If you had just been supernaturally commissioned by the Lord to deliver Israel from the oppression of Midian, you would expect your first order to involve the enemy. Round up a posse. Plunge a dagger into the heart of the oppressor. Go to war.
But that is not what God tells Gideon to do.
In Judges 6:25, the Lord says to Gideon, on the very same night of his calling, “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image that is beside it.”
No mention of Midian. The first mission-facing act of God’s newly commissioned deliverer is not pointed at the external enemy. It is pointed inward, at the household of faith, at the idolatry of his own family.
Root Cause, Not Fruit
This makes perfect sense when you rewind to the beginning of the chapter. The reason Midian was oppressing Israel in the first place was not Midian’s strength. It was Israel’s unfaithfulness. They had given their allegiance to the gods of the Amorites and the Canaanites, abandoning the God who had delivered them. The oppression was the fruit. The idolatry was the root.
And here lies a sharp rebuke for our own day. It is very easy to look outward and point to the symptom. To blame the external pressure. To rage against the World Economic Forum, or immigration, or whichever visible pressure point gets the blood up. But God is not impressed with that. He goes straight to the heart of the issue. It is the religious disposition of the people who are called by His name. If the covenant community is trusting in false gods, the external consequences are simply the inevitable harvest.
If you want to make sea change in your time, deal with that issue. The problem is that you’re pointing at yourself. The hopeful thing is that you’re pointing at yourself, because that is where you can actually make changes. You don’t have billions. You don’t have a lobbying firm. But you do have control of your own household.
God Demands Proper Worship
Notice that God does not say, “Just tear down the altar and we’ll figure out the rest.” He gives Gideon precise instructions: “Build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement.” God is concerned with strict adherence to His Word. He does not say, “I know your heart’s in the right place, just slap anything up there.” No. The law of God specifies how an altar is to be built, down to the kind of stones used. And Gideon knows this. He is not an ignoramus. He knows God’s Word.
Then, in a beautifully defiant act, Gideon is told to chop down the Asherah pole and use the wood as fuel for a burnt offering of his father’s bull on the new altar. The instruments of false worship become the kindling for true worship. Destruction and construction in a single night.
The Right Man for the Job
Gideon is a farmer. He knows how to chop things down, break rocks, move bulls around, and sacrifice animals. This is the second sacrifice he has performed in as many days. God does not perversely call the naturally timid to lead armies or the desk-bound scholar to wield axes. He fits the man for the job. Gideon’s God-given, natural abilities are precisely what the mission requires.
And notice, he takes ten of his servants with him. This is a man of means, a man with employees. The Lord, as with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before him, does not call a nobody. He calls a somebody. The question for every man is not “Why am I not somebody else?” but rather “What is the job that I am the right man for?”
Prudence Is Not Cowardice
The commentators love to condemn Gideon for doing the deed at night. “Oh, what a coward! What a lack of faith!” But this is nonsense born of armchair piety. Abraham deceived Pharaoh because Pharaoh would have killed him. Isaac did the same with Abimelech. Jacob fled Laban under cover of darkness. And sure enough, just three verses later, the men of the city say, “Bring out your son, that he may die.”
Did the Lord command him to do it by day? He did not. Did the Lord condemn him for doing it at night? He did not. Gideon acted within the same 24-hour period. He did not delay, did not procrastinate, did not wait three months to “gather his forces.” He obeyed immediately, and he did so wisely. That is not a failure of faith. That is prudent, faithful obedience.
God’s Eminent Domain
An intriguing question arises: how is it right for Gideon to take his father’s bull and sacrifice it? Is that not stealing? Consider what is actually happening. The Baal altar and the Asherah pole belong to Joash. But Joash owes God worship. He holds everything he has as a stewardship from the Lord. Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills? The Lord does. God is here exercising His eminent domain, His sovereign right over all property.
This concept points directly at the idols of our own age. Only a god claims eminent domain. Only a god says, “I own it, you are merely using it, and I can reclaim it at will.” And who exercises that exact claim today? The state. The state claims the right to your property, your land, your income. And just like Baal, the state promises protection and prosperity. And just like Baal, the state fails to deliver.
The Generational Dynamic
There is one more layer worth considering. The older generation in Gideon’s day were comfortable. Joash had his bulls, his servants, his position. The Baal-Asherah system, whatever its failures, was working out for him, at least in the short term. But what about Gideon’s generation? They were not the beneficiaries of the system. Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress. His future is obscured. The system has failed him.
The parallel to our own day is striking. The generation with paid-off mortgages and comfortable pensions is not the generation that will go out and chop things down. “Don’t rock the boat. We’ve got a sweet deal here.” But the younger generation, priced out of the housing market, facing stagnant wages and a declining standard of living, they are the ones who look at the system and say, “What has this Baal done for me?”
God is not a God of irrationality. He works through circumstances. He picks the man who is naturally predisposed to act. And the man who has nothing to lose from tearing down the altar is a better candidate than the man who is profiting from it.
The Application
This is not a distant, far-off story about a man who did great things when God was “at His prime.” This is the same dynamic playing out in our own time. If you want to deal with the external problems, you must start with the internal ones. Start with your heart. Start with your religious disposition. What are you trusting in? What is the wider society trusting in?
God has a man for that job. He can raise one up. And the first order of business will not be to attack the external enemy. It will be to tear down your father’s altar.