Tearing Down the Family Idols Text: Judges 6:25-27
Introduction: The Public Nature of Private Idolatry
We live in a time that is simultaneously obsessed with public justice and private piety. Our culture screams for righteousness in the town square while insisting that what a man does in the privacy of his own home is his own business. But the Bible knows nothing of this distinction. The Scriptures teach us that all sin is public in its consequences, and all true reformation must begin where the sin is most deeply rooted, which is often right in our own backyards, right in our father's house.
The book of Judges is a cyclical story of Israel's infidelity. They sin, God sends oppressors. They cry out, God sends a deliverer. They have peace, and then they get fat and happy and wander back into sin. It is a grim and bloody book, but it is also a book of astonishing faith and God's inexorable mercy. In our portion of the story, Israel has done evil in the sight of the Lord, and so for seven years, God handed them over to the Midianites. The oppression is so severe that the Israelites are hiding in caves, and the Midianites swarm the land like locusts, devouring everything. And in their distress, Israel finally cries out to Yahweh.
God's answer is to call a man named Gideon, who, when we meet him, is the very picture of the nation's condition. He is threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from the enemy. The Angel of Yahweh appears and calls him a "mighty man of valor," which at that moment must have sounded like the blackest irony. But God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called. After Gideon's initial fear and faith-filled testing of God, the Lord gives him his first assignment. And notice where this great national deliverance begins. It does not begin with a frontal assault on the Midianite hordes. It begins with a direct assault on the idolatry in his own family.
Before Gideon can be trusted to fight the public enemy, he must first prove faithful in fighting the domestic enemy. Before he can tear down the Midianite tents, he must first tear down his father's altar. This is a profound and unyielding principle. Reformation begins at home. You cannot decry the idols in Washington D.C. if you are tolerating idols in your own living room, or in your own father's backyard. God's war against the world's corruption is a war that must first be prosecuted within the covenant community, and within the covenant family.
The Text
Now it happened on the same night that Yahweh said to him, “Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it, and build an altar to Yahweh your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take the second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down.” So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as Yahweh had spoken to him; and now it happened that because he was too afraid of his father’s household and the men of the city to do it by day, he did it by night.
(Judges 6:25-27 LSB)
The Divine Command: A Declaration of War (v. 25-26)
The command from Yahweh is specific, direct, and utterly uncompromising. This is not a suggestion for Gideon's consideration. It is a divine mandate.
"Now it happened on the same night that Yahweh said to him, 'Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it, and build an altar to Yahweh your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take the second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down.'" (Judges 6:25-26 LSB)
First, notice the target. "The altar of Baal which belongs to your father." The rot was in the family of Joash, Gideon's father. Baal was the Canaanite storm and fertility god, the great rival to Yahweh. Asherah was his consort, a goddess of fertility, often represented by a wooden pole or a grove of trees. This was not some minor syncretism; this was high-handed treason against the covenant God of Israel. The first and second commandments were being trampled underfoot right there in Gideon's hometown, and his own father was the custodian of the abomination.
God is telling Gideon that the reason the Midianites are in their land is because Baal is in his backyard. The foreign oppression is a direct consequence of the domestic idolatry. We become like what we worship. Israel was worshipping impotent, man-made gods, and they had become impotent themselves, hiding in holes in the ground. If you worship a god you can knock over, you will become a man who can be knocked over.
The command is not simply to destroy, but also to build. He is to "pull down" the altar of Baal and "cut down" the Asherah. This is the negative work of reformation: the tearing down of falsehood. But this is immediately followed by the positive work: "build an altar to Yahweh your God." You cannot leave a vacuum. If you tear down one altar, you must erect another. If you cast out one lord, you must enthrone the true Lord. Mere iconoclasm is not reformation. True reformation replaces the worship of idols with the worship of the living God, in the way He commands.
And notice the details. He is to build the altar "in an orderly manner." God is a God of order, not chaos. The pagan worship was chaotic, orgiastic, and debased. The worship of Yahweh is to be ordered, structured, and holy. Then, he is to take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering "with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down." This is a glorious and defiant insult to Baal. God commands Gideon to use the very stuff of idolatry as the fuel for true worship. He is to take the sacred object of the false god and set it on fire as a sacrifice to the true God. This is what God does with all our idols. He takes the things we worship, the things we think give us life and power, and He burns them up in the fire of His holiness, using them as fuel to display His own glory.
Fearful Obedience (v. 27)
Gideon's response is a marvelous picture of weak faith acting in obedience. He does not argue. He does not make excuses. He obeys. But his obedience is mixed with a very human emotion.
"So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as Yahweh had spoken to him; and now it happened that because he was too afraid of his father’s household and the men of the city to do it by day, he did it by night." (Judges 6:27 LSB)
Here we see the central conflict in every Christian's life: the fear of God versus the fear of man. Gideon is "too afraid of his father's household and the men of the city." This was not an irrational fear. He was about to commit an act of what they would consider extreme sacrilege and vandalism against the town's sacred site, which was also his own father's property. The men of the city, as we see in the following verses, want to kill him for it. His father, his kinsmen, his neighbors, they were all invested in this idolatry. To defy Baal was to defy his entire community.
The fear of man brings a snare, the Proverb says. It paralyzes. It compromises. It makes cowards of us all. And Gideon felt it acutely. But here is the key: his fear of man did not stop his obedience to God. He was afraid, but he did it anyway. This is the definition of courage. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is acting rightly in the face of fear. Gideon feared man, but he evidently feared God more. He was more afraid of disobeying the command of the living God than he was of the reaction of his neighbors.
So he does it by night. Some might see this as a flaw, a mark of his cowardice. But I see it as God's accommodation of his weak faith. God did not command him to do it at high noon. He just commanded him to do it. Gideon uses wisdom. He takes ten men for help and uses the cover of darkness to accomplish the mission. This is not disobedience; it is tactical prudence born of a realistic assessment of the opposition. Faith is not foolishness. Faith does not mean you turn your brain off. Gideon obeyed the what of the command, and used his God-given sense to figure out the how.
This is an encouragement to all of us. You may feel your faith is weak. You may be keenly aware of your fear. The prospect of standing for Christ in your family, at your job, or in your community may fill you with dread. The lesson from Gideon is not "don't be afraid." The lesson is "obey anyway." Do it afraid. Your trembling hand, when it is doing the will of God, is stronger than the clenched fist of a godless mob.
Conclusion: Your Father's Altar
This is not just a story about a man in ancient Israel. This is a story about you. Every one of us has a father's altar that needs to be torn down. It might not be a literal stone altar to a Canaanite deity. But the principle is the same. The idols of the heart are passed down from generation to generation.
What is the central idol of your father's household? Is it the love of money? Is it the pursuit of comfort and respectability? Is it the fear of man? Is it a dead, formal religion that has a form of godliness but denies its power? Is it a tradition of bitterness, or anxiety, or lust? These are the Asherah poles set up in our family lines, and God calls us, as He called Gideon, to take an axe to the root of them.
This work begins when the gospel first comes to us. Just as with Gideon, God shines His light on us while we are hiding in our winepresses, and He calls us mighty warriors in Christ. And His first command is one of demolition and reconstruction. Repentance is pulling down the altar of self-worship. Faith is building a new altar to Jesus Christ on the ruins of the old one.
And what is the fuel for our sacrifice on this new altar? It is the wood of the old idol. God commands us to take the very things we once served and burn them in service to Him. You served money? Now you use it with radical generosity for the Kingdom. You served your reputation? Now you are willing to be called a fool for Christ's sake. You served your lusts? Now you channel that passion into a zealous love for God and your neighbor. God consecrates our deepest shames and turns them into fuel for His glory.
This is costly. It will make you enemies, sometimes within your own household. Jesus said He came to bring a sword that would divide families. But the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and it is the only antidote to the fear of man. Like Gideon, you may have to do it by night. You may have to take your stand quietly, without fanfare, trembling as you do it. But you must do it. Identify the idol. Take up the axe of God's Word. And start swinging.
Because only when the altars of Baal are rubble can the armies of Midian be routed. The victory of God in the world begins with the obedience of God's people in their own backyards.