GIDEON’S TEST; THE KEY TO BRITAIN’S FUTURE
YOU might be forgiven for asking what does a man who lived a few thousand years ago have to do with the future of our nation at this point in history? Well I believe when you hear this message today you’ll have that question answered.
Earlier I spoke about the need of Britain to be cleansed of shrines to the Queen of Heaven. Now we are going to look at the Bible record of a man who acted out God’s command to do just that.
Beginning at Judges 6:1-5
“And the children oflsrael did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them; And they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it”.
Here’s a lesson for all those who want a multicultural society. This was a multicultural and a multiracial society but notice that it was not a blessing to Israel but indeed it was the hand of judgement upon them. Notice that they were engulfed by foreigners, people who rode camels (there’s a lesson in there for us isn’t there?).
The other lesson that I want to take from this is that Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord. When the land is engulfed by the heathen to use that old fashioned term, (it is a shame it is old fashioned but it is) but I’m using it, it always results in the poverty of God’s people.
Ask yourself where all the money today is in Britain? It is in the hands of foreigners isn’t it? So therefore we see that Scripture speaks directly to the state of our nation today.You might say “Oh is that a racist message you are preaching there brother?” Well I want to say this to you, my message based on this today is not so much on the colour of people’s skin as it is the fact that the vast majority of people who are entering our land are not worshippers of Jehovah, they are not Christian people. They bring their false and foreign gods and of course that cannot but pollute and bring down the spiritual condition of the nation.
From verse 7:
“And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD because of the Midianites, That the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of/srael, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage;”
God always sends a prophet when His people cry. God has a response to the cry of His people and here’s the thing, it is not always a nice response. It is not someone saying, “There you go, everything’s going to be ok.” It can be a harsh word. I want to say this to you, the word that you don’t necessarily want to hear is maybe the one that we do need to hear. When God speaks, He speaks to the very heart condition of our poverty of our need of our folly whatever. God took the prophet Ezekiel didn’t He, took him right into the temple of Jerusalem in the spirit and said this is a spiritual problem at the heart of the nation?
Then God reminds them verse 9:
“And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land;”
God brought them out of bondage but all of a sudden they are back in bondage. Why? Same reason that we looked at earlier on “idol worship”! Their heart has gone away from God.We will see that as we go on into this chapter.
Verse 10:
“And I said unto you, I am the LORD your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell but ye have not obeyed my voice. And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon (here’s where Gideon enters the story) threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.”
God sent an Angel for a specific task and here it was, to appoint God’s chosen man to lead the nation out of bondage.
Now you and I may have gone to seminary to find that man, you and I might have looked around at all the creatures, but who did God choose? A bootlegger! This was an illegal still Gideon was operating here. He was running an illegal winepress from the Midianites, so he’s a man that doesn’t pay taxes! He is a rebel if you like against the establishment; he doesn’t want to pay tax to Midian. God chooses the strangest folks doesn’t He? You only have to look at yourself in the mirror to know that. God chooses all the weirdoes, no names, not looking at anyone! But He does, God chooses the most unlikely people. He chooses the foolish things to confound the wise, the weak things to confound the mighty.
Look what the Angel says; the Angel doesn’t say to him, “You’re a bootlegger!” “You’re avoiding paying taxes!” He speaks to the man’s spiritual destiny “The Lord is with thee thou mighty man of valour.” God will always speak to our destiny; He will always speak to us on the level He sees us. We may see ourselves as inadequate, we may see ourselves as unable, we may see ourselves as unequipped but God always speaks to our destiny, to our potential that He has placed within us. Isn’t that good news?
Gideon said unto him
“And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”
These people were doing the same thing you and I do, and it is this; we were referring to the glories of the past and thinking we could dine out on them for ever. You and I would say why has all this happened because we are a Protestant nation, look what happened in the Reformation we had all the Glorious Revolution and we had all this and we had all that.We had the Empire, why has all this befallen us? We don’t understand that just because there were great men in our past and great miracles in our past and great deliverances that you and I have got to play our part in the present in order that we may have the same relationship with God and indeed the same glory and the same splendour if you like in our land.
So in other words there is no point in bleating about, we’ve lost the Empire. The Empire is long gone – might be news to some people – but it is long gone. What we need to do is believe God for our generation that God will raise up the nation again and make it a mighty Protestant Christian nation in the earth.
So there is no point in looking back to Egypt and the Angel said this didn’t He:
“And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy rmght, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?”
In other words forget about the past, you concentrate on the task at hand and go in the power and the strength you have because I have sent you to your generation. We are living in the 21st century now. I’m sending you is what He is saying. This is the message we take from that.
Never mind what happened in the Empire, let’s go in this with all our might and that means do what you can and God will be with you because look what it says next
“And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
Gideon’s still focused on self isn’t he? He’s still looking to his own inadequacies. But look what the Angel says:
” And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.”
God’s answer to every problem you have as an individual, to every problem you have as an household, as a family, and thank God every problem that we have as a nation is the “I willbe with thee.” That’s everything taken care of right there isn’t it?
Then of course Gideon starts to ask, because he is a weak person. Anyone recognise that? He’s weak, he feels inadequate, he feels he isn’t spiritual enough. “Can you give me a sign that you’re talking to us?”
“And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me.”
This man is so full of doubt and yet he is still God’s choice. Then the Angel tells him to make a small meal and he makes that – the Angel sets it on fire and so on.
Verse 22:
“And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the LORD, Gideon said, Alas, 0 Lord GOD! for because I have seen an angel of the LORD face to face. And the LORD said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die.”
He’s so fearful he thinks he is going to die because he’s seen an Angel.
“Then Gideon built an altar there unto the LORD, and called it Jehovah-shalom: (The Lord is Peace) unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abi-ezrites.”
Now watch this!
“And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father’s young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it.”
As we looked at earlier that word “grove” is not correctly translated by the King James translators. It doesn’t mean grove. The Hebrew word is “Ashera” which means a shrine to Ashera or Ashtaroth, the Queen of the Phoenicians or Canaanites. She was a deity worshipped as Queen of the Heavens. The Babylonians called it Eshta. She was also known as Astarte. The Greeks called her Aphrodite and the Romans called her Venus.
Various names fo the Queen of Heaven and that is what that word “grove” means, a shrine to the Queen of Heaven.
I keep being told this is a Protestant Bible, the King James Bible. I want to tell you something – some of the more modern translations that we have heard vilified for so long correctly translate this. So it is time that we started looking at things very honestly folks. This word “grove” means a shrine to the Queen of Heaven.
And God’s message to Gideon was this is in your father’s house, the altar to Baal and the shrine to the Queen of Heaven. Go and cut it down.
Now if you have grown up with a Bible background, I know some of you have, maybe you have been to Sunday School or you come from a Christian house. When you mention Gideon we all think of the same thing don’t we? Gideon’s 300 men lapping at the water instead of going down and drinking from it the right way. God chose them. Remember Gideon had an army of thirty thousand and God sent all the timid ones home. Then He whittled it down and Gideon ended up with 300 men – the SAS ok? When you start off with thirty thousand men you think nobody is going to beat us. Then you end up with only three hundred, 1%! We have a man in the church back home who recently preached that message, 1%, about Gideon. He was whittled down, 99% of all the superfluous were taken and he was left with 1%.
We remember that story about Gideon don’t we, maybe more famous than anything? But here’s what I am trying to say to you – this is Gideon’s test, this is the thing that we should really honour about Gideon’s memory.
” Then Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the LORD had said unto him: and so it was, because he feared his father’s household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, that he did it by night.”
Gideon is just like you and I, he’s a coward he does it at night and he takes 10 of his pals with him as well because he is scared to go on his own. And he’s thinking well if I’m going to go down for this all my buddies are going to be in jail beside me; I’m not going to get caught doing this on my own.
” And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove (the Ashera pole) was cut down that was by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built. And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing”
. In other words Gideon wanted to do it surreptitiously by night. He wanted to take 10 of his pals with him so that nobody will notice him and when they hold a council the next day they all say it’s that guy with the Union Jack sweater that did it! They know who did it because this is the guy who shoots his mouth off. This is the guy who is always talking about we need to do something about these Midianites.
Now he may be a coward and he may just be a talker, but all of a sudden the talker has been, if you like, conscripted into action and they all know it is Gideon. It’s that guy there who has got the heart for the Lord. No matter how much you try to hide it you see you wear your heart on your sleeve, so they knew it was Gideon.
So they got Gideon and the men of the city said unto Joash, “bring out thy son that he may die”
“Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove (the Ashera pole) that was by it. And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar.
Now what is the point of all this story? It is this! Before Gideon could take a nation, before Gideon could save Israel out of the hand of her enemies, he had to deal with idolatry in his own life. He had to deal with idolatry in his own household or his own background. This wasn’t a shrine somewhere up on a hill in town, this was in his father’s house, this was a private chapel. So he had to deal with idolatry in his own house and in his own heart.
It is all good and well you and I speaking, brothers and sisters, about taking the nation back for the Lord. But before we can do it, we must pass the test that is this. Before you can take a nation given to idols, you have to take the idols out of your own life and cast them down.
Gideon’s test is the key to our future. Why? Here’s why! Because Gideon lived in the same type of society that you and I do. He knew that to attack the shrine of the Queen of Heaven which in our day is manifest in the form of shrines to Mary in Roman Catholic chapels that are dotted all over this land. Before we can come against that system we have to understand the same thing that Gideon did – if you do, they will try and hang you for it.They were going to put this man to death! No I don’t know if it was a crime to do this but they were so incensed against him.
I want to say this before I go on: I am not advocating that we leave this place and go and vandalise our local Roman Catholic Church. I’m talking about heart issues. We have to decide we are going to rid this nation of idolatry.We are going to pull these shrines down in prayer and proclamation like they did in the Reformation.
I know someone will say to me, “but in the Reformation they did go out and burn these places down”. I’ll tell you what if there was such an outpouring of zeal and fervency for the Lord and the nation, the people…because remember that a lot of the people that got reformed, in fact the only people that got reformed in the Reformation, were Roman Catholics because there was nothing else was there?
They were reformed Catholics then, who became Protestants – they didn’t just appear and drop out of clouds – the people who were reformed were themselves Roman Catholics. Every one of us in this room, our ancestors were Roman Catholics.So the point I am trying to say to you is this; if you make this decision to take the nation back, understand that just like they did with Gideon, they will want to persecute you and hang you if you want to start cutting down idols. Whether that be literallyof metaphorically, figuratively or whatever.
Gideon of course was a weak man in many respects. He then asked God for signs and we had the whole episode with the fleece. Could you make the fleece dry and the ground wet, the ground dry and the fleece wet, all that type of thing. Gideon was always looking for signs, “I just need to be sure, I just need to confirm.” Just like you and I, have I really heard from God or am I just a nutter? The point is this, this was still the man that God took.
Now you may say to me “Well what can we do in our day?” God gave Gideon that great slogan “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon” didn’t he? This is our sword in our day, brothers and sisters, to pull down the altars of Baal and the shrines to the Queen of Heaven. This was the sword that God gave to John Wycliffe and Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Knox and men like that, to pull down Romanism of their days.
Some one will say “You know this Queen of Heaven business isn’t all just about Romanism, what about the New Age, what about all the other false gods in our land, Buddhism, Mohammedism, which is an old term for Islam, Communism, Humanism, Atheism – they are all false gods. God has a weapon against them – The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon – the word Gideon means feller or destroyer or he who knocks down.
I believe that God has commissioned us all to be Gideons in our time, those who pull down the altars to false gods.
As I mentioned before there was a reformation in Israel’s history. Further on in particular in the Kingdom of Judah there was a reformation because this is what we were looking at earlier and I want to emphasise this again. Time and time and time again in our nations history we have seen this sliding back to Baal and Ashtaroth worship, worshipping false gods. Denying the worship of the True God, falling back into dodgy theology and indeed ending up with no theology, ending up in a land without God.
It is interesting that although we may abandon Christianity we never abandon spirituality, so in other words as we get less Christian we get more into other spiritualities,don’t we, New Age and all kinds of weird stuff? This is a time in Judah’s history where this had happened.
2 Kings 23:
” And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD.”
Wouldn’t it be great if the Queen called a meeting and called the Prime Minister and all the top men in Cabinet. Some of them need to hear this don’t they? I can think of one, this week that alone needs to hear this; they need to hear this message. “Come in leaders of the opposition come in take a seat.” That would be something to see.
And the Queen says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; I’m going to read you the book of the Law.”
“And the king stood by a pillar (The Stone of Destiny) , and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.” – 2 Kings 23
In other words, here is the King of Judah, Josiah, leading the nation back to God. Watch what happens as a consequence, notice that the King did this and this was a reformation. Notice this:
“And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD (notice where these things were – remember we saw it in Ezekiel, which was a far later time in Judah’s history but even before Ezekiel’s time and the revelation that God gave Ezekiel in Chapter 8 of Ezekiel – this is an earlier point in time and notice what it says) all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove (Ashera shrine), and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel (All that junk all that mess, all that idolatry was in the House of the Lord and the King said go and get all that junk out of here and burn it outside the walls.) And he put down the idolatrous priests, (or the ecumenical priests) whom the kings of Judah had ordained to bum incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the grove (Ashera shrine) from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, (wasn’t enough just to burn it he ground it to powder) and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.” (Because at this particular place it was where they burned people in worship of these gods.)
This was a great Biblical reformation; you and I are looking for God to do mighty things in our day. But understand from what we have seen from Gideon’s life story here what we have seen from this point in 2 Kings 23, what we have looked at today earlier on and been brought to the inescapable conclusion right now and it is this.
If we want revival, if we want reformation, if we want the glory of the Lord back in our land and with that, the glory of the Empire resurgent, there is only one way to do it. “Oh Yes God needs to send revival, we need to pray, the pastor’s calling for a prayer and fasting time!” No! We need to get serious with God and pull down those altars, pull down those shrines to the Queen of Heaven.
“Oh you’re in an anti-Catholic ranting again preacher!” Oh yes, why? Because until the message sinks home, we all need to hear it. I know I’m speaking to the converted here, but I’m saying this to you, this is the message that this nation needs to hear. They won’t like it, they didn’t like it back then. But it is the necessary and urgent message of God.
Deal with idolatry, it takes it all the way back to the first Commandment – Thou shalt have no other gods before me – thou shalt worship the Lord thy God. It is still the same message, the message that saved our nation time and time again. It is the message that will save our nation in the future. Gideon’s testing is the spiritual key for our future in the Lord.
This article is virtually verbatim of the author’s original sermon
