Gideon

Bobbie Frere | Judges 6:1-16 

After a break last Sunday to cheer on the heroes running in the celebration of the Birmingham Half-Marathon, we're back with our series looking at some of the Bible characters who can teach us "Lessons for life". Like so many long-distance runners these "heroes" encountered adverse conditions, uphill stretches and times when they thought that they would never make it. None faced more overwhelming odds than Gideon, plucked from obscurity to free his nation from a massive army of occupation. How did he face the challenge? As Bobbie explains, he didn't get everything right - yet God still fulfilled his promise. 

Discussion questions can be downloaded here.

The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.'

'Pardon me, my lord,' Gideon replied, 'but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, "Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?" But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.'