True faith in God needs to be seen first in the family before it’s seen on the field of battle.
Anticipating coming blessing, Gideon named the altar “The-Lord-Is-Peace” (Jdg 6:24). But battles must be fought before peace is secured. Israel had been languishing in their sin for seven years. But once they turned to the Lord, He moved swiftly into action. There was no time to waste. With Gideon enlisted, “it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him…” (v 25). Gideon’s first mission was not against the Midianites, but against the Israelites; not against strangers, but against his own father’s house. An altar to the Lord must be built in his own backyard, but another altar was already there, to Baal. It had to go. There is only room for one. “So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night” (v 27). We can see that the key ingredient in courage is not the absence of fear but the presence of God. Down went Baal’s altar! Down went the asherah, or carved image, and the grove in which it stood! Up went Jehovah’s altar! And up went the offering of “the second bull of seven years old” (v 25), one the townsfolk seem to have been fattening up to offer to Baal, over the same seven years they were under bondage to Midian! No wonder they were furious in the morning when they found their town “Open For Business Under New Management.” But when they came to lynch Gideon, it dawned on his father that something was amiss. Baal hadn’t spoken a word in protest! “If he is a god, let him plead for himself” (v 31) said Joash. Thus Gideon (meaning “tree feller”), in chopping down the groves, became Jerubbaal, “let Baal plead.” When Baal had the chance—crickets!