One line to draw from Judges 6:25–32, with Judges 6:24 also in mind, is that a divided heart is an obstacle in the way of enjoying the peace of the Lord. For no one can successfully serve two masters. The citizens of Ophrah certainly did not succeed; and that was symptomatic of Israel as a whole. Baal worship was far more appealing to them. He brought the rain (which was a good thing in an agrarian society). But Baal worship also involved all sorts of illicit pleasures that were forbidden by Yahweh. So Baal was attractive because he was more fun to worship than the Lord.
This was Gideon’s home life for many years—seven, anyway. The people of Ophrah were covenant people who knew the Lord, but had given their hearts to Baal. The Lord comes to Gideon and appoints him as judge for Israel’s deliverance. And once Gideon believes this, he builds an altar, The Lord Is Peace.
But there was no peace between Israel and her God.
Israel first needs to have her worship reformed before she can enjoy the Lord’s deliverance, and his peace. This is what the Lord makes plain to Gideon in the first place, in calling him to destroy idols on the home front. God cannot give his good gifts to those who are not fully given to him.
But Gideon himself is slow to embrace undivided loyalty to the Lord. He did what the Lord commanded, but not with the same trust and conviction as Othniel the ideal judge. Yet God does not cast him away. God chose this particular judge, knowing the kind of person he is. He chose to work with this earthen vessel in order to make his own power manifest. Baal cannot stand up to God, and the Lord can make that message loud and clear, with or without an ideal judge as instrument. That reminds us that the judges are not our models; they were never supposed to be. They are in many ways mirrors.
For do we not struggle to have undivided hearts before the Lord? And does that not prevent us from enjoying the wholeness, the fullness, the blessing that is promised us?
The Lord wants an undivided heart. Because he himself gives to his children his undivided heart. And he wants us to enjoy that, he wants us to enjoy the peace, the wholeness, the security, the blessing that comes from knowing his heart. But we will only enjoy that, and increasingly so, as we smash the idols of the heart and follow the Lord in true worship.
Our faith, however, is weak. Like Gideon, our obedience to the Lord tends to be beset by a lack of trust and conviction. Our obedience can be tainted by fear or by pride. Our hearts are not pure, they’re not single-hearted. We have our own altars of Baal that we want to tear down, that we want to distance ourselves from, but we are not always in a hurry to do so. We find it all frustrating. We want to serve God with an undivided heart. Yet we cannot seem to completely distance ourselves from idolatry.
25 That night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it