others than it is to recognize our own.
We need the Holy Spirit’s help. We need the Lord’s expressed command to tear down our particular idols. But we should not fear reprisal from our friends and neighbors—those who enable and encourage our idolatry and sin—because we know we have a heavenly Father who will defend us against them.
We have an advocate in Jesus who will stand by saying of our toppled idols, ‘If He is a God, let him contend for Himself.’
Remember this, brothers and sisters: take it to heart. It’s only after we first remove the plank from our own eye that we may help others to remove specks from theirs.
And it’s only those without sin themselves who may righteously and justly cast a stone at others. The only person who fits that bill and meets that standard is Jesus. He prefers to help us, building us up in love and faith rather than condemning us.
Before we might begin to help anyone else, we must first be more like Gideon and clean up our own house. At least, we’ve got to start working on it because we shall each remain a work in progress until Christ returns and we’re finally raised and glorified.
Therefore, on that day, Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, ‘Let Baal contend against him because he broke down his altar.’ Gideon received a new name that day because of what he did, because he did what the Lord commanded him.
And so he took on a new identity. Like him, we Christians also receive a new name, and we have a new identity, not because of anything that we ourselves have done, but because of what has been done for and to us.
While it’s our obedience that proves the truth of this, if we’re regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit, then our idols will topple. They’re toppling already because we are not who we once were; we have been changed by Christ.
We have put on Christ so that we may put Satan and all the world to the test, saying, ‘Let him contend for himself. The Lord will contend and win. Can Satan say the same?’
So Christian, ask the Holy Spirit to identify whatever idols you need to have torn down. Ask His help to tear them down and drag them away. Then stand firm with your identity in Christ Jesus, for you belong to Him because you were bought with a price, so that you may rely upon your faith in Him alone, by God’s grace alone. Amen.