The book of Judges begins with victory and ends with chaos. It’s a tragic record of a nation that forgot God, not because they stopped believing in Him, but because they started believing they could live without Him. The theme verse sums it up: “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25, NLT).
Sound familiar?
We live in a world that also celebrates moral relativism—the idea that truth is flexible and everyone decides what’s right for themselves. However, when truth becomes a matter of personal preference, chaos inevitably follows. That’s precisely what happened to Israel. Partial obedience led to full rebellion. They compromised with sin and lost their moral compass.
Yet even in their failure, God’s mercy remained. When Israel cried out under the oppression of the Midianites, God didn’t abandon them. Instead, He called an unlikely hero—a fearful, hesitant man named Gideon.
When we meet Gideon in Judges 6, he’s hiding from the enemy, threshing wheat in a winepress, hardly a picture of courage. Yet God greets him with these words: “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!” (Judges 6:12). Gideon’s response is honest: “Who, me?” He feels unqualified and weak. But God reminds him that strength doesn’t come from who we are; it comes from who’s with us.
Gideon’s story shows us that weak faith in a strong God is enough. God patiently confirms His calling, not once but multiple times. And then, in an act that defies logic, He reduces Gideon’s army from 32,000 to just 300 men to defeat the Midianites. Why? So that no one could boast in human power, only in divine strength.
Gideon’s victory reminds us that God doesn’t need big numbers or perfect people to accomplish His purposes. He works through those who trust Him, even when their faith feels fragile. But the story doesn’t end with victory. Judges 8 warns that even after success, Israel quickly returned to idolatry once Gideon died. The cycle of sin started again because they still hadn’t learned that partial obedience is, in fact, disobedience.
Gideon teaches us three key truths about living in a world full of moral confusion:
- God is the absolute truth. In a world of shifting opinions, His Word stands firm.
- Peace comes through His presence. Gideon called God Yahweh-Shalom or “The Lord is Peace.” True peace isn’t the absence of problems; it’s the presence of God.
- Strength comes through His grace. As Paul later writes, “Be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1).
When your faith feels weak, remember Gideon’s story. God can take fear and turn it into faith, weakness and turn it into strength, chaos and turn it into peace. Because even in a world that does what’s right in its own eyes, God still calls ordinary people to live courageously by His truth.