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Week 18, Day 1 — Judges 7-8

Kyle Turner
04/28/24 - Podcast

And now, a minute with the word…

Most of us are probably very familiar with the account of Gideon defeating the Midianites. God had Gideon trim his fighting force down to 300 men, so that the Israelites would recognize that God had delivered them from the hand of Midian. However, at the end of the account of Gideon in Judges 8, there is a warning for all of us.

Judges 8.27 — “Gideon made an ephod from all this and put it in Ophrah, his hometown. Then all Israel prostituted themselves by worshipping there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household.” (CSB)

Gideon, by all accounts, could have been trying to set up a memorial that should have pointed the Israelites back towards God and the victory He gave them over Midian. Whatever his intentions, the result was that the Israelites began to worship the ephod, and treated it as some form of an idol. That became the object of their worship, not God. Let us always consider our actions, and how they might affect, for better or worse, those around us.