Slip Sliding Away

Passage: Judges 8:22-35

Intro: “Slip sliding way. Slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination the more you’re slip sliding away... God only knows. God makes His plan. The information’s unavailable to mortal man. We work our jobs, collect our pay. Believe we’re flyin’ down the highway when in fact we’re slip sliding away.” Paul Simon, “Slip Sliding Away”

1. humans have an almost unlimited ability for self-delusion. Here’s an example

1. The Midianite army had been crushed, destroyed. The survivors limped home for good.

2. what one might expect and what actually took place afterward are two different things.

3. we are dealing here with a pagan culture, even with the name Israel

4. this wonderful deliverance, so powerful and miraculous, had a mixed effect.

5. we’ve seen that God’s purpose in deliverance was transformation, turning people from sin and fear to embrace faith.

6. easier said than done!

7. some decisions made in the wake of this deliverance that are very instructive to us.

Il) John Trent in book “Heartshift", p17, tells the story of a NASA engineer he spoke to on a plane that said a 2% deviation on a launch to the moon will result in a 11,121 mile mistake when you arrive at, or near, the moon.

8. choices we make may seem small, but over time, we find we are slipping and sliding away from what we thought was our goal. Deviations!

9. the deviations we make have results.

10. the good news is that the information from God is available to mortal man. And here is some of it!

I. God’s People Chose an Idolatrous Alternative

1. Gideon wasn’t the only person who benefited from deliverance.

2. every person was delivered, economic picture brightened, security returned

3. now remember the times!

4. Israel, for 380 years, forgot who they were, their national identity.

5. they had become completely secularized, just like their neighbors

PP Judges 17:6

6. they worshiped a series of gods, and their lives were spent seeking to please one god or another.

7. now Gideon had emerged, in their eyes, as a person with great power!

8. he had taken on Baal and Ashteroth in chapter 6 and beaten them.

9. he took on the god of the Midianites (in their view) and defeated him or her.

10. v 22, “because…” his “god” was more powerful, and he was clearly a favored man. So they wanted him to bring them under his umbrella.

Il) they wanted to hitch their wagon to his star

11. to Gideon’s credit, he gave glory to God. (Yahweh in v23)

12. but the seed was sown in his heart to reap a substantial payday from his victory in money or power, or both!

13. the people of Israel had a choice here, and they chose the tangible and physical rather than the worship of God.

14. this is the heart of man, to be led away by the here and now, the physical, rather than the eternal and spiritual.

PP Virgin of Guadalupe at the Basilica in Mexico City

15. be aware of this natural human tendency, and see it as the pursuit of physical, tangible things over the things of God.

Il) American church, often about buildings

II. Gideon Tried to Have It Both Ways

1. after correctly refusing to be the king, Gideon decided to keep the perks

2. not unusual to benefit from spoils.

3. but earlier, Abraham had rejected the spoils of war.

PP Genesis 14:21-24

4. Gideon took over 40 lbs of gold, but then made it into an “ephod”

5. various types, from one worn by high priest, used to discern God’s will, to linen garment worn by David.

6. I’m wondering if Gideon was seeking to honor God, but appeal to the desire for a physical presence of God.

7. is that why people were “glad”? v25

8. whatever his motive, the people quickly began to worship the object. v27

PP 2 Kings 18:4

9. “prostituted themselves” a clear OT image for idolatry.

10. this ephod now became the object which had delivered them from Midian

11. while Gideon and family did not worship it, it became a “snare”

12. it may not have sent them down the wrong path of idolatry, but it caused them to miss the best path of the exclusive worship of God

13. we call this syncretism, the blending of two disparate ideas into a third.

14. and while Gideon, on the surface, was worshiping God, there was a dangerous blending that led his family astray.

15. in our day, some call this tendency “cultural Christianity”

16. the tendency to incorporate, in order to attract the world, secular ideas into our faith to make it more acceptable.

17. certainly Gideon could not demand the worship of God alone and expect to be listened to, so he “snuck God in the backdoor” with an idol that would appeal to the masses but was still part of God’s revealed religious system.