What a sad ending to that story! After the mighty things Gideon did because the Lord enabled him to, because the Lord made it possible for him to, because the LORD went before him and tied up all the details for him, Gideon went and did a fool thing! He was right to refuse to be king, and he was right to say that it should be the Lord who ruled over Israel. But then he made a gold ephod which became a snare not only to himself and his family, but others in Israel. When he should have been leading the people in faithfulness to God, instead he drew them away from the Lord. Obviously, you cannot rest on the laurels of one spiritual triumph. You've heard the adage that if you're not growing and moving forward, you're actually backsliding? This seems true here of Gideon. Rather than continuing and pursuing faithfulness to the Lord, he camped on the fact that the Lord had used him greatly at one point, and instead begins to worship the spoils that he had gained. It is a good warning to us: if we cannot see spiritual growth in our own lives recently, we may need evaluate where our walk is going. There was a sign once on the wall across from the elevator doors in my dormitory at the Bible college I attended; it said: If you no longer feel close to God, it was not God who moved. Something like that. I can gaurantee that's true.
Tomorrow's Reading: Judges 9:1-57
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