“And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city in Ofra, and all Israel whored after it there. And it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.”
– Judges 8:27
Do you see the danger here? The warning here for every single one of our lives. So just to remember the context, Gideon has by God’s grace been used at this point to bring deliverance to God’s people from the Midianites and God has given him success. And yet here in Judges 8:27, Gideon does something that goes against the word of God. He made an ephod and put it in his city in a way that led Israel into idolatry. So don’t miss the danger and the warning here of how success can just like that so quickly lead to sin. How even being used by God to do something or experiencing God’s grace in a powerful way, we and our sinful nature can just like that, turn around and do that which goes totally against God’s word and lead other people into sin.
Praying for Success Found in God
God, we pray that we would see you as the one who is granting success.
Like success, if we are not careful can lead to sin in all kinds of ways in our lives. And the lesson is guard your heart at all times, at all times. As we read through scripture there, there certainly seem to be emphasis on guarding our hearts at particular times. And Judges chapter eight is clearly a warning to guard our hearts when things are going well and when we experience some sort of success. And so we pray, God help us to guard our hearts always, always, all day long. Today, all day long tomorrow, in every situation and every circumstance. God, we pray you’d help us to guard our hearts against sin and that you would keep us from leading others into sin, particularly, oh God, we pray according to Judges 8.
Judges 8:27 Prays for Humbleness and Humility
When you grant us such favor or success in specific certain ways, God, we pray that you would help us to stay humble in those moments. God, we pray you’d help us to be humble, to grow in humility in those moments and those days, those years, whatever they might be when you are granting favor. God, we pray that we would see you as the one who is granting it, that we would not boast and ourselves.
And God, we pray that you would guard us from wandering from you during those days. Even from what we’ve seen in the language of Judges, from forgetting you during those days. And God help us. Help us to keep our eyes fixed on you in the middle of successes in life. And God, we pray that you would guard us from sin, that we might be susceptible to as a result of any kind of success or favor you grant us in this world. God, we pray this in Jesus name, according to Judges 8:27. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
