That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 18: Seduced To Lead

Day 18: Seduced To Lead

---------------------------------------

1. Sincerely Wrong Majorities

It has been said, and rightly too, that the majority is not always right. Perhaps we should also add that sincerity, no matter how passionate, is not an infallible measure of truth. The fields of history are scattered with the bones of several who were very sincere, yet very wrong.

It was in the papers the other day: eight hungry children of an absent jobless father in Warri, Delta State of Nigeria, wailed until their confused stepmother ran across to a nearby farm to uproot cassavas with which she made them an appeasing meal. Little did she know that she had harvested poisonous roots, which she never properly processed. Six of the children were dead before anyone knew what the matter was. She was sincere, but she was sincerely wrong; tragically wrong.

Now make a majority out of the sincerely wrong, and we would say again that sincerity plus majority does not also guarantee veracity.

2. Gideon: The Idolated Deliverer

The Bible tells the sad story of an inconspicuous young man, Gideon, who rose from the shreds of fear to the podium of national heroism, but whose robes of honour, at last, were polluted with the abominable stench of idolatry. He was the victim of a sincere but wrong majority.

Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian (Judges 8:22).

The Midianites had brutally oppressed the Israelites for several years, until they were forced to return to their abandoned God. In response to their penitent cry, God, their God, sent an angel to the crumpled Gideon where he bunkered frightfully from the marauding Midianites. The angel said to him, "Go… and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? (Judges 6:14).

That was the blueprint of his call. He was truly "sent" by God, to "deliver" his people from the lingering yoke of the Midianites. But notice that nothing was said to him about also becoming the king of the people he shall have delivered from bondage. The call to rule was the opinion of "the men of Israel," not the God of Israel.

Very unfortunately, Gideon’s response to the popular call to leadership produced a scourge of idolatry upon the land (Judges 8:22-27). He said he would not be their king, but he exercised the powers thereof, in demanding from them a contribution of golden earrings. With those he made an ephod (an "ornamental idol," according to the Moffat translation, or a "golden mantle," according to Knox), which became an idol, "and ALL ISRAEL went thither a whoring after it" (v.27). They prostituted themselves spiritually to it in worship.

The rest of the verse tells us that this "ornamental idol," this "golden mantle," this religious "ephod" became a snare not only to Israel but also "unto Gideon, and to his [innocent] household." According to the Knox translation, it led "to the ruin of Gedeon and his race."

That a person was the instrument of divine deliverance yesterday does not confer on that person the divine mandate for leadership. That was the error of "the men of Israel"; and the unsuspecting, undiscerning promising starter ruined his fortunes, and those his entire future "race," by that popular but mistaken step. He had not learned from the error of Aaron his ancestor.

3. Aaron: Called to the Altar, not the Throne

Aaron was a good priest, not a good leader. That he was a good priest did not also make him a good leader. The people did not know that. He was called to serve at the altar, not the throne. After a few years of being a successful priest, he strayed from his guaranteed priestly quarters into the strange territory of leadership, seduced by a wrong majority that may have been sincere. His sin was the reverse of Uzziah’s, the very successful king of Judah, who caught abominable leprosy trying to venture also into the priesthood (2 Chronicles 26:15-21).