It only took one generation after Joshua for Israel to turn to the gods of the other nations around them. Just one generation after Joshua said “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”, and all of the rest of Israel agreeing with him and swearing to serve God, and him alone, they walked away from the Lord.

God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt, eventually brought them across the Jordan river and into the promised land, and had driven out the Canaanite people before them. Yet as a result of not teaching their children about the Lord, as a result of focusing on themselves instead of what God had done for them, they forgot God completely.

The Israelites were already headed into their own direction. They were leaving the Lord behind and they were going their own way. They began to intermix with the other nations around them, serving the pagan gods and practicing every sort of evil possible, as commanded by the traditions of worshiping those gods.

There were moments in which it seemed that they would turn back. There were points at which they would return back to the Lord, but frequently those hopes were dashed as they continued to be lured away.

The path to return back to God was clear: Humility for men before God. There is one way in which God always required men to come before him: In repentance and in humility. God detests the pride of men. He hates man’s desire to lift himself up over God himself. God wants men to be in the right relationship with him, placing God before themselves, glorifying him, lifting the Lord up in first place over all.

This is the attitude with which God expected the Israelites to have before him. Even as the Midianites came to war against the Israelites with at least 135,000 men in their army, with the Israelites marshaling an army of less than a quarter of that number, God made sure that it was not only specifically NOT a fair fight, which was the case already, but that it was completely impossible. Gideon would be asked to go to war against those 135,000 with just 300 men.

Would they be particularly strong men? Would they be particularly well-trained men? No, none of these things. They were not like the Spartans. They were not the Marines, just a few good men. No, they were simply given trumpets and torches. God would do all of the rest. God would do all of the work.

God gave dreams to the Midianites that they would be routed by the Israelites. He put fear into their hearts that Gideon and his army would destroy them. When Gideon and his army shouted, blew their trumpets, and lit their torches, all of the Midianites were thrown into confusion, even going so far as to fight against and kill one another, ultimately fleeing from the Israelites despite there only being 300 men who stood before their camp in the dark with nothing more than trumpets and torches.

God would defeat the Midianites and their army because he did not want the Israelites to begin to think that their own strength would save them. He wanted the Israelites to remember, once again, that God was the one who saved them. God was the one that led them. It was God’s strength, not their own:

The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’

Judges 7:2

The word of God can often be like a mirror that is held up to us so that we can see ourselves clearly within it. How often do we think that we are leading, we are guiding, we are in control? How often do we think that it is our own strength and power that is leading us and giving us any of the victories that we might experience?

The world tells us to pull ourselves up. God tells us that it is by his strength and might that we are strong.

The world tells us that we are the masters of our fate. God tells us that he is the king in the kingdom of God and we should do all things to glorify him.

This may not seem that significant because maybe it doesn’t look like “sin”. Maybe it doesn’t look like stealing or killing or hurting others. But it is the start of these things, and so much more. Through our pride, we decide what is right for ourselves. Through our pride, we make the decisions of what is right and wrong.

That is the same decision that Adam and Eve made. They believed that they could “be like God”, as the serpent told them, and so their desire for this knowledge, their own knowledge, of what is right and wrong led them down a path that led them to destruction. Their pride made them believe that they would be powerful enough to lead themselves. And at that point they wouldn’t need God.

This is the same sin that came later with the Israelites and it is the same sin that we find ourselves in today. Either we live to glorify God or we live in the pride of glorifying ourselves.

But if we decide that we will live to glorify God, the first step is humility. This is why both John the Baptist and Jesus called the people to repentance. To come before God, the first step is to renounce that which we have done, the life that we have lived for ourselves, and instead come to him. If we do this, we will be God’s people in Christ. If we do this, he will save us. If we do this, he will fight for us. But we must do the first things first, setting our pride aside and instead looking to the Lord, lifting him up and glorifying him, recognizing him as first over all.