You know why? Because they can't give other people's hostility, and they just can't eradicate all the stress. But as far as the Hebrew's understanding of peace was concerned, it had nothing to do with the absence of hostility or the eradication of stress. The idea of peace, as far as they were concerned, was that things are in order. In fact, the bishop of Hippo, Augustine, defined peace as the tranquility of order. What Gideon is saying is this: "I am going to find myself in an extremely hostile situation, I'm going to be in all kinds of hostilities, there's going to be incredible stress in my life, but one thing I know, it is this: In all my weakness, I'll abandon myself to who the Lord is. He will be with me, and because He is with me, things will be in order! Because things will be in order, I can go into this hostility. I can go into this stress. I can go into this tension with that deep-rooted tranquility of order in my life."

This idea spills over into the New Testament. You remember on one occasion the Lord Jesus was talking to His disciples, and He was very blunt with them, He said, "In the world, you will have trouble." That was encouraging wasn't it? "In the world, you will have trouble." But then He said, "In Me, you will have peace."

Now, I can imagine one of the disciples saying to Jesus, "Excuse me, Master, would You clarify that for me?"

"Yes, what do you need clarified?"

"You just said, 'In the world we will have trouble.'"

"Right!"

"But then You said in You we will have peace!" "Well, are we going to have trouble or are we going to have peace?"

And Jesus said, "Yes!" Because, you see, peace is not the absence of trouble! Peace is the deep-rooted tranquility of order in the midst of your trouble, because you know that you're going in the strength that you have, which isn't much, but He is with you in the midst of the trouble. Therein lies the key!

So Gideon is beginning to turn a corner. He is no longer the despondent Gideon; he is now the dependent Gideon, and he builds an altar. The Lord then says to him, "All right Gideon, this is what I want you to do." "I want you to go and knock down the altar that your Dad has built to Baal."

Baal was the god of the local people, he was the antithesis of all that Jehovah stood for. This was how far the children of Israel had declined in their spirituality in those days. They were actually worshiping Baal rather than the Lord.

Gideon's father, Joash, had built an altar to Baal. They were also worshiping the goddess Asherah, the goddess of the Phoenicians and the Syrians.

So this is what the Lord said to Gideon. He said, "You are going to break down the altar to Baal. You're going to chop down the Asherah pole. Then you're going to get your father's prize bull and you're going to build a new altar to me, Jehovah Is Peace, or Shalom. You're going to chop up the Asherah pole, and that will be the wood for the altar, and you're going to kill your father's prize bull as a burnt offering before me."