Gideon-Study-Guide_EBook-Final

G IDEON
A Study in Judges 6-8
REALFAITH.COM
By Mark Driscoll
Gideon: A Study in Judges 6-8
© 2024 by Mark Driscoll
ISBN: 979-8-9894167-5-2 (Paperback)

ISBN: 979-8-9894167-6-9 (E-book)
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CONTENTS
Real Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER 1
The Prophetic Mind-Melting Connection Between the
Ancient War in Judges and the Current War in Israel . . . . . . 3
CHAPTER 2
Introduction to Judges and Gideon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
CHAPTER 3
The Spirit of Judges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
CHAPTER 4
Judges and Jesus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
CHAPTER 5
Personal and Group Study Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
1. Gideon: Anointed Son (Judges 6) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
2. Gideon: Anointed Savior (Judges 7). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
3. Gideon: Anointed Sinner (Judges 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
About Pastor Mark & RealFaith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
REAL G ROUPS
WITH REALFAITH
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James 2:20, TLB
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1
G IDEON: A STUDY IN JUDG ES 6-8
3. Get into God’s Word

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We will be praying for you and your group and look

forward to hearing what God does through it.
2
CHAPTER 1
The Prophetic Mind-Melting Connection
Between the Ancient War in Judges and
the Current War in Israel
Ihave spent my entire adult life, since my conversion

as a college freshman, studying, preaching, and
teaching the Bible. In more than three decades as
a Senior Pastor largely preaching through books of
the Bible, verse by verse, week after week, I have
been repeatedly stunned at how perfectly timed my
study of God’s Word is with events in our world. I pray
about my sermons a year in advance, asking the Holy
Spirit to help me hear His leading for my preaching.
God sovereignly knows the future, and over and over
God’s timeless Word has proven to be timely, because
Scripture tells us not merely what happened in the past
but what always happens, including in the present.
Hamas Is a Demonic Spirit in the Bible
On October 7, 2023, a Palestinian terrorist group

called Hamas, from the Gaza Strip region, invaded
Israel. “Hamas” is a demon that is described in the
Bible. In my book War In Israel, I write:
In Genesis 6:11 it says, “Now the earth was corrupt
in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.”
The Hebrew word for violence in this context is hamas.
The whole world was filled by the spirit of hamas.
3
Hamas is not just a group; it’s a demonic spirit that

works through various groups throughout Scripture
and history. The filling of the world with hamas is
the demonic counterfeit to being filled with the Holy
Spirit. What God creates, Satan counterfeits, and the
reason God was so brokenhearted was because nearly
everyone in the world was possessed, or filled, by the
Hamas spirit instead of the Holy Spirit.
What did God do in response to a world filled and
possessed by the spirit of Hamas? He sent a flood
and killed everyone. The only people saved were Noah
and his family because they had the Holy Spirit,
which is the opposite of the Hamas spirit. The same
Hamas spirit was working in several groups after the
flood, including the Chaldeans and Babyloniansa, the
Shechemitesb, and the Egyptiansc.
The counterfeit of the Holy Spirit is the Hamas
spirit. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of life. The Hamas
spirit is the spirit of death. The Holy Spirit is the spirit
of Christ. The Hamas spirit is the spirit of antichrist ...
When Ishmael is around 16 years old, Isaac is about
two years old, and the teenage “wild donkey of a man”
that we established means “savage of a man” Ishmael
is mocking and tormenting his younger half-brother. So,
you have a wild donkey of a man who is now grown and
has no regard for human life because he and his mother
are governed by the Hamas spirit. The literal Hebrew
says that Ishmael was terrorizing Isaac, the same thing
that the Palestinians do towards the Israelites. The
Hamas spirit always terrorizes and attacks children.
Case in point: Part of the recent Hamas attack on
Israel is grown men terrorizing, killing, and beheading
children.
_________________
a
Jeremiah 24:5 b Judges 9:34 c Joel 3:19
4
In Joel 3:19, it says “Egypt shall become a desolation

and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence
[hamas has] done to the people of Judah, because they
have shed innocent blood in their land.” God is referring
to the book of Exodus when innocent baby boys, who
are descendants of Isaac, are killed by a government
possessed by Hamas. Here in Joel, God says He
brought judgment and destruction on Egypt because
they acted towards children by the Hamas spirit. When
you see spiritual and political leaders in different
nations and generations doing the same thing, it
might be because, although people come and go, their
demons remain the same. The Hamas demon spirit that
killed Hebrew children in Egypt may have also been at
work with Herod in the days of Jesus when His family
had to flee to Egypt like the Palestinians are currently
doing to avoid the death sentence placed on the
Jewish boys. As another mind-melting fact, Herod was
a descendant of Ishmael, leading that same terrorist
attack in the days of Jesus as happened recently in
Israel. This may be because Herod, who was possibly
a descendant of Ishmael, may have had the same
demonic Hamas spirit inciting him and others to kill
babies and destroy Israel.
The Holy Spirit and the Hamas spirit cannot coexist
– one must be cast out, like a demon, which is just
what Abraham does in Genesis 21. Sarah says Hagar
and Ishmael must be cast out and he sends them away,
confirming the Abrahamic Covenant and that God’s
promise will come through Isaac’s descendants, not
Ishmael’s.
Today, the conflict between Abraham’s two
sons, Isaac and Ishmael, continues through their
descendants: the Jews and the Arabs, which include
the Palestinians. This same conflict is reported in
5
Judges, especially the battles between Gideon

and invading terrorists reported in Judges 6-8. In
those three chapters, the invading terrorists are
called “Midianites” (nine times) and from “Midian”
(22 times). Judges 8:24 says of the Midianites, “they
were Ishmaelites.” In the days of Judges, Gideon, a
descendant of Isaac, was fighting descendants of
Ishmael over land that was invaded by terrorist forces
seeking to overtake Israel. The current war in Israel is a
repeat by their descendants, as the Bible tells us not
just what happened, but rather what always happens.
From Moses, to Gideon, to Today’s War In Israel
Going even deeper into prophetic revelation to

understand the spiritual war behind the physical war
currently raging in Israel, we will now connect some
prophetic passages in Deuteronomy, to their fulfilment
in Judges, and to the current war in Israel, which was
foreshadowed over 3,000 years ago, as we are seeing
ancient deep prophecy fulfilled and repeated on the
nightly news.
Upon occupying the Promised Land, God
commands His people in Israel to kill as many enemies
as possible and completely drive out those who seek to
remain in the land, saying in Deuteronomy 7:1-5, 17-26:
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land
that you are entering to take possession of it, and
clears away many nations before you, the Hittites,
the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations
more numerous and mightier than you, and when
the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you
defeat them, then you must devote them to complete
destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and
6
show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with

them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their
daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your
sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the
anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and
he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal
with them: you shall break down their altars and dash
in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and
burn their carved images with fire. [...]
“If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater
than I. How can I dispossess them?’ you shall not be
afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord
your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, the great
trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the
mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the
Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your
God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.
Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among
them, until those who are left and hide themselves
from you are destroyed. You shall not be in dread of
them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great
and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away
these nations before you little by little. You may not
make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow
too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will give
them over to you and throw them into great confusion,
until they are destroyed. And he will give their kings
into your hand, and you shall make their name perish
from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand
against you until you have destroyed them. The carved
images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall
not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take
it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an
abomination to the Lord your God. And you shall not
bring an abominable thing into your house and become
7
devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest

and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.”
In current political vernacular, God commanded a
one-state solution: Israel inhabited and governed by
Abraham’s descendants through Isaac (the Jewish
people), not Ishmael (the Palestinian people). In
rebellion that infuriated God, His people in the ancient
days of Judges chose what today would be called a
two-state solution: a coexisting of both groups in the
Promised Land, which ignores the underlying spiritual
war that inevitably leads to physical war.
Judges 1:3–36 reports that God’s people enslaved,
intermarried with, and even syncretized (i.e., sought to
unite or harmonize) their religious worship with their
enemies:
And Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up
with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may
fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with
you into the territory allotted to you.” So Simeon went
with him. Then Judah went up and the LORD gave the
Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they
defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. They found Adoni-
bezek at Bezek and fought against him and defeated
the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Adoni-bezek fled,
but they pursued him and caught him and cut off
his thumbs and his big toes. And Adoni-bezek said,
“Seventy kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut
off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have
done, so God has repaid me.” And they brought him to
Jerusalem, and he died there.
And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem
and captured it and struck it with the edge of the
sword and set the city on fire. And afterward the men
of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites
who lived in the hill country, in the Negeb, and in the
8
lowland. And Judah went against the Canaanites who

lived in Hebron (now the name of Hebron was formerly
Kiriath-arba), and they defeated Sheshai and Ahiman
and Talmai.
From there they went against the inhabitants of
Debir. The name of Debir was formerly Kiriath-sepher.
And Caleb said, “He who attacks Kiriath-sepher and
captures it, I will give him Achsah my daughter for a
wife.” And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger
brother, captured it. And he gave him Achsah his
daughter for a wife. When she came to him, she urged
him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted
from her donkey, and Caleb said to her, “What do you
want?” She said to him, “Give me a blessing. Since you
have set me in the land of the Negeb, give me also
springs of water.” And Caleb gave her the upper springs
and the lower springs.
And the descendants of the Kenite, Moses’ father-
in-law, went up with the people of Judah from the city
of palms into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the
Negeb near Arad, and they went and settled with the
people. And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and
they defeated the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath
and devoted it to destruction. So the name of the city
was called Hormah. Judah also captured Gaza with
its territory, and Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron
with its territory. And the LORD was with Judah, and
he took possession of the hill country, but he could not
drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they
had chariots of iron. And Hebron was given to Caleb,
as Moses had said. And he drove out from it the three
sons of Anak. But the people of Benjamin did not
drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem, so the
Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in
Jerusalem to this day.
9
The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel,

and the LORD was with them. And the house of Joseph
scouted out Bethel. (Now the name of the city was
formerly Luz.) And the spies saw a man coming out of
the city, and they said to him, “Please show us the way
into the city, and we will deal kindly with you.” And he
showed them the way into the city. And they struck the
city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man
and all his family go. And the man went to the land of
the Hittites and built a city and called its name Luz.
That is its name to this day.
Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of
Beth-shean and its villages, or Taanach and its
villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages,
or the inhabitants of Ibleam and its villages, or the
inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages, for the
Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. When
Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced
labor, but did not drive them out completely.
And Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who
lived in Gezer, so the Canaanites lived in Gezer among
them.
Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron,
or the inhabitants of Nahalol, so the Canaanites lived
among them, but became subject to forced labor.
Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco, or
the inhabitants of Sidon or of Ahlab or of Achzib or of
Helbah or of Aphik or of Rehob, so the Asherites lived
among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for
they did not drive them out.
Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-
shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth-anath, so they
lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the
land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh
and of Beth-anath became subject to forced labor for
10
them.
The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into
the hill country, for they did not allow them to come
down to the plain. The Amorites persisted in dwelling in
Mount Heres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim, but the hand
of the house of Joseph rested heavily on them, and
they became subject to forced labor. And the border
of the Amorites ran from the ascent of Akrabbim, from
Sela and upward.”
In Judges 2:1-3, Jesus Christ appears from Heaven
as the Angel of the Lord to rebuke the people for not
driving every one of their enemies into the grave or out
of the land, saying:
“I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into
the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will
never break my covenant with you, and you shall make
no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall
break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my
voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will
not drive them out before you, but they shall become
thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to
you.”
Today’s Israeli War in Gaza Started 2,600 Years Ago
The rest of Judges reveals repeated terrorist

attacks, invasions, and wars with the surrounding
demonic people groups that are enemies of God and
God’s people. The Judges are raised up as military
leaders to lead the battle for the Promised Land
against demonic terrorist invasions.
For example, Deboraha, Gideonb, and Samsonc all
lead military campaigns against terrorist invaders
seeking to take from the Hebrew people the Promised
Land that God promised to them through Abraham and
11
Isaac. Tragically, after Gideon’s great military victory,

Judges 8:30-31 says, “Now Gideon had seventy sons,
his own offspring, for he had many wives. And his
concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son,
and he called his name Abimelech.”
A Bible encyclopedia summarizes the life of
Abimelech, saying, “A son of Gideond who aspired to
be king after the death of his father, and did rule three
yearse. He first won support of the members of his
mother’s family and their recommendation of himself
to all Israelf. He then murdered the seventy sons of
his father at Ophrah, the family home in the tribe of
Manasseh, Jotham the youngest son alone escaping.g
After this Abimelech was made ruler by an assembly of
the people at Shechem.”1
How did Abimelech overtake the nation of Israel and
rule over God’s people, even though he was an enemy
of God? He did so by the power of the demonic spirit
of hamas that continues its work to take the Promised
Land and install a demonic king, which paves the
way for the coming of the Antichrist in the last days.
Judges 9:22-24 prophetically reveals all of this, saying:
Abimelech ruled over Israel three years. And God
sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders
of Shechem, and the leaders of Shechem dealt
treacherously with Abimelech, that the violence
(“hamas” in the original Hebrew) done to the seventy
sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid
on Abimelech their brother, who killed them, and on the
men of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to kill his
brothers.
Not only was it the hamas demonic spirit at work in
the days of the Judges 2,600 years ago, in fulfilment
_________________
a
Judges 4 b Judges 7 c Judges 15 d Judges 9 e Judges 9:22 f Judges 9:3f
g
Judges 9:5
12
of the prophecies given in Deuteronomy 2,700 years

ago, but the ancient wars, just like the current war,
were triggered by terrorist invasions targeting civilians
– including women and children. The hamas spirit that
was at work in the days of Abimelech sought to kill the
leaders in Israel, overtake the nation by terroristic force,
and rule over God’s people, thereby replacing God as
King and Judge in the Promised Land of Israel.
Today, the Hamas Charter is considered to be the
movement’s most important ideological document. Its
central commitments are to religious and political war
between Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews; belief that all
of Palestine is Arab Muslim land, sacred and stolen by
the Jews and their supporters (e.g., the United States);
and terroristic jihad (holy war) as the main means to
eliminate Israel and the Jews and replace them with
Arabs and Islam. It says, in part:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam
will obliterate it. [...] The Islamic Resistance Movement
is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose
allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It
strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of
Palestine. [...] The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant
him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgement will not
come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the
Jews) ... Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the
Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for
the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes[.]”2
The eschatology of Islam, or their belief about the
end times, is that Islam will overtake the world through
jihad or holy war, and then an Islamic leader will arise
to rule the world. This person is perhaps, if not likely to
be, the false christa, antichristb, man of lawlessnessc,
and son of perditiond who the Bible warns will rise up,
triggering the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
13
The Hamas Charter says:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that
the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated
for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day[.]
... Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic
Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed.
Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper
than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem
land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the
individual duty of every Moslem, male or female[.] ...
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except
through Jihad[.]”3
Lastly, adding another level of deep prophetic
insight, not only did the same demons in Judges do the
same things through terrorist invasions in the days of
the Judges to elicit war, but the war was also over the
same piece of land.
In the ancient world, the wars were waged in what
is known as the Gaza Strip. Today, the Palestinians
are descendants of the ancient nations that God
commanded in Deuteronomy 7 to be destroyed and/
or driven out. Had God’s people obeyed instead of
disobeyed, for which Jesus rebuked them in Judges
1:3-36, today there would not be a Palestinian people
demanding to rule the Promised Land and operating by
the demonic spirit of Hamas.
The ancient wars waged against terrorist invaders
in Judges continue today as the same demons are
doing the same work in new days through new people.
The following two maps show the ancient world of
these battles in the days of the Judges (e.g., Deborah,
Gideon, and Samson) and the current Gaza Strip over
which there is war in Israel.
_________________
a
Matthew 24 b I John 1:7, 1:22, 2:18, 4:3; 2 John 1:7 c 2 Thessalonians 2:1-
12 d 2 Thessalonians 2:3 KJV
14
15
CHAPTER 2
Introduction to Judges and Gideon
Deuteronomy 12:8 – “You shall not do according to all

that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever
is right in his own eyes...”
Judges 21:25b - Everyone did what was right in his own

eyes.
C onsider a nation in steep spiritual and cultural

decline; lacking godly and strong leadership;
surrounded by major shifts in political relationships
with other nations; during a time of economic change
causing internal social unrest, division, rioting and
terrorism leading to anarchy and a complete disregard
for God and the rule of law.
While this backdrop sounds much like our own day,
it is also the setting for the Old Testament book of
Judges.
Understanding the Days of the Judges
Written or collected into a complete manuscript

hundreds of years after the events took place, the book
of Judges reports a significant season of transition for
God’s people in the Old Testament.
In the book of Genesis, God raised up Abraham
and Sarah to cut off their godless family, move in faith
to a new nation, and start a new life and legacy in the
16
Promised Land as the nation of Israel was born. At the

end of Genesis, a famine takes the family into Egypt,
which is reported in Exodus. At the end of roughly four
hundred years away from the Promised Land, God’s
people were enslaved and abused by a demonic king,
or Pharaoh. At that time, God’s people who had not
lived faithfully in relationship with the Lord cried out
to Him in desperation. God heard and answered their
desperate prayers, raising up Moses to lead God’s
people into deliverance. Sadly, God’s people returned
to rebellion against the Lord, which caused them to
wander in the wilderness for some forty years. With the
death of Moses, Joshua led the next generation into
the Promised Land, setting the stage for Judges.
A Bible commentary says: “The death of Joshua and
his generation is the backdrop against which the book
of Judges unfolds. More than a sign of the absence of
godly leadership, the notice about the emergence of a
new generationa signals to the reader that Israel now
lacks those who remember the exodus and the mighty
victories of God during the conquest of Canaan. The
two-part introduction explores the ramifications of
this reality by highlighting, first, the failure of most
tribes to properly drive out the land’s inhabitantsb
and, second, the way in which God responds to that
failure – by testing their allegiance through repeated
battles from which he miraculously saves them.c This
initial summary sets the stage for the rest of the
book, which demonstrates just how decidedly Israel
fails to follow God’s instructions and remain loyal to
him. Judges begins where Joshua ended, i.e., with the
land of promise having been won in battle, but not
entirely settled or fully conquered. In fact, many of the
_________________
a
Judges 2:10 b Judges 1:1–36 c Judges 2:1–3:6 d Judges 1:1-20 e Judges
1:21-36
17
land’s pagan Canaanite inhabitants remain. The first

chapter summarizes the attempts of God’s people
to adhere to the charge to remove the people and
the religious influence of Canaan from the land they
were allotted. The first half of the chapterd relays the
success of Judah and Simeon in this endeavor. The
remainder of the chaptere outlines the increasingly
ineffective efforts of the rest of the tribes to do the
same. Ultimately, they compromise their exclusive
loyalty to Yahweh. Because of the failure of God’s
people to follow his instructions, in the next chapter
he will respond by confronting them through a divine
messenger and testing their allegiance through the
serial occupation of the land by oppressors of various
kinds. God answers the covenant breach committed
by the people in chapter 1 by reminding them of the
defining moment in their relationship: the exodus. In
this speech,a the messenger accuses God’s people of
unfaithfulness and reminds them of the consequences
of their disloyalty, namely, the difficulties posed by
the nations remaining in their midst. However, the
generations after Joshua are so far removed from
past miracles that they have lost sight of their
unique relationship with Yahweh and have fallen into
worshiping the gods of the nations. God responds with
a series of military conflicts designed to expose their
sin and demonstrate his gracious deliverance through
the judges. However, the people refuse to acknowledge
their waywardness. Therefore, God reiterates that the
nations will continue to live among his people “to see
whether Israel would obey the commands of Yahweh”.b
As the rest of the book will demonstrate, the people
will fail this test miserably.”4
_________________
a
Judges 2:1-5 b Judges 3:4
18
Judges reports that the nation of Israel was

supposed to honor God as their King, obeying His laws
found in Scripture. Because of the multiple generations
of sinful rebellion, the nation had fallen into complete
anarchy, making it unsafe for citizens to travel or
conduct basic business. Judges 5:6-8 says, “the
highways were abandoned, and travelers kept to the
byways. The villagers ceased in Israel[.]”
Had the people honored God as King, their nation
would have not been devastated by military attacks
externally and wicked behavior internally. This set the
stage for ungodly leadership, which started with the
judges and culminated with earthly kings. The history
of sinful rebellion reported in Judges shows the need
for a Spirit-filled king who is a worshiper of God and
warrior against God’s enemies. God raised up King
David to meet that need.
God Raises Up Judges
The first judge God raised up was Moses. Exodus

18:13 says, “Moses sat to judge the people, and the
people stood around Moses from morning till evening.”
Serving as the only judge, Moses was overwhelmed
at the workload, and people could not get justice in a
timely manner. So, Moses’ father-in-law Jethro says
in Exodus 18:19-22: “You shall represent the people
before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall
warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make
them know the way in which they must walk and what
they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the
people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and
hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as
chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.
And let them judge the people at all times. Every great
19
matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter

they shall decide themselves.”
Moses delegated his workload so that he could
elevate to a higher level of leadership. Exodus 18:24-26
says, “So Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-
law and did all that he had said. Moses chose able men
out of all Israel and made them heads over the people,
chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of
tens. And they judged the people at all times. Any hard
case they brought to Moses, but any small matter they
decided themselves.”
The similarities between the judges Moses and
Gideon are many.a
•Both men had ties to the region of Midian, as
Moses married a Midianite woman, and it was the
Midianites many years later who invaded and
destroyed Israel during the days of Gideon.
•Both men were doing agricultural tasks when God
called them into new leadership positions as
judges.
•Jesus Christ appearing as the angel of the Lord
appeared to both men in fire.
•God raised up both men to deliver His people from
evil political oppression.
•God gave signs to both men to help convince them
nof His divine calling on their life.
•Both Moses and Gideon felt inadequate for the
calling God gave them and asked to be excused
from serving in the role of judges.
•Both men were given orders from God to obey and
did so, even though imperfectly.
In the days of both Moses and Gideon, God’s people
cried out in desperation for deliverance, and God heard
_________________
a
Exodus 3-4; Judges 6
20
and answered their prayers by raising up leaders called

judges.
Judges in the Old Testament were a combination of
spiritual, political, legal, and military leadership “raised
up” by God to deliver God’s people from their enemies.
A Bible dictionary says:
"The judges primarily functioned as military leaders,
and it seems that they were supposed to function as
spiritual leaders, who at the very least set a positive
example. The judges functioned within their own tribes
and across tribes.
The stories of the spirit-empowered, yet often very
flawed, judges combine to show the faithfulness of
Yahweh to an unfaithful people. The temporary and
successive leadership of the judges underscores Israel’s
dependence on human leadership during this time,
which ultimately leads them to declare that they are
in need of a king. The difference between a judge and
a king was temporary leadership versus long-term
leadership: Judges do not seem to have had unilateral
power like a monarch, but rather power limited to
military (and possibly arbitration) matters, and it does
not seem that the successors of judges were meant to
be chosen based on blood line."5
That last point is another clue about how to
interpret Judges. Although the book features those
who “judged” Israel, only one named figure – God
himself, the Judge – is given that title [A substantive
participle, used as a noun. Only Yahweh is called a
“Judge” by name](by Jephthah).a The point all along
is that only God is the real Judge.6 He is the Judge of
Judges, and God judges everyone, and everyone will
give an account to Him. This is because authority is
_________________
a
Judg. 11:27
21
derived from God, and those with authority are still

under God’s authority.
The Judges Cycle
Judges is closely related to the book of

Deuteronomy which prophesies the future events
reported in Judges. A Bible commentary says:
“One theme of Judges is stated in 2:1–6. There,
the Angel of the Lord travels from Gilgal to Bochim
[“Bochim” is probably a euphemism for “Bethel”
(Footnote see Judg. 21:2). Perhaps this critiques the
golden calf that Jeroboam erected there. Here is
another symbolic name change!]. He states one of
Judges’ most important perspectives: because Israel
has failed to keep covenant, it will be tested and
take the land only through much adversity. Probably
Deuteronomy most clearly expresses this covenant.
Judges is then a sermon on Deuteronomy: lessons
drawn from history illustrating Deuteronomic principles.
This characteristic unites the parts of Judges into
a whole. Deuteronomy 7:2 commands Israel to drive
out the land’s native inhabitants. But in Judges 1:3-
36 the tribes enslave them instead. Deuteronomy
12:3 commands them to destroy Canaanite places of
worship. The Angel specifically cites this passagea and
finds them wanting. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 commands
the Israelites to teach their children about Yahweh.
But in Judges 2:7-12, a generation arose who did not
know about him. Deuteronomy 7:3-4 commanded
them not to intermarry with the Canaanites. Judges
3:5-8 virtually quotes this law and gives it as a reason
God was angry – exactly what Deuteronomy says his
_________________
a
Judg. 2:1–6
22
reaction would be. Consider also Deuteronomy 12:8:

“You shall not do according to all that we are doing
here this day, every man doing whatever is right in his
own eyes.” This is the motto of the last five chapters
of Judges, cited three times, and it concludes the
whole book. One aspect of the Mosaic covenant that
has particular clarity in Deuteronomy is that of curses
for disobedience and blessing for covenant fidelity:
punishments and rewards. The program of Judges is
to illustrate how the covenant drives history in this
way[.] ... Notice the references to warnings such as
Deuteronomy 4:25. But Deuteronomy also says that
they will cry out in their distress and return to God,
who will then show mercy.a In Judges, this becomes a
repeating cycle. Again, the author plainly states this
principle ... (Judg. 2:17–19).”7
It takes the average reader around two hours
to read the entire book of Judges. I would strongly
encourage you to do that multiple times, or listen
to it on your phone through an app like YouVersion.
As you do, a pattern will emerge from generation to
generation. A Bible dictionary says:
"Judges portrays the geographical and religious
situation of the Israelites after Joshua’s death. It is
a collection of primarily hero stories that emphasize
the weaknesses of Israel’s leaders and God’s patient
compassion. The narrative also illustrates God’s
punishment of His people when they turn from
worshiping Him to worshiping Baal and living immorally.
This punishment usually consists in domination by
another people. Each story is set within a framework
involving five steps, commonly referred to as the
“Judges Cycle,” of sin, repentance, and salvation:
_________________
a
Deut. 4:30–31
23
1. Israel does evil and worships the Baals.

2. God becomes angry and hands Israel over to an
enemy nation.
3. Israel cries for help.
4. God raises up judges who deliver Israel from the
enemy.
5. Israel returns again to foreign gods."8
One error in studying Judges is to read with a
religious spirit instead of a repentant spirit. A religious
spirit wonders why supposed believers continue to
fall back into sin, folly, and rebellion over and over
from generation to generation. A repentant spirit sees
this same pattern in our own churches and Christian
ministries. It seems like the trend is always south and
to the left, away from faithful obedience to God’s Word
in favor of apostasy and idolatry. Furthermore, most
honest Christians can see this same pattern in their
own lives. If honest, we all say and do some of the same
foolish and harmful things as the generations before
us, and the dark world around us. To truly benefit from
Judges, we have to keep asking how we might be like
the same people who are suffering because of their sin.
Themes in Judges
Paying attention to the following themes in

Judges can be helpful in using it as a story to better
understand your own heart, life, and culture.
Covenant. God is faithful to His covenant people
even when they are unfaithful to Him. God’s promise to
Abraham, that He would raise up and provide for His
people, remains true no matter how many years pass or
how many sins are committed.
Reap-Sow. Obedience brings blessing; disobedience
brings cursing. Because God is Holy and Good, like any
24
good parent the Father cannot aid in evil, or reward

rebellion. Once God lifts His hand of provision and
protection, even the slightest demonic evil floods in to
cause great suffering and hardship.
Foolish people are motivated by great pain. Over
and over in Judges, people do not cry out to God until
they are in so much pain that they are desperate and
turn to God as a last resort. While wise people try to
live in obedience to God to prevent pain in their life,
foolish people don’t seek God until times are terrible.
God answers prayer. Throughout Judges, when
people – even rebellious apostate corrupt prodigals –
cry out, He hears and answers their prayers.
God is gracious. On every page of Judges, God is
gracious. Rather than giving them what they deserve,
He gives them grace.
Leadership is never neutral. Leaders either pull
people closer to God or pull people further from God.
God is sovereign over everyone and everything.
Throughout Judges, there is no one and nothing that
is beyond the sovereign rule of God. He rules over
the nation of Israel and the nations who invade it. He
rules over godly and godless leaders. He rules over the
demons worshipped as Baal and Asherah.
God can do perfect work through imperfect people.
In judges like Gideon, we see people with faults and
flaws who are on their worst days a lot like us. In judges
like Samson, we see people with deep defects and
brokenness that God still uses despite their profound
imperfections.
Success can be hard to manage. In the story of
Gideon, for example, he starts as a poor and timid man.
By the end of the story, he is a national war hero, rich
and powerful. Sadly, he takes for himself a harem and
sires around seventy sons, setting the stage for violent
25
infighting in the next generation. He is a man of God,

flawed and imperfect like us, and struggles to manage
success in a godly manner.
A Bible dictionary says: "Gideon meets God’s
messenger, destroys his father’s altar to Baal, and
builds an altar to Yahweh in its place. God reduces the
number of men in Gideon’s army and then shows him in
a dream that he will be victorious. Using trumpets and
pitchers as their main weapons, Gideon’s reduced army
overwhelms the Midianites. He pursues the Midianite
kings across the Jordan, captures them, and kills them.
He also punishes the elders of Succoth because they
refused to help his exhausted army. Although Gideon
refuses to establish a ruling dynasty, he leads a royal
lifestyle—collecting tribute, creating an ephod that
Israel worships, collecting a harem, and fathering 70
sons. "9
Biography vs. Testimony
When non-Christians share their life story, it is a

biography. When Christians share their life story, it is
supposed to be a testimony. The difference between a
biography and a testimony is who the hero of the story
is. In a biography, there is a tendency to downplay or
even dismiss the faults, flaws, and failures of a person
honored as a hero. In a testimony, the goal is to be
honest about the best and worst days, deeds, and
decisions of a person, so that God is glorified for His
faithfulness to and through that person.
A Bible commentary says: “Gideon’s legacy is
threefold. First, Midian is permanently subdued, and
the land rests for a paradigmatic forty years. Second,
he has a harem and “seventy” sons, with one more in
Shechem, named Abimelech, “My Father is king.” Finally,
26
Israel forgets him and eventually returns to worship

Baal as before. So the Gideon cycle ends as it began,
with Israel playing the harlot after Baal.”10
Summarizing the honest but complex life of
Gideon, a Bible commentary asks: “What does a
Spirit-empowered sinner look like? Gideon was a
complex character, who exhibited strongly positive and
strongly negative qualities. Although he questioned
and doubted, and needed signs and reassurances,
he obeyed. But he obeyed feebly and under cover
of darkness, fearing his neighbors. Hardly an Elijah
confronting an Ahab with idolatry. But Gideon did cut
down Baal’s altar. Even after the Spirit outfitted him,
he asked for signs. He finally “got it,” however, and led
with full confidence. He even declared with no fear at
all to Succoth that Yahweh would surely deliver the
commanders of fifteen thousand Midianites they were
pursuing. He didn’t object when God reduced him from
twenty-two thousand men to three hundred. He was
wise in his diplomacy with Ephraim. But he made an
illegal ephod that blurred Israel’s focus on Yahweh’s
requirements. Although he did accomplish the mission
at hand, in the end Israel was spiritually no better off.
Why did he make a religious item? Why did he deal
so harshly with Israelite towns? This ambiguity, or
two-sided character, makes Gideon look like us. We
are baptized with the Spirit and empowered to fulfill
the mission at hand – the Great Commission – even
while we err, sin, and engage in great folly. And yet,
for all our shortcomings, the success of the mission is
guaranteed.”11
In Judges, especially the final scene of Gideon’s
life, we see that God is perfect and His leaders are
not. Their success is by His grace, not their goodness.
That should encourage us that, for God to use us, we
27
don’t need to be perfect – just available and honest.

Lastly, it is not too far-fetched to assume that Gideon
did indeed repent of his sins against the Lord. After all,
some of them were private matters that we would not
know about unless he told his testimony and included
mention of the sins he committed but God forgave.
28
CHAPTER 3
The Spirit of Judges
In the book of Judges, people come and go, but the sinful
behavior remains the same.
Why? Because their demons remain the same. Even
though there are new days, they have the same old
demons.
In my book New Days, Old Demons, I explain how
people live and die, but demons endure, unchanged. Baal
was believed to be the senior male demon, the archenemy
of God, worshipped for wealth, power, success, and
status, mentioned over one hundred times, as this demon
was a constant problem. In the ancient world, he was
worshipped with prostitution, pornography, and pleasure.
To worship Baal and Asherah, sex cults arose that erased
any of the God-given sexual boundaries in Scripture and
promoted gender confusion, sexual sin of every sort, and
tolerance and pride of these things in the greater culture.
These same demons are powerfully at work in our
culture, seducing God’s people into evil and sin just as
they always have. The rise in everything from worship of
the environment as our sacred goddess Mother; greed
that worships the demon Mamon in everything from
crime to skyrocketing debt; murder of the innocents
starting with the unborn; and the mainstream acceptance
of pornography, polygamy, fornication, adultery,
homosexuality, transgenderism, and every other sexual
deviancy is all the work of Baal and Asherah waging
spiritual warfare that manifests in our physical world.
29
Canaanites Run Our Culture
God made us as one person in two parts. What we do

with our body, good or bad, affects our soul. According
to the Bible, there is no distinction between sacred and
secular, because God rules over both the seen and unseen
realms of the physical and spiritual. Romans 12:1-2
reminds us that whatever we give our body to is, in God’s
eyes, a sacrifice being made to an object of worship that
is either the one true God or a counterfeit demonic deity.
Sex, food, drugs, unjust violence, stealing, lusting, lying,
and the like are all worship acts in devotion to demons.
That being the case, we are no better and no different
than people in the days of Judges.
To put it another way, people in the days of Judges
and our own days are just filthy Canaanites. The
Canaanites were enemies of God and His people. A
Bible encyclopedia says, “In the ‘table of nations'a Noah’s
grandson Canaan was progenitor of 11 groups that lived
in the area of Syria and Palestine.”12
Powerful demonic forces ruled in both the seen
and unseen realms of Canaanite culture. The demons
who opposed God also seduced God’s people into sin
throughout the Old Testament. A Bible encyclopedia says:
"From what is now known of Canaanite culture, the head
of the Canaanite list of gods was a shadowy personage
named El, who was worshiped as the “father of man.” His
consorts were Athirat, known to the Israelites as Asherah,
Astarte, and Baaltis. El had a son, Baal, a fertility god
described in myths as the lord of rain and storm. Baal
succeeded his father as head of the pantheon (list of
gods) and supposedly resided in the distant northern
heavens. A monument found at Ugarit represented him
_________________
a
Gn 10:15–19
30
carrying a thunderbolt at his left side and a mace in his

right hand.”13
Throughout Judges, God’s people continually wander
into the worship of the demonic false god Baal and
follow the sexual and spiritual practices of the nearby
ungodly neighboring Canaanites. Powerful demonic spirits
work through everything and anything from religion to
spirituality, politics, education, and entertainment to lure
people away from pure devotion to the one true God. In
the New Testament, this is referred to collectively as the
“world” system that is a counterfeit of God’s Kingdom.
Ruled by Satan and demons with the help of evildoers, it
is an attempt to pull the culture of hell up onto the earth
and prevent the culture of Heaven from coming down.
These powerful demonic forces are referred to as a
“god” or the “gods” throughout Judges.a Demon spirits
parading as false gods work together, under Baal the
chief god of the Canaanite legion. His name is translated
with terms like “master,” “lord,” and “owner.” The Bible,
including Judges, speaks of both Baalb and Baalsc. Like
any business, government agency, or military fighting unit
with human beings, in the unseen realm demonic divine
beings also have a chain of command. At the top is the
demon “Baal,” and working under them are the various
demon “Baals.” Although demons are not male or female
with a physical body like human beings, Baal appears as a
male demonic deity.
_________________
a
Judges 2:3, 2:12, 2:17, 2:19, 3:6, 5:8, 6:10, 6:31, 8:33, 9:9, 9:27, 10:6, 10:13-
14, 10:16, 11:24, 16:23-24, 17:5, 18:14, 18:17-18, 18:20, 18:24 b Judges 6:25,
6:28, 6:30, 6:31, 6:32 c Judges 2:11, 2:13, 3:3, 3:7, 6:25, 8:33, 9:4, 10:6, 10:10,
20:33
31
Apostasy From the Ancient East to the Modern West
Throughout the Bible, including Judges, when you see

Baal followed by another name, it is often a location over
which that demon has dominion. For example, the book of
Judges mentions “Mount Baal-hermon”a, “Baal-berith”b,
and “Baal-tamar”c. Today, there are demons who have
dominion over geographic areas and, if reported in the
Bible today, we would read of places like Baal-Seattle,
Baal-San Francisco, Baal-New York, Baal-Washington
D.C., Baal-London, Baal-Tokyo, Baal-Amsterdam, etc.
Baal was considered the most powerful demonic deity
and a god of wealth, prosperity, and success. This explains
why he is often mentioned first among other demonic
deities in the Bible. Unlike the people in Judges and
our own day who have no regard for any authority, the
demons at least respect chain of command and hierarchy.
Throughout Judges, Baal is also often mentioned as
working with Ashtaroh, or Asherah.d This demon appeared
as a female, and the goddess of fertility and sex. Also
known as Venus, she was the highest ranking Canaanite
demonic goddess and considered the passionate lover
of Baal. The worship of Baal and Ashtaroh included sex
without any limits, pleasure and indulgence of every kind,
and even child sacrifice. Ancient artwork devoted to her
was incredibly pornographic as she is the demon goddess
of the porn industry. God’s people kept falling back into
this sin during the days of the Judges, and the pattern
continues to this day with the constant lure of wealth,
power, success, pleasure, comfort, sex, indulgence, and
pornography.
When it comes to authority, in the most basic sense
there are two options.
_________________
a
Judges 3:3 b
Judges 8:33, 9:4 c Judges 20:33 d 2:13, 3:7, 6:25-6:30, 10:6
32
One, authority is external, in people like parents, police

officers, pastors, teachers, and laws. Both God and His
Word are supposed to be the external authorities to which
His people submit, as He also works through appointed
leadership in the home, at work, in the church, and in
government.
Two, authority is internal, based solely on such things
as your personal thoughts, feelings, urges, desires, and
ideas. This is a radical rejection of the way God intends
our world to be run and our lives to be lived – an act of
sinful treason against God and a declaration of spiritual
war that opens us to the flesh and demonic forces at
work in and around us.
God had clearly warned His people in the external
authority of His Word not to fall into the demonic
deception that they were the highest authority in their
life. In Deuteronomy 12:8 God said, “You shall not do
according to all that we are doing here today, everyone
doing whatever is right in his own eyes[.]” In the closing
line of Judges, (21:25), we read the summary of generation
after generation: “Everyone did what was right in his own
eyes.”
Furthermore, in Judges, God’s people ask him for
direction only twice: at the beginning of the book (1:1-8)
and the end (20:18). The people in Judges acted a lot like
those in our day – doing whatever they want, not seeking
God’s will, yet claiming to be believers. Therefore, the
backdrop of Judges and our own day is apostasy:
“A public denial of a previously held religious belief
and a distancing from the community that holds to it.
The term is almost always applied pejoratively, carrying
connotations of rebellion, betrayal, treachery, or
faithlessness. The Greek terms (apostasis)
and (apostasia), from which “apostasy”
derives, typically appear in a political or military
33
context. “Apostasy” is also related to the term

(aphistēmi). Ancient literature presents two prevalent
senses for the terms ...
1. rebellion in the sense of disobedience to a king or
superior
2. defection during a conflict”14
Apostasy is precisely the condition of people in
Judges. Judges 2:11-15,17 says: “And the people of Israel
did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the
Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their
fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.
They went after other gods, from among the gods of the
peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them.
And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned
the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the
anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave
them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold
them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that
they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever
they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them
for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had
sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress ... they
whored after other gods and bowed down to them.”
Sometimes, the pain and distress that people
experience is reaping what they have sown through sin.
These people are not victims; they are villains. They are
rebelling against God as King and defecting from the
faith during an invasion from enemies and surrendering
to demonic forces of temptation and rebellion. In our day,
the equivalent would be woke progressive “Christians”
who support abortion, transgenderism, and socialism
with a tolerance that welcomes everyone but God and
everything but God’s Word.
In Judges, we also witness a death blow to the
progressive evolutionary myth that people are basically
34
good, human progress is inevitable, and, given more time,

people and their cultures and nations will consistently
improve. Judges 2:19-20 reports the exact opposite of
progressivism:
“[T]hey turned back and were more corrupt than their
fathers [emphasis added], going after other gods, serving
them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of
their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the
Lord was kindled against Israel …”
A major theme throughout Judges is that, unless
God intervenes, sin is like gravity that pulls everyone and
everything down toward hell without exception. Our only
hope is not time, evolution, or government but deliverance
from God alone, who not only saves us from Hell but also
saves us from ourselves!
LGBTQIA+ People Are Pharisees With Fetishes
Why do younger generations today believe things

that their grandparents would have laughed at, thinking
it was preposterous absurdity? For example, within a
few generations, Western culture has gone from listing
homosexuality as a mental disorder to encouraging it as a
preferable lifestyle. Gender dysphoria was also considered
a mental disorder, but today we have males who say they
are female and even competing in women’s sports and
showering in women’s locker rooms.
To tackle the underlying tectonic worldview shift
that is happening at lightning speed, thanks to the
indoctrination of a weaponized internet and social media
platforms, Dr. Carl Trueman undertook a few-hundred-
year-deep investigation into those thinkers and ideas
that have completely shifted the paradigm of Western
thinking and culture making: intellectual giants such as
Augustine, Descartes, Rosseau, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche,
35
and Freud; culture-shaping movements like Romanticism

and the death of God; the shift from sex being what
people do to sex being fundamentally who people are,
which culminated in the sexual revolution, along with
legalized abortion and pornography, fueled by drug use
and abuse, which is a doorway to demonic influence.
As a result, drugs are now the counterfeit of the
Holy Spirit as the force controlling people, and sex is
the sacrament of this pagan secular religion that is now
actively evangelizing even young children. The alphabet
soup LGBTQI+ community has taken the role of Pharisees
straining to point out specks in the eyes of others while
overlooking the lumber that has impaled their entire
head. This ungodly but powerful spiritual movement, led
by demons, is overtaking every aspect of culture: media,
government, education, economics, family, religion, and
arts and entertainment.
Trueman’s work culminated in a large book, The Rise
and Fall of the Modern Self, and a shorter version, Strange
New World. The remainder of this chapter will be my
attempt at a short summary of his findings. The bottom
line is that we have shifted from the bedrock of reality,
from God to man and from facts to feelings.
Until recent generations (in particular, the sexual
and spiritual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s), the
biblical worldview – that we should begin with God –
largely served as the basis of modern culture. The Bible
opens with the words, “In the beginning, God created ...”
Before we can understand anything or anyone, including
ourselves, we must begin with God.
Since it is God who created everyone and everything,
only by knowing God can we know who we are and why
we are here. The opening pages of Genesis also reveal
that God does all of His work through His Word, as
God literally speaks everything into existence. God’s
36
Word is unchanging, fixed, and external. Because God’s

Word reflects His perfection, it is true, unchanging, and
has laws that rule over everyone, everywhere, as the
authoritative source created by God to govern human
belief and behavior.
God’s Word establishes sex and gender as binary,
with man and woman, and goes on to speak to men and
women, as well as husbands and wives, with prescribed
sex and gender roles. God’s Word also establishes
marriage solely for one man and one woman and sex
solely for the covenant of heterosexual marriage. God
establishes the family as the foundation for other
institutions, such as church and government. God’s Word
says that human life is sacred and children are a blessing.
God’s Word commands husbands and wives to be fruitful,
multiply, fill the earth, build culture, and exercise dominion
over lower life forms such as plants and animals. God’s
Word repeatedly establishes a hierarchy of leadership
in every sphere of society, including fathers in families,
parents in child rearing, kings in nations, and pastors in
churches. The Bible teaches the “correspondence theory
of truth” – i.e., truth is that which agrees with facts and
reality. For example, although I am a married right-handed
man who was born in 1970 and Irish, I would be lying if I
said I was a left-handed single woman born in 2003 and
Japanese.
According to the worldview that now dominates
Western culture, it is better to begin not with God but
rather with the individual person and a denial of original
sin and the fall. It pretends that people are morally neutral
or good and are evolving, and that moral human progress
is inevitable and caused by liberation from outdated
past morals like fixed laws and past institutions like the
church.
Furthermore, it is considered better to begin with the
37
feelings inside a person, rather than the facts outside

their feelings. This shift from God and facts to personal
feelings is the fundamental basis for the constant cultural
collision of two worldviews: the biblical worldview versus
progressivism (or wokeism). In this secular religion of
demonic deception, the highest authority and truest
reality are the internal feelings of an individual.
For example, if someone feels like a female but is
in a male body, we are supposed to use their preferred
gender pronoun even though it does not correspond with
reality. In the past, when someone internally felt a flawed
personal version of “reality” that did not correspond with
external facts, they were diagnosed as having a mental
health problem. Today, the complete opposite is the case,
as they are lauded for living their “truth.” The result is
a culture replete with rapidly declining mental health,
emerging generations unable to deal with the realities of
life, and a change of external facts to correspond with
internal feelings. This explains the surging pressure on
parents to have their young, gender-confused children
put on puberty blockers, given hormones, and even
undergo sex-change operations to re-create the body
God gave them as an act of repentance, through the
tearing of flesh and shedding of blood, to atone for God’s
sin of giving them the wrong body.
Applying this demonic worldview to culture, in the
name of “social justice,” attacks are made on anyone who
disagrees, and they are crucified by being cancelled as
intolerant, bigoted, prejudiced, hateful, dangerous, and
evil. In this way, the God and Scriptures of Christianity are
now considered not just wrong but immoral and needing
to be eliminated altogether. Anyone (like a Christian)
or anything (like the Bible) that puts limits on human
expression of their feelings, or calls them immoral, is
considered repressive and stopping the evolutionary leap
38
of humanity into a world that would be more and more

utopian if it weren’t for the bigots and their old ideas.
Accountable to no one beyond ourselves, including
God, we have replaced the Lordship of God as King with
the feelings of morally blind sinners prone to deception,
especially self-deception. To quote again the last line of
Judges, “In those days there was no king[.] Everyone did
what was right in his own eyes.”
39
CHAPTER 4
Judges and Jesus
The key to understanding any Old Testament book,

including Judges, is to connect it to the person and
work of Jesus Christ. This is explained more fully in
the revised 10-year anniversary edition of Doctrine,
which I co-authored, but the following summary
communicates the big idea.
The opening line of Scripture introduces us to its
Hero, God, who is revealed throughout the rest of
the pages of Scripture. In the closing line of the New
Testament, we are reminded that our hope is in “the
grace of the Lord Jesus.” Thus, the written Word of God
reveals to us the incarnate (“in human flesh”) Word
of God, Jesus Christ. Without the written Word, we
cannot rightly know the incarnate Word.
The Old Testament and New Testament are about
Jesus Christ. Anyone can read the Bible, but only
someone who reads it in the Spirit comes to this
rightful conclusion. Some prefer the New Testament
to the Old Testament because they wrongly believe
that only the New Testament is about Jesus. However,
while arguing with the theologians in His day, Jesus
Himself taught that the Old Testament was primarily
about Him. In John 5:39-40, Jesus says, “You search
the Scriptures [Old Testament] because you think that
in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear
witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that
you may have life.” The Bible is not just principles to live
40
by, but a Person to live with.

Following His resurrection, Jesus opened the Old
Testament to teach about Himself: “Beginning with
Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them
in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”a
Likewise, in speaking to his disciples, Jesus said, “These
are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with
you, that everything written about me in the Law of
Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be
fulfilled.”b We then read that He “opened their minds to
understand the Scriptures.”c Jesus’ own words about
Himself as the central message of the Old Testament
are pointedly clear. He said in Matthew 5:17-18, “Do
not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill
them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth
pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the
Law until all is accomplished.” Jesus repeated this
fact throughout his ministry by saying he “fulfilled”
particular Scriptures.d To correctly interpret Scripture,
you will need to connect its verses, concepts, and
events to Jesus.
The Old Testament predicts the coming of
Jesus in a variety of ways to prepare people. The
New Testament reflects back on the life of Jesus,
particularly in the four Gospels, and reports the results
of Jesus’ life and ministry, particularly in the Epistles.
The Old Testament uses various means to reveal Jesus,
including promises, appearances, foreshadowing types,
and titles.
_________________
a
Luke 24:27 b
Luke 24:44 c Luke 24:45 d e.g., Matt. 26:56; Luke 4:20–21;
22:37
41
Four Ways Jesus Appears in the Old Testament
First, the Old Testament teaches about Jesus in the

numerous prophetic promises given about Him. More
than a quarter of the Old Testament is prophetic in
nature, promising future events. No other world religion
or cult can present any specific prophecies concerning
the coming of their prophets. However, in the Old
Testament, we see hundreds of fulfilled prophecies
extending hundreds and sometimes over a thousand
years into the future, showing God’s foreknowledge of
and sovereignty over the future.
Second, the Old Testament teaches about Jesus
through His appearances before His birth, also called
Christophanies. Examples include walking with
Abraham; wrestling with Jacob; appearing to Moses;
joining Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the
fiery furnace; and calling Isaiah into ministry.a Other
examples may include “the angel [messenger] of the
LORD,” who is sometimes identified as God in Judges.b
This angel provided the sacrifice in Isaac’s place, spoke,
and journeyed with Moses.c This is also Jesus who
appears throughout Judgesd including speaking to
Gideon multiple times.e
Third, there are Old Testament representative
figures, institutions, or events that foreshadow Jesus.
Examples include Adam, who foreshadows Jesus the
second Adam; the priesthood, prefiguring Jesus as our
high priest; David and other kings, prefiguring Jesus as
the King of kings; Moses and the prophets, prefiguring
_________________
a
Genesis 18; cf. John 8:56; Gen. 32:30; Ex. 3:2–6; cf. John 8:58; Dan.
3:24–25; Isa. 6:1–5; cf. John 12:41 b Judg. 6:11–21; 13:22 c Gen. 22:9-14;
Ex. 3:14; 23:20–21; cf. John 8:56–59 d Judg. 2:1, 2:4, 5:23, 13:3, 13:13,
13:15, 13:16, 13:17, 13:18, 13:20, 13:21 e Judg. 6:11, 6:12, 6:21, 6:22
42
Jesus as our ultimate prophet; animal sacrifices,

prefiguring Jesus as the sinless Lamb of God slain
for our sins; the temple, prefiguring God’s presence
dwelling among us in Jesus; shepherds reminding
us sheep that Jesus is our Good Shepherd; judges,
foreshadowing Jesus as the final judge of all people;
and many others, such as Jesus the true bread, true
vine, and true light. In the Judges story, the appearance
of judges who rule the people and enforce God’s Word
for justice points to Jesus Christ who will judge the
world once and for all at His White Throne Judgement,
where He takes His seat as Judge over everyone and
everything, after coming like Gideon to judge and make
war (as Revelation 19:11 says, “he judges and makes
war”).
Revelation 20:11-15 speaks of Jesus as eternal
Judge: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who
was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled
away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the
dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and
books were opened. Then another book was opened,
which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by
what was written in the books, according to what they
had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it,
Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them,
and they were judged, each one of them, according
to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were
thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death,
the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found
written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake
of fire.”
We also see people in the Old Testament who
perform various kinds of service that is analogous
to the service that Jesus performs perfectly. Unlike
the first Adam, Jesus Christ is the Last Adam, who
43
passed his test in a garden and in so doing imputed

his righteousness to us to overcome the sin imputed
to us through the sin of the first Adam. Jesus is the
true and better Abel who, although he was innocent,
was slain and whose blood cries out. When Abraham
left his father and home, he was doing the same thing
that Jesus would do when He left heaven. When Isaac
carried his own wood and laid down his life to be
sacrificed at the hand of his father Abraham, he was
showing us what Jesus would later do. Jesus is the
greater Jacob who wrestled with God in Gethsemane
and, though wounded and limping, walked away from
his grave blessed. Jesus is the greater Joseph who
serves at the right hand of God the King and extends
forgiveness and provision to those of us who have
betrayed him, using His power to save us for loving
reconciliation. Jesus is greater than Moses, standing as
a mediator between God and us, bringing us the new
covenant. Jesus is also the greater Judge, more perfect
than even the best judge, Deborah.
Like Job, innocent Jesus suffered and was
tormented by the Devil so that God might be
glorified, while his foolish friends were no help or
encouragement. Jesus is a king greater than David; He
has slain our giants of Satan, sin, and death, although
in the eyes of the world He was certain to face a
crushing defeat at their hands. Jesus is greater than
Jonah in that He spent three days in the grave, not
just in a fish, to save a multitude even greater than
Nineveh. When Boaz redeemed Ruth and brought her
and her despised people into community with God’s
people, he was showing what Jesus would do to
redeem his bride, the church, from all the nations of
the earth. When Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem, he was
doing something similar to Jesus, who is building for
44
us a New Jerusalem as our eternal home. When Hosea

married an unfaithful wife that he continued to pursue
in love, he was showing us the heart of Jesus, who does
the same for His unfaithful bride, the church. In Judges,
when the people were oppressed, cried out to God for
deliverance, and eventually got a king, all of this was a
foreshadowing of the end of history, where Jesus Christ
will deliver His people, judge the nations, and set up His
throne to rule as King of kings forever and ever. Simply
stated, the longing of Judges is not fully satisfied until
the Second Coming of Jesus.
Connecting Jesus and Judges, a Bible commentary
says: “Joshua parallels the judges before their era,
illumining a feature of Judges: while “judges” are said
to “judge” Israel (using the finite verb), they are not
actually called judges. They are called saviors. Joshua
means “Yahweh saves,” and is the same name as Jesus.
Each “judge” is actually a “savior,” or “deliverer” – one
might say a “Joshua” who saves God’s people from the
consequences of their idolatry and sin (Judg. 3:9, 15).”15
We also see various Old Testament events preparing
people for the coming of Jesus Christ. For example,
in the Exodus account of Passover, the people placed
blood over the doorframe of their home with hyssop (a
common herb bundled for cleaning), and no one was
to leave their home until the morning. Death would
not come to any home marked with lamb’s blood.
Peter says our salvation is given by Jesus Christ and
“sprinkling with his blood.”a In Judges, when the Spirit
comes upon God’s servants to empower them to bring
justice and grace, this prefigured the coming of Jesus
Christ who was filled with the Spirit to lead God’s
people out of oppression into liberation.
_________________
a
1 Pet. 1:2
45
Fourth, in the Old Testament there are many titles

for God that refer to Jesus Christ as God. In Daniel
7:13–14, God is called the “son of man,” and Jesus
adopted that as his favorite title, using it some 80
times in the four Gospels. Jesus is the suffering servant
that was promised in Isaiah.a Jesus is also known by
many other Old Testament titles for God, including first
and last, light, rock, husband or bridegroom, shepherd,
redeemer, savior, and the Lord of glory.b In Judges,
Jesus is repeatedly referred to as “the angel of the
Lord.” The word for “angel” simply means messenger
and can refer to a created divine being who speaks
for God, or to Jesus Christ coming personally to
communicate a Word.
The Bible uses the wording “the angel of the Lord”
63 times. The Old Testament speaks of the “angel of
the Lord” 52 times and the New Testament 11 times.
The Old Testament distinguishes between the angel of
the Lord and an angel of the Lord. When the Bible uses
this language, it is distinguishing angels from someone
who is far superior and more significant, and that is our
Savior, Jesus Christ.
Sometimes God sends an angel of the Lord, a divine
being. That can be what we would know as an angel,
a son of God, the heavenly host. This is a created,
powerful, and limited divine being. But sometimes God
sends the angel of the Lord. That is usually the Lord
Jesus Christ who shows up in Judges to speak directly
on multiple occasions.
_________________
a
Isa. 42:1–4; 49:1–7; 52:13–53:12; cf. Phil. 2:1–11 b Isa. 41:4, 44:6, 48:12;
cf. Rev. 1:17, 2:8, 22:3; Ps. 27:1; cf. John 1:9; Pss. 18:2, 95:1; cf. 1 Cor.10:4,
1 Pet. 2:6–8; Hos. 2:16, Isa. 62:5, cf. Eph. 5:28–33, Rev. 21:2.; Ps. 23:1, cf.
Heb. 13:20; Hos. 13:14, Ps. 130:7, cf. Titus 2:13, Rev. 5:9; Isa. 43:3, cf. John
4:42; Isa. 42:8, cf. 1 Cor. 2:8
46
Connecting Judges and Jesus
To properly understand the Old Testament, we must

connect it to the person and work of Jesus. This should
not be done in an allegorizing manner where arbitrary
meanings foreign to Scripture are assigned to Old
Testament words and images, thereby changing their
meaning. Rather, the meaning of the Old Testament
includes symbolism and identity that are most fully
revealed in Jesus.
Unless Jesus is the central message of the
Scriptures, errors abound. The most common is
moralizing – i.e., reading the Bible not to learn about
Jesus but only to learn principles for how to live life as
a good person by following the good examples of some
people and avoiding the bad examples of others. That
kind of approach to the Scriptures is not Christian,
because it treats the Bible like one of the endless
parade of books that offer moral lessons utterly
disconnected from faith in and salvation from Jesus
and life empowered by the same Holy Spirit of Jesus.
The victory of God through Gideon is connected
with the coming of Jesus Christ as the greater Gideon.
Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give
you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear
a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Jesus was
promised to come as the male child born of a virgin
and as Immanuel, which means “God with us.”
How Jesus would come is further explained a few
chapters later in Isaiah 9:1-7: “But there will be no
gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time
he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and
the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has
made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the
Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked
47
in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in

a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You
have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as
they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke
of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of
his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel
for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his
name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of
his government and of peace there will be no end, on
the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish
it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the
Lord of hosts will do this.”
Comparing Jesus’ Second Coming, to destroy the
nations and deliver His people, to the defeat of the
Midianites in the days of Gideon, Psalm 83:1-18 says:
“O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace
or be still, O God! For behold, your enemies make an
uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads.
They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult
together against your treasured ones. They say,
“Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name
of Israel be remembered no more!” For they conspire
with one accord; against you they make a covenant[.]
... Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and
Jabin at the river Kishon, who were destroyed at En-
dor, who became dung for the ground. Make their
nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah
and Zalmunna, who said, “Let us take possession for
ourselves of the pastures of God.” O my God, make
48
them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.

As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the
mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your
tempest, and terrify them with your hurricane! Fill their
faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O
LORD. Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
let them perish in disgrace, that they may know that
you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High
over all the earth.”
A Bible commentary asks: “What is the ultimate
meaning of the story? Isaiah 9:1–7 recalls the humbling
of Naphtali and Zebulun, and Gideon’s victory in
Judges 6–8. Isaiah connects this with the birth of a
leader, a child, on whose shoulders the government
will rest. He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His rule will
never end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his
kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice
and righteousness, from that time on and forever. This
leader will bring peace against the backdrop of Israel’s
bloody history of struggle and warfare. We await his
return, when he will do to his enemies as he had done
to Sisera and Midian. Every battle in Judges points
forward to the final victory over sin and Satan. This
truth is reiterated in Psalm 83:1–18, where again, what
happened to Sisera and what will happen to Midian in
the next cycle foreshadow the judgment that will be on
all nations.”16
Further connecting the story of Gideon with
Jesus Christ, a Bible commentary says: “Gideon was
promised victory in chapter 6, but had not yet fought
the battle. Before the denouement, the people of Israel
had to simply trust that God was with them. In the
same way, we trust God as we approach the end times.
His enemies have already been vanquished. Death
49
has no sting—but we still die. Satan is vanquished—

yet he still prowls around like a lion. Sin is rendered
powerless—yet we still miss the mark. Gideon’s victory
anticipates the end of all things, when all the promises
of God find their consummate fulfillment. The enemies
of God will finally be defeated. This is the ultimate
meaning of the Gideon cycle.
The climax of history is also anticipated in the
image of locusts. The book of Joel predicts that the
day of Yahweh will have something in common with
the experience of a locust plague.a Joel 2 describes
the final day as a human army that resembles a locust
plague. Revelation 9 uses the same imagery: a human
army that devours everything and leaves nothing is a
picture of how the world will act toward the church and
of the overwhelming forces that will be defeated in
the end. Thus, the Midianites typify the eschatological
enemies of God, and Gideon’s victory anticipates
Armageddon.
The Midianites met their demise at the trumpet blast
of Gideon. With the blast of the trumpet, fire was
suddenly revealed that had previously been hidden.
This is a picture of the return of the Lord Jesus. In the
end, the Son of Man will send his angels with a great
trumpet to gather his elect.b The last trumpet will
sound, and God will give his faithful ones victory over
the last enemy.c For the Lord himself will descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel,
and with the trumpet of God.d The day of the Lord
will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass
away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed
with intense heat, and the earth and all its works will
be burned up.e When the seventh trumpet sounds,
_________________
a
Joel 1:2–7; 2:1–5, 28–31 b Matt. 24:31 c Cor. 15:50–58 d 1 Thess. 4:16
e
2 Peter 3:10–13
50
the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom

of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever
and ever.a The New Testament uses the trumpet to
announce the end of the world, just as Gideon used it
to announce the end of Midianite oppression. Therefore,
Gideon’s trumpet looks forward to Jesus’ coming to
judge the world. The trumpets and torches announce
God’s judgment on Midian and, much later, on the
whole world, reserved for fire.”17
In summary, we are like the Israelites in the days of
Judges, doing right in our own eyes and wrong in the
eyes of God. Satan and demons are like the Midianites
who attacked God’s people to terrorize and traumatize
them. Jesus came the first time clothed in the Holy
Spirit like Gideon to deliver His people from the slavery
and oppression to the demonic forces that are at work
in every area of culture and politics. Jesus is coming
again as the greater Gideon who comes to judge and
make war, and He brings an eternal victory greater
than the battle that God won through Gideon’s 300
men, with the one God-Man, Jesus Christ, defeating
every person and demon against Him by Himself. God’s
people will live forever in the New Jerusalem, which is
part of Jesus’ Kingdom as the greater Israel. The little
story of Gideon is part of the big story of Scripture
with Jesus as the greater Gideon.
_________________
a
Rev. 11:15
51
CHAPTER 5
Personal and Group Study Guide
Gideon: Anointed Son
Scripture to Read: Judges 6
Scripture for Memorization and Meditation:

Judges 6:1, 34 - The people of Israel did what was evil
in the sight of the Lord... But the Spirit of the Lord
clothed Gideon...
Commentary:
The Purge is a series of horror movies based on
the premise that, for one 12-hour period each year,
there are no laws, people are free to commit any crime,
and there are no emergency services (e.g., police, fire
fighters, and medical care). During this time, people go
into hiding to survive, and the most evil people roam
the streets causing terror and committing murder.
If the Gideon narrative in Judges were a movie, it could
aptly be an ancient version of The Purge, with the 12
hours was expanded to 12 months. All of this lasted for
seven years, amid other periods of similar oppression
lasting eight years,a 18 years,b 20 years,c and 40 years.d
Gideon’s story opens with both the Israelites and
their enemy the Midianites doing “evil in the sight of
the Lord.” God’s patience wears out, and He allows
________________
a
Judges 3:7-8 b Judges 10:6-18 c Judges 4:1-3 d Judges 13:1
52
Midian to undertake a successful terrorist invasion.

For the ensuing seven years, the Israelites – who are
supposed to be God’s people but live in open constant
rebellious sin – are forced into hiding in the mountains
while their enemies move into their homes, plunder
their possessions, and eat their livestock and crops, in
what today would be reported as an invasion causing
a humanitarian crises. The point is that sometimes life
gets hard not because we are not victims, but because
we are villains, and God has allowed us to reap what
we have sown and allows others to treat us the way we
have been treating others.
Then, everything changes when “the people of Israel
cried out for help to the LORD.” This is the Judges
cycle, where people do evil, God does not intervene
to save them, their lives plunge into suffering and
darkness, and eventually, under great pain and loss, as
a last resort they cry out to God. Sadly, many people
do the same thing today – live in sinful rebellion, wreck
their life and family, take years to come to their senses,
and only when they have hit proverbial rock bottom do
they turn to God.
Rather than delivering them, God sends a prophet
to rebuke them. His message reminds them that
they were in a similar bondage situation generations
prior as slaves in Egypt. Then, God delivered them
and told them He would bring them to the Promised
Land, but when they occupied it they were forbidden
from worshipping other gods and marrying and
compromising with people of other nations who
worshipped powerful demon gods. They did exactly
the opposite of what God said, which is why they were
back in bondage.
The people want their circumstances to change,
but they do not want their hearts to change. They cry
53
out for God to bring deliverance, but they are unwilling

to practice repentance. This scene contains a vital
lesson: If you want God to deliver you from hardship in
your life, cry out to Him in repentance of whatever sin
and folly helped get you into your dire circumstances.
Furthermore, in this scene we learn the powerful lesson
that, once God sets you free, you must choose to live
free, otherwise you will return to a life of brokenness
and bondage. This is precisely what happens to the
people in Judges; rather than owning and repenting of
their sin, they blameshift to the Lord. As Gideon says,
“the LORD has forsaken us,” when the truth is they had
forsaken the Lord.
Jesus Christ then appears as “the angel [or
messenger] of the Lord” from Heaven. His visit is to
one man, Gideon, who is hiding out, threshing wheat
in a winepress. This would indicate absolute poverty,
because he must have had little wheat to thresh, in a
small walled winepress instead of an open area, with no
wind to help separate the edible from the inedible parts
of the grain. This would also indicate fear, because he
is literally hiding for his life, trying to get enough food
to survive during what felt like the apocalyptic end of
the world. In a bit of comedic satire, Jesus calls Gideon,
“O mighty man of valor.”
In meeting Gideon, we are introduced to a man who,
from the beginning, struggles with fear and anxiety.
No less than seven times Gideon’s fear is mentioned,
with most in this opening chapter of his life.a The
most frequent command in the Bible in some form
or fashion is “fear not,” and often nearby God says
in some manner the same thing that Jesus says to
Gideon: “The LORD is with you[.]” Bible commentators
_________________
a
Judges 6:15, 6:17, 6:22, 6:27, 6:37, 6:39, 7:11
54
tend to criticize Gideon for his ongoing struggles with

fear and anxiety, but the truth is that many people
also struggle, and he’s a lot like us. In the Gideon story,
we see that courage is not the absence of fear but
rather the overcoming of fear. This is made possible
when we, as believers like Gideon, remember that God
is for us, goes with us, and rules over us so that we
are not alone. In the same way, imagine walking alone
through a dangerous inner city late at night, and then
consider how differently you would feel if escorted
by armed soldiers assigned to protect you? God
repeatedly reminds us that, when we are fearful, it is
often because we have forgotten that He is with us.
When Moses demonstrated similar fear at his calling
from God, God also told him, “I will be with you”.a
Gideon’s fear arises when Jesus responds to his
whining about his life with the plan to send Gideon
to lead a counteroffensive, exchanging farming for
fighting. Gideon responds in fear, likely rightly saying
that his clan (extended family) is the smallest, and
he’s the runt in the litter. Nonetheless, Jesus promises
the secret to success: “I will be with you, and you shall
strike the Midianites[.]” God promises victory will come,
and Gideon struggles to believe it. In the same way, the
Bible is clear that, in the end, King Jesus will return to
defeat all of His foes and ours, but we often struggle to
live in faith believing those promises.
Gideon is the only judge in the book to whom Jesus
speaks directly. Nonetheless, unsure of his calling,
Gideon then asks for a “sign” from Jesus to prove He
is the Lord and what He says is true. On one hand,
Gideon may be showing unbelief, since He’s asking
Jesus for a sign just like the scribes and Pharisees
_________________
a
Exodus 3:12
55
would many years later.a On the other hand, Gideon

may be a brand-new believer, and the thought of one
poor small farmer leading an army against an alliance
of trained soldiers from multiple surrounding nations
that had ruled their land for seven oppressive years
understandably brings some fear. However, Gideon
also has some faith, as he asks Jesus for a sign and
eventually obeys. Gideon is a lot like us – a mixture
of faith and fear in trusting God’s promises and
commands. Even though Jesus says, “you will not die,”
Gideon struggles to fully trust the Lord in obedience.
If we are honest, none of us has consistently
responded to God’s call on our lives to do difficult, if
not seemingly impossible, things, with pure faith that
lacked any doubt or fear. In studying Gideon, the Bible
commentators are consistently critical of his mixture
of fear with faith – but I doubt most of them have
ever been sent untrained into war. It is a lot easier to
criticize Gideon from the safe confines of a library than
do what he did and, in war, literally risk your life and the
lives of other men.
Jesus graciously gives Gideon a supernatural sign,
and, after the miracle, Jesus disappears. Jesus treats
Gideon like He treats us; knowing we are struggling
to trust Him, He sometimes shows up in miraculous
or providential ways. Gideon responds in faith and
worship: “Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD
and called it, The LORD Is Peace.”
Throughout life, there are many days that we do
not remember. There are a few days, however, that we
will never forget. For Gideon, this is one of those days:
“That night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s
bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down
_________________
a
Matthew 12:38
56
the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the
Asherah 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 Asherah
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.”
Here we see Gideon’s combination of faith as he
obeyed God “that night,” which indicates immediate
obedience, and his fear in coming by night in hiding to
tear down his father’s altar. Despite his imperfections,
Gideon is listed among the heroes of the faith,a
because he trusted a perfect God.
Syncretism is what happens when you worship
both God and other gods, obeying some of what God
says and some of what Satan says. Jesus will not allow
any syncretism in Gideon’s life and does not allow any
syncretism in our life. Gideon’s father was a pagan
worshipping the demon god Baal and demon goddess
Asherah. This would have brought generational cursing
on the family, as Satan had a foothold that had
become a stronghold. In addition to the people being
subjected by soldiers in physical war, they were also
subjected by demons in spiritual war. To break the
curse and sever all ties to the demonic, Gideon needed
to demolish strongholds in his family, sacrifice to the
Lord the seven-year-old bull (which corresponded to
the seven years of oppression), and replace them with
the worship of God alone. Sometimes, living out and
sharing our faith is most difficult when done with our
family members. This explains in part why Gideon came
_________________
a
Hebrews 11:32-34
57
to destroy the family altar of idolatry at night, when

everyone was asleep, much like when Nicodemus years
later would visit Jesus in the darkness of night.a
Upon finding the altars to the demons Baal and
Asherah torn down, the men in the town who were also
demonic cult worshippers demanded that Gideon’s
father Joash execute his son. In a deft move, Joash
says that, if Baal wants Gideon dead and he really is
a powerful god, then Baal can prove himself by taking
Gideon’s life, but that he would not lay a hand on his
son. On that day, Gideon (which means “hearers” or
“chopper”) picked up the nickname “Jerubbaal,” which
means, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he
broke down Baal's altar.
In the next scene, a coalition of armies from
surrounding nations began their march further into
Israel. In the life of Gideon, we learn a tremendous
lesson for our own lives. Like Gideon, we often have evil
working around us, certain to overtake us. However,
like Gideon we can have the Holy Spirit anoint and
empower us to overcome and defeat the evil that is
against us. We see this very thing happening when, “the
Spirit of the LORD clothed Gideon...” The secret to his
victory is the same secret for your victory. We cannot
overcome evil without the Holy Spirit. Thankfully,
Jesus said that if we simply stop and ask for a fresh
anointing in the Holy Spirit, the Father will give Him to
us (Luke 11:11-12).
A Bible commentary says: "Judges explores
something that is rare elsewhere in the Bible, namely,
the phenomenon of militaristic leaders who are
empowered by the Spirit of Yahweh. Four judges are
explicitly said to have experienced this power, starting
_________________
a
John 3:2
58
with Othniel the first judge. What about the others?

Consider that Othniel sets the paradigm for the others.
Consider also that we know little of the minor judges.
So four out of six major judges are explicitly said to
have had the Spirit. Deborah was a prophetess, which
is a spiritual office. So of all the major judges, only
Ehud the Benjaminite lacks reference to the Spirit’s
work. Before Judges, Joshua was arguably the only
purely military figure whom the Spirit empowered.
Others, such as Moses and the seventy elders, were
more like prophets. Moses also is a special case, filling
the nonrepeatable role of lawgiver. After Judges, the
only political leaders explicitly with the Spirit are
King Saul and King David, making a total of seven in
the Bible. The book of Judges explores what Spirit-
empowered leaders look like, how they behave, what
sort of leadership they provide. This is an important
contribution that Judges makes to the theology of the
Bible. This is also one way in which Judges connects
with Christ (the word Christ means “anointed”) –
Judges yearns for a covenant-keeping Savior anointed
with the Spirit. Christians today are also anointed (or
baptized) with the Spirit as we fulfill God’s mission to
build his kingdom through proclamation of his gospel
with accompanying deeds. Thus, the time of the judges
will, in a way almost unique in the Old Testament, have
parallels to our own time in how God’s mission will be
accomplished by the very fallible and wayward people
who make up his church."18
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Gideon begins to lead,
assembling the beginning of an army to follow him
into battle despite no training or experience. Gideon
then asks God for an additional sign that Gideon will
emerge victorious in battle. He already had a Word
from the Lord, and now he seeks a sign. God does not
59
owe Gideon, or us, any supernatural sign. However, in

grace, God occasionally gives us supernatural signs
in addition to His Word, much like Jesus, who not only
spoke the Word of God but also conducted miraculous
signs and wonders to prove Himself. The sign Gideon
asks for involves a fleece of wool he would leave
overnight on his threshing floor. On the first night he
asks that it be made wet, and on the second night
he asks that it may be made dry. On both nights, his
request is granted, and God gives him two signs.
The reason for these signs is debated. Most Bible
commentators believe that Gideon is acting in half-
hearted faith, continuously not trusting the Lord.
Others counter that Gideon is asking for a sign not for
himself but for those who will be called to follow him
into war:
"Given these seven parallels between the call
narrative of Moses and the story of Gideon, it seems
that Gideon asked for a sign for the same reason that
Moses did: so that Israel might be convinced that it
really was God who had spoken with him. Gideon is like
Moses, sent by God to deliver his people, accompanied
by miraculous signs."19
Gideon commenced his leadership into battle with
a “trumpet” blast.a This prophetic act foreshadows the
Second Coming of Jesus Christ as the greater Gideon,
who will ride into battle with His angelic army after a
trumpet blast to the nations.b
Dig Deeper.
1. Gideon was clothed in the Holy Spirit. Look up the
following Scriptures to see what God calls us to
put on:
_________________
a
Judges 6:34 b Matthew 24:31, 1 Corinthians 15:50-58, 1 Thessalonians
4:16, Revelation 11:15
60
•Romans 13:12, 13:14

•Ephesians 4:24, 6:11
•Revelation 19:8
Walk it out. Talk it out.

1. If anyone is new to the group, start by introducing
yourselves.
2. When you hear of the cultural darkness and
decline in Gideon’s day, how does it remind you of
the times we are living in?
3. We’re studying the most difficult thing God called
Gideon to do. What is the most difficult thing God
has called you to do? How did you respond
compared to his response?
4. How can we pray for you?
61
NOTES
62
63
Gideon: Anointed Savior

Hebrews 11:32–34 - For time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel
and the prophets – who through faith conquered
kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped
the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out
of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies
to flight.
Commentary:
The writer Mark Twain once said something that
sounds a lot like the scene we will now study in
Gideon’s life, “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's
the size of the fight in the dog.”
The time had come for Gideon, called and anointed
by God, to lead untrained civilians against armed
invading soldiers who had terrorized them for seven
years. God knew that if the number of men with Gideon
in the fight was too many, their pride would cause them
to not see His sovereign hand giving them the victory.
Instead, they would arrogantly use the victory to boast
that they were the heroes and saviors, saying, “My own
hand has saved me.” This same thing, sadly, happens
all the time. How often have God’s people, including
you and me, seen God do something and, because He
worked in and through us, we take the glory for it? Even
the way people tell their salvation testimony is often
flawed – that they found God, as if God was ever the
one who was lost.
Anyway, Gideon’s call to arms brought out 22,000
64
men. Anyone who was “fearful and trembling” was

given the opportunity to not join the fight and go home.
If you’ve ever been in a fight, combat, or a potentially
deadly situation, you know this feeling. Your heart is
beating out of your chest, your mind is racing with
fear, your hands are trembling, and you feel like you
are going to faint or throw up. War is no joke, and only
a scholar who has never been shot with even a Nerf
gun hiding in the safe confines of a library studying
this ancient text would criticize these men for feeling
fearful in the face of battle. This is a perfectly human
response to urban combat against trained terrorists
when you are a malnourished civilian outnumbered and
surrounded. At this invitation, 12,000 start the long
walk home, trying to figure out what they will tell their
wives and kids to make it sound like they weren’t total
cowards.
With 10,000 soldiers remaining – the same number
that Deborah took into battle a few pages earliera –
God then had Gideon test the men by taking them
to the water for a drink. The test concludes, “And the
LORD said to Gideon, “Every one who laps the water
with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself.
Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.” Only
300 men passed this test, and the rest were sent home.
“And the LORD said to Gideon, ‘With the 300 men who
lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your
hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.’”
To be clear, this means that God’s plan for
Gideon was to bring 300 untrained, malnourished
civilians into a war against 135,000 armed terrorists.b
Commentators often criticize Gideon for struggling
with fear in this moment, as “the LORD said to him,
_________________
a
Judges 4:6-10 b Judges 8:4-12
65
‘Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it

into your hand. But if you are afraid to go down, go
down to the camp with Purah your servant. And you
shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands
shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.’
Then he went down with Purah[.]” God senses Gideon’s
fear, and, like a good Father, leads him through it into
the biggest risk of his entire life, with the lives of 300
other men hanging in the balance. To be sure, God had
promised them victory. However, when the enemy has
450 bad guys for each one of your men, it is easy to
understand a bit of fear. Imagine, for a moment, that
you showed up for a shoot-out at high noon in the
middle of a street like an old-school western, and you
had one gun up against 450 gunmen!
Faith is like a muscle; it gets stronger the more we
use it. To help Gideon’s faith grow sufficient for the
battle, God gives some guy a dream in which Gideon,
represented by “a cake of barley bread” as God met
him threshing grain, knocked down a tent (see Amos
9:11), representing the camp of the Midianites. This
dream was rightly interpreted as, “This is no other than
the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel;
God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp.”
Throughout the Gideon story, we have seen God
repeatedly show up in supernatural ways. Not only
did the Holy Spirit clothe Gideon; Jesus came down
from Heaven to speak with Him, God later spoke to
him again, and in this scene God gives a prophetic
dream with a correct interpretation. These miraculous
moments reveal the freedom and power of God as
He works differently in the lives of different people
and leaders. Seeing that God is truly with him, Gideon
grows in his faith. “As soon as Gideon heard the telling
of the dream and its interpretation, he worshipped.” The
66
example here is vital: Whenever we see God show up in

our lives, we need to take that sacred moment to stop
everything we are doing and worship Him! Singing in
the car, kneeling in our house, getting to our church –
whatever would be examples of this principle. Too often
God shows up in our lives and we do not take the time
to process with him and thank Him so that our faith
grows. As we see in the Gideon story, when God shows
up in our life, it is to grow and deepen our faith for a
test that is coming, and so we must stop and worship
to grow in faith and be prepared for what the Lord
knows is coming and readying us for. Furthermore, in
this scene we learn that the war is both physical and
spiritual, as Paul also tells us.a The war is between men,
but working behind the scenes are God and Satan, and
God alone knows the future and cannot be defeated.
The appearance of Gideon, the man of God, as
bread in the dream also points to the future coming of
Jesus Christ, the Greater Gideon. Like Gideon, Jesus is
called the “bread of life”,b is born in Bethlehem (which
means “house of bread”), multiplied the bread of a
boy to feed a crowd,c and taught us to pray for our
daily bread.d Like Gideon, Jesus will return as a warrior
leading an angelic army into battle to take down the
tent of the Enemy once and for all. The little story of
Gideon is a part of the bigger story of Jesus.
Now filled with faith and the Spirit, Gideon followed
God’s battle plan. First, they attacked at night –
something not done in ancient battles. Typically, wars
were fought in the daytime, with each side having
banners lifted up high over the battlefield, so that as
their soldiers were wounded or wandered off having
lost their bearings in the fight, they could regroup.
_________________
a
Ephesians 6:12 b John 6:35 c John 6:1-3 d Matthew 6:11
67
Attacking at night would have been unexpected and

a strategic surprise element. Rather than fighting,
Gideon trusts the Lord to defeat the massive army,
and their job was to worship God in faith and cause the
enemy to worry in fear. Instead of taking up swords, the
men filled jars with torches and took trumpets to blow.
Gideon instructed them, “When I blow the trumpet, I
and all who are with me, then blow the trumpets also
on every side of all the camp and shout, ‘For the LORD
and for Gideon.’” To be sure, the battle cry is probably
not the greatest demonstration of humility and sole
glory to God. It’s a bit like a worship song written by
a pastor in which the people sing both the praises of
their God and their pastor.
Doing perfect work through an imperfect person,
which gives us hope, God graciously joins them in the
battle. In this instance, various Scriptural principles are
on full display:
•“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we
trust in the name of the Lord our God.”a
•“The battle is the Lord’s.”b
•“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says
the Lord of hosts.”c
The soldiers “blew the trumpets and smashed the
jars.” God’s soldiers simply stood still as an act of
worship and watched God do all the defeating and
saving. “[T]he LORD set every man’s sword against
his comrade and against all the army[.]” The surprise
late-night attack, with the great noise and show of
fire, created an illusion that caused the enemy camp
to think they were being overtaken by a massive show
of force. Filled with fear, the enemy panicked, with men
grabbing swords and attacking one another in the
_________________
a
Psalm 20:7 b 1 Samuel 17:47 c Zechariah 4:6
68
darkness of night, killing their own comrades.

In this are a few principles worth noting.
One, our fears are often false prophecies about
something that is untrue. In this instance, the enemy
feared an invasion from a large army, but none of that
was true.
Two, decisions made in fear instead of faith end in
doom. In this scene, Gideon and his army stood still
in faith and lived, while the enemy who was filled with
fear died.
Three, the key to victory is always worship. Gideon
and his men did not engage the enemy in war as much
as they engaged with God in worship. When we worship
God, He will go before us and fight for us as He did on
this historic day. Worship God and let God go to war
for you. These same principles are echoed in the days
of Joshua, in the fall of Jericho, where in principle the
same battle plan was successfully executed.a
The enemy soldiers who lived through the
confusion then fled, which moved the field of battle
into surrounding towns to hunt down the remaining
terrorist invaders. Overtaking and killing many of their
foes, “they captured the two princes of Midian, Oreb
(meaning “raven” or “unclean”) and Zeeb (“wolf” or
“vicious enemy”). They killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb,
and Zeeb they killed at the winepress of Zeeb. Then
they pursued Midian, and they brought the heads of
Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon across the Jordan.”
This battle by the Lord Jesus Christ over His
enemies to bring His people to salvation, worship, and
freedom is a picture of the Second Coming of Jesus
Christ. Echoing many of the themes of Judges 7,
Revelation 19 reveals Jesus coming as a warrior riding
_________________
a
Joshua 5:13-6:25
69
a white horse into battle, followed by an angelic army.

God’s people do not war, they simply worship God as
He wars for them like the days of Gideon. Like Gideon
the judge and warrior, Jesus Christ “judges and makes
war.” When the nations rise up against Jesus, as they
did Israel, those enemies experience “the fury of the
wrath of God the Almighty.” At the end of the last
battle in history that ushers in eternity, like the Gideon
battle, the political rulers are killed last: “And the rest
were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of
him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were
gorged with their flesh.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, God is
not a pacifist. Pacifism is: "the belief that war is
unacceptable, either because war is inherently immoral
or because Christians are called to a higher standard
of conduct. Some pacifists extend their opposition to
war to any killing or violence. For Christian theologians
the chief alternative to pacifism has been the just war
theory. Pacifism was the dominant view in the early
church and is the historic position of such churches as
the Mennonites and the Quakers."20
The Christian criteria for a “just war” began with
the church father Augustine and were expanded by
theologian Thomas Aquinas. The battle to which God
called Gideon and his 300 men meets the criteria of
a just war. Christian ethicists say, “A war is generally
considered just if and only if it is waged for a just
cause, is motivated by a just intention, comes as the
last resort, is pursued by a legitimate governmental
authority, has limited ends in view, exempts
noncombatants from attack and carries a reasonable
hope of success.”21
Lastly, once again, the story of Gideon’s battle is
a small chapter in the big story of the Bible, in which
70
Jesus is the greater Gideon, His Second Coming is the

greater war, and we are called to worship Him in faith,
trusting that His promise to bring our victory is certain
to pass.
Dig Deeper.
1. Look up a similar battle in Joshua 5:13-6:25 to
learn how God can war when we worship.
2. Look up the following verses about fear to learn
more about the response of God’s enemies
(Proverbs 29:25; 2 Timothy 1:6-7; 1 John 4:18).
3. Look up the following verses about faith to learn
more about the response of God’s people (Psalm
23:4, 46:1-3, 56:3-4, Luke 12:25-26; Romans 8:38-
39; Philippians 4:6; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

1. What stands out to you so far in learning about
Gideon? Is there anything in his life story that the
Holy Spirit has highlighted for you to consider or
learn from? If so, what is that, and why do you
think this lesson was chosen for you?
2. In reading the story while looking back on your
life, if you had to put yourself in the story, do you
identify more with Gideon, the men who did not
go into battle, the men who worshipped while
God warred, or the enemies of God who were
confused, fearful, and defeated? Why?
3. How have you seen God speak to you in a
supernatural way, like He did to Gideon (e.g.,
vision, dream, angelic visit, word from God,
prophecy, miracle, specific Scripture, etc.)?
71
NOTES
72
73
Gideon: Anointed Sinner

Judges 8:33-35 - As soon as Gideon died, the people
of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and
made Baal-berith their god. And the people of Israel did
not remember the LORD their God, who had delivered
them from the hand of all their enemies on every side,
and they did not show steadfast love to the family of
Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the good
that he had done to Israel.
Commentary:
Life often reminds me of the first time I remember
flying a kite as a kid. My entire focus was on getting
the kite in the air. I kept running back and forth, as fast
as I could, dragging the kite behind me, hoping it would
eventually take off and soar. I don’t know how long I
kept trying and failing, but I do remember needing to
take multiple breaks to catch my breath before trying
again. Eventually, after incredible effort, the kite got
airborne! I started to let the string out, and the kite
started to make its climb higher and higher. I was so
excited that I started shouting in joy. Suddenly, for no
clear reason, the kite made a nosedive into the ground
and broke apart.
Success. Many people spend their entire life driven
toward success. In school, students push themselves
for grades and academic honors; in the workforce,
employees push themselves for promotions, raises,
and success. So much of life is spent trying to get our
proverbial kite up that we forget to figure out how to
keep our kite up. Every day, our headlines are filled with
74
successful people whose life, like my kite, has taken

a nosedive. Beautiful weddings end in bitter divorces;
celebratory baptisms end in compromised apostasy;
the growing company ends up filing for bankruptcy; the
celebrity influencer ends up addicted and broken.
Thus far in the Gideon story, he’s gotten his kite up.
Jesus came down from heaven to meet with him, call
him to lead a military resistance movement against
terrorist invaders as a judge, clothe him in the Holy
Spirit, and give him a supernatural victory as 300 of his
men defeated 135,000 of their enemies. At this point,
Gideon’s kite is soaring. In chapter 8, however, the kite
that is his life takes a nosedive.
This scene starts with a conflict between Gideon
and members of his clan, or extended family,a and
like most extended families, doing life and business
together got complicated. Rather than celebrate
Gideon’s victory following the capture of Oreb and
Zeeb, the Ephraimites publicly criticize Gideon for not
including them in his battle plans much earlier in the
conflict, because they could have possibly been able to
cut off the fleeing Midianites and prevent their escape.
Basically, Gideon’s relatives are jealous of his success,
feel left out of an influential position compared to
the other clans, and want to get some of the glory for
themselves. Like someone who has won the Lottery
suddenly meets a lot of long-lost relatives with their
hand out, there is a sudden pressure on Gideon to take
responsibility for the success of even distant relatives.
In what is an ancient riddle of sorts, Gideon gives
them a backhanded compliment; they are not smart
enough to rightly understand it and wrongly conclude
he is honoring them, and the conflict subsides. Gideon
_________________
a
Judges 8:1-2 cf. Joshua 17:2
75
flatters them, downplays his success, and by assuaging

their pride defuses the conflict.
This shift in the war corresponds with a shift in
Gideon. In the ensuing scenes, God is silent. Gideon
is not acting out of obedience to the Lord; instead,
he is acting on his own. To use language of the New
Testament, in this season of his life Gideon remains a
believer but goes from living in the Spirit to living in the
flesh. In any war, some of the fighting continues after
the battle is won. Often, this includes the pursuit of the
highest-ranking enemy combatants who flee the battle
scene hoping to live, regroup, and fight another day. In
this instance, Gideon and his 300 men are “exhausted,”
“pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of
Midian.” Arriving in the town of Succoth, Gideon asks
for food to sustain his army. The local leaders deny
his request, possibly because they are surrounded by
Midianite forces, unsure of the ultimate outcome of the
battle, and fearful of reprisal. Nonetheless, their denial
infuriates Gideon, who vows to return in vengeance,
saying, “I will flail your flesh with the thorns of the
wilderness and with briers.” Gideon and his soldiers
then proceed to the nearby town of Penuel “and spoke
to them in the same way, and the men of Penuel
answered him as the men of Succoth had answered.”
Gideon once again became enraged and publicly
vowed to return after his victory and “break down this
tower.” Importantly, Gideon is threatening to return to
two towns with an armed militia to inflict damage not
on the enemy but on members of his own nation.
Gideon and his 300 men fight on, eventually
overtaking the 15,000 enemy troops who had fled with
the two kings of Midian – Zebah and Zalmunna – as
the other 120,000 were already dead from the conflict.
Now an undefeated liberating warrior, Gideon is at the
76
pinnacle of power. Rather than stop to worship God

for making all of his success possible, Gideon instead
returned to the town of Succoth that refused to feed
his troops, called a public meeting, and berated the
elders of the town because “you taunted me,” and then
“he took the elders of the city, and he took thorns of
the wilderness and briers and with them taught the
men of Succoth a lesson.” The ancient reader would
be well aware that Succoth was where Jacob wrestled
with Jesus.a Therefore, this was considered an ancient
holy site and place where God was to be worshipped.
This would have been the perfect place for Gideon to
stop and worship Jesus Christ in thanks for the military
victory, but, sadly, that is not the case. Instead, he flogs
the leaders of the city a bit like Jesus Christ would
later be publicly humiliated through flogging; as one
English translation (NIRV) says, “He tore their skin with
thorns from desert bushes.”
After publicly humiliating the older men leading in
that town, Gideon then returned to the town of Penuel,
where “he broke down the tower of Penuel and killed
the men of the city.” Gideon is now attacking cities
in his own nation and killing its citizens who are his
countrymen. Modern readers will be tempted to blame
his outbursts on exhaustion, the trauma of war, or even
a justified insurrection, but the truth is we do not hear
God speaking to Gideon or hear Gideon speaking to
God in prayer or worship. Gideon is acting on his own.
In confronting the Midianite kings Zebah and
Zalmunna, we discover that Gideon is being driven
by bitterness. Bitterness takes root in our soul when
we are offended and choose unforgiveness over
forgiveness. When we choose forgiveness, we are
_________________
a
Genesis 32:22-32, Hosea 12:4
77
leaving our offender to the Lord to deal with. God

had already proven fully capable of justice, as He
took down an entire enemy army while Gideon and
his men worshipped. In this instance, however, Gideon
will not leave things in God’s hands but instead takes
vengeance into his own hands because the kings
murdered his brothers. “They were my brothers, the
sons of my mother. As the LORD lives, if you had saved
them alive, I would not kill you.” The Old Testament does
give a provision for a close relative to exact revenge
for murder;a however in this instance, it appears
that Gideon’s brothers died in a military battle with
Midianite soldiers under the leadership of the two kings,
which would not qualify as justifiable execution. In a
dark twist, Gideon then orders his firstborn son, Jether,
to “rise and kill them!” Fearful, the boy does not kill the
kings, which may have been a good thing, because it
could have put a bounty on his head for the rest of his
life. God says that vengeance is Hisb and has proven
this fact by routing the enemy armies, but on this day
vengeance is Gideon’s, as “Gideon arose and killed
Zebah and Zalmunna[.]”
Making matters worse, Gideon then “took the
crescent ornaments that were on the necks of their
camels.” Looking much like the modern-day crescent
moon that serves as the symbol for Islam, this pagan
jewelry with clear demonic association is moon-
shaped, either of gold or silver, worn by the Midianite
kings or their camels.c At Isa. 3:18 the crescents
constitute part of the tawdry attire of the “daughters
of Zion” which the Lord would remove, possibly because
of their pagan association.”22
In old western movies, there were good guys and
_________________
a
Leviticus 24:17, Deuteronomy 19:21 cf. Numbers 35:6-34 b
Deuteronomy 32:18, Romans 12:19 c Judg. 8:26, 21
78
bad guys. The good guys wore white cowboy hats, and
the bad guys wore black cowboy hats. Life, however,
is a lot more complicated than an old gunslinger show.
If we are honest, even if we are believers, some days
we wear the white hat, and some days we wear the
black hat. This is the case with Gideon. In Judges 6 he
began to put on a white hat. In Judges 7 he wore the
white hat into battle. In Judges 8 he has been wearing
the black hat. However, in the next scene he puts back
on the white hat, before then putting on the black
hat yet again. Seeking to make Gideon into a king
with a generational monarchy, “the men of Israel said
to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, you and your son and your
grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of
Midian.’ Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you,
and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule
over you.’”
What the people want, and eventually get, is a
human king. However, first they are to honor God as
the King of kings. The same is true of us, because
we are sinners in a fallen world. Everyone needs to
be under some kind of leadership (e.g., children need
parents, employees need bosses, students need
teachers, citizens need police officers, and people
need politicians) to bring some sense of order to what
would otherwise be anarchy and chaos. However, all
authority and leadership are given by God, who has all
authority and is to be the Leader that everyone else
follows. Unless there is a respect for God, there will
not be human flourishing. At the height of national
popularity, having pulled off a miracle and routing
an overwhelmingly larger terrorist invader that has
tormented them for seven years, Gideon can cash in all
of his success and become the king, securing his family
on the throne for generations. Rightly, Gideon declines
79
that offer, and later God would raise up David to be

their Spirit-filled warrior king instead.
However, Gideon then put back on the black hat,
saying: “Let me make a request of you: every one of
you give me the earrings from his spoil.” (For they had
golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites). And
they answered, “We will willingly give them.” And they
spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings
of his spoil. And the weight of the golden earrings that
he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the
crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple
garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the
collars that were around the necks of their camels.”
A Bible commentary says, “The total collected equal
just over forty pounds of gold! To this are added a
variety of other items taken from the two kings and
their camels. But such a significant amount represents
only the beginning of all that has been gathered from
the devastated Midianites.”23
Years prior to Gideon, there was a very dark moment
in the history of Israel. After God delivered them like He
did in the days of Gideon, the people chose to worship
a golden calf. A calf is a young bull, and the bull is the
symbol of Baal, the demonic false god and chief enemy
of God and His people. Exodus 32:1-4 says: “When the
people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the
mountain, the people gathered themselves together to
Aaron and said to him, ’Up, make us gods who shall go
before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us
up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has
become of him.’ So Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the
rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your
sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ So all
the people took off the rings of gold that were in their
ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the
80
gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving

tool and made a golden calf. And they said, These are
your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land
of Egypt!’”
Despite knowing this idolatrous story, the people
and their leader repeat it. “And Gideon made an ephod
of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel
whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon
and to his family.” A Bible commentary explains:
“Gideon ... upon receiving the gold rings, fashions
them into an ephod, which he then places in his
hometown of Ophrah. An ephod was an important
priestly garment used when making inquiry of the
Lorda ... [T]he ephod soon becomes more than a
symbol, serving instead as an object of worship. ...
Exactly what Gideon has in mind with this ephod is
unclear. It must be recalled, however, that he has earlier
destroyed the altar of Baal located in Ophrah, and
subsequently has built an altar to the Lord in its place.b
Furthermore, Gideon has offered a sacrifice to God
there, and he has successfully sought a word from the
Lord before going into battle.c In other words, Gideon
has previously performed priestly functions; now he
seemingly consecrates himself as a priest. ... While
Gideon admirably turns down the offer of kingship,
he creates, knowingly or not, a new religion instead.
In a sense, Gideon has come full circle. He began his
ministry in Ophrah by destroying the altar of Baal and
the associated Asherah pole. By the end of his ministry,
Ophrah has a golden ephod to take their place."24
The final scenes of Gideon’s life are that God’s
battle victory through him brought forty years of
peace, Gideon took many wives, fathered 70 sons, lived
_________________
a
Exod. 28:6–8; 1 Sam. 14:3; 23:9–12; 30:7–8 b Judges 6:25–27 c Judges
6:36–40
81
to a “good old age” and was “was buried in the tomb

of Joash his father[.]” Throughout the Old Testament,
polygamy is common despite God forbidding it by
declaring that marriage was between one man and one
woman, any sexual activity outside of the marriage
covenant was adultery, and a leader “shall not acquire
many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away”.a
Furthermore, when there are children born outside
of the marriage covenant, the results are repeatedly
disastrous for generations, which is the case with
Gideon.
The final lines are haunting, showing that despite
his imperfections Gideon was far godlier than the rest
of the nation. “As soon as Gideon died, the people
of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals
and made Baal-berith their god. And the people of
Israel did not remember the LORD their God, who had
delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on
every side, and they did not show steadfast love to the
family of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the
good that he had done to Israel.”
In the ensuing chapters of Judges, the focus is
on Gideon’s son Abimelech, whose name means “my
father is king.” Some commentators think Gideon
arrogantly named his son this, and, despite declining
the kingship, he remained king in his heart. Other
commentators believe that his name means “God
my Father is King,” which, if true, would have been
consistent with what Gideon told the people and what
God commanded the people. In either case, Abimelech
was raised apart from his father, which likely caused
a father wound after being born to a non-Israelite
“concubine,” which was an ancient combination of
_________________
a
Deuteronomy 17:17
82
adulterer, lover, nanny, slave, and prostitute.

In Judges 9, Abimelech deceives and murders all
but one of his brothers and publicly campaigns to be
king once those men in line in front of him are dead
by his hand. Abimelech rules as king for three years.
God opposes and ultimately destroys Abimelech, who
worships demons and seeks to rule Israel like Satan
sought to rule Heaven.a In shame, Abimelech finds
his end when a woman drops a millstone on his head,
crushing his skull, and he asks his armor-bearer to run
him through with a sword so that he would not have
been killed by a woman.
Although Gideon is honored as a man of faith,b
his work is imperfect, and the change he brings is
temporary. This sets the stage for the coming of
Jesus Christ, whose Father truly is King. Born of a
virgin instead of a concubine, Jesus grows up to live
without sin, only and always wearing the white hat.
Continually humble, Jesus will return to the nation of
Israel to establish Himself as King forever and Judge
over all nations. On that day, a trumpet blast like the
days of Gideon will announce His riding into battle with
an angelic army mightier than Gideon’s. Jesus Christ
will perfectly execute justice against His enemies
and deliver God’s people to worship Him alone forever
without ever reverting to idolatry. Furthermore, on that
day, King, Warrior, and Judge Jesus Christ will sentence
all demons, including Baal and Asherah, “into the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”c
Dig Deeper.
1. Gideon struggled with pride. Look up the following
Scriptures to learn about this sin (Job 41,
_________________
a
Revelation 12:7-11 b Judges 8:33-35, Hebrews 11:32-34 c Matthew
25:41
83
Proverbs 8:13, Proverbs 11:2, Proverbs 16:18, Mark

7:21-23, 1 John 2:15-17, James 4:1-10).
2. Gideon struggled with bitterness and vengeance.
Look up the following Scriptures about these sins
(Matthew 6:14-15, Ephesians 4:25-32; Hebrews
12:14-15).
3. Gideon struggled with lust. Look up the following
Scriptures about this sin (Job 31:1, Matthew 5:27-
30, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, Galatians 5:16-24,
Colossians 3:1-17).

1. In studying Gideon, what is the big lesson you
have learned about God?
2. What is the big lesson you have learned about
yourself?
3. In light of what you have learned studying
Gideon, what is God asking you to do?
84
NOTES
85
86
ENDNOTES
1. E. Mack, “Abimelech,” ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised
(Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979–1988), 10.
2. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.
asp
3. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.
asp
4. Douglas Mangum, ed., Lexham Context
Commentary: Old Testament, Lexham Context
Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020),
Jdg 1:1–3:6.
5. John D. Barry and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, “Judge,
Role in Israel,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible
Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
6. George M. Schwab, Right in Their Own Eyes:
The Gospel according to the Book of Judges, ed.
Tremper Longman III, The Gospel according to the Old
Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2011), 30.
Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2011), 24-
25
8. Trent C. Butler and Amy L. Balogh, “Judges, Book
of,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary
(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
9. Trent C. Butler and Amy L. Balogh, “Judges, Book
of,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary
(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
87
12. Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Canaan,
Canaanites,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 406.
13. Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Canaan,
Canaanites,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 409.
14. Ian W. K. Koiter, “Apostasy,” ed. John D. Barry et al.,
The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham
Press, 2016).
Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2011),
41–42.
117–118.
41–42.
88
20. C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of
Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 87.
21. Stanley J. Grenz and Jay T. Smith, Pocket
Dictionary of Ethics, The IVP Pocket Reference Series
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 65.
22. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid
B. Beck, “Crescents,” ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C.
Myers, and Astrid B. Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the
Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 295.
23. Terry L. Brensinger, Judges, Believers Church Bible
Commentary (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999), 101.
24. Terry L. Brensinger, Judges, Believers Church Bible
Commentary (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999), 101–
102.
89
ABOUT MARK DRISCOLL
& REALFAITH
W ith Pastor Mark, it’s all about Jesus! He is a
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Together, Mark and Grace have co-authored Win Your

War, Real Marriage, and Real Romance: Sex in the Song
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G IDEON

A Study in Judges 6-8

ISBN: 979-8-9894167-5-2 (Paperback)

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

1. Gideon: Anointed Son (Judges 6) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

2. Gideon: Anointed Savior (Judges 7). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

3. Gideon: Anointed Sinner (Judges 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

A t RealFaith, we believe that the Word of God isn’t

2. Listen to the sermon on realfaith.com or on the

3. Get into God’s Word

We will be praying for you and your group and look

Ihave spent my entire adult life, since my conversion

Hamas Is a Demonic Spirit in the Bible

On October 7, 2023, a Palestinian terrorist group

Hamas is not just a group; it’s a demonic spirit that

In Joel 3:19, it says “Egypt shall become a desolation

Judges, especially the battles between Gideon

From Moses, to Gideon, to Today’s War In Israel

Going even deeper into prophetic revelation to

show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with

devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest

lowland. And Judah went against the Canaanites who

The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel,

Today’s Israeli War in Gaza Started 2,600 Years Ago

The rest of Judges reveals repeated terrorist

Isaac. Tragically, after Gideon’s great military victory,

of the prophecies given in Deuteronomy 2,700 years

The Hamas Charter says:

Deuteronomy 12:8 – “You shall not do according to all

Judges 21:25b - Everyone did what was right in his own

C onsider a nation in steep spiritual and cultural

Understanding the Days of the Judges

Written or collected into a complete manuscript

Promised Land as the nation of Israel was born. At the

land’s pagan Canaanite inhabitants remain. The first

Judges reports that the nation of Israel was

God Raises Up Judges

The first judge God raised up was Moses. Exodus

matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter

and answered their prayers by raising up leaders called

derived from God, and those with authority are still

The Judges Cycle

Judges is closely related to the book of

reaction would be. Consider also Deuteronomy 12:8:

1. Israel does evil and worships the Baals.

Paying attention to the following themes in

good parent the Father cannot aid in evil, or reward

infighting in the next generation. He is a man of God,

Biography vs. Testimony

When non-Christians share their life story, it is a

Israel forgets him and eventually returns to worship

don’t need to be perfect – just available and honest.

Canaanites Run Our Culture

God made us as one person in two parts. What we do

carrying a thunderbolt at his left side and a mace in his

Apostasy From the Ancient East to the Modern West

Throughout the Bible, including Judges, when you see

One, authority is external, in people like parents, police

context. “Apostasy” is also related to the term

good, human progress is inevitable, and, given more time,

LGBTQIA+ People Are Pharisees With Fetishes

Why do younger generations today believe things