The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E53 - Gideon

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Hey, church family, it is Devo time. If you got your Bible, go to Judges Chapter 6. Judges Chapter 6. We are going to look at the events of the life of a man named Gideon. Maybe you know of him. Maybe not. But we're just going to dive right in. And part of what I want to look at, I think Pastor Todd said this a couple weeks ago when

some of the campus pastors did the Divos, by the way, big thank you to those guys, right? They were super good. is that every single page of scripture points to Jesus. And so when we see heroes, like in the book of judges, the judges that came to help Israel are not the hero. They are pointing to the greater judge, the greater hero's name is Jesus. And so in the book of judges, what's happened is that Joshua is dead. They've moved into the promised land.

He's gone. And then what begins to happen is really, really sad, is that Joshua gathers the nation of Israel together. And he says, choose for this day, whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You flip over two pages, the second book of judges, the second chapter of judges, and one of the saddest verses in the whole Bible, and maybe we'll spend, maybe we'll do a divil on this sometime. And it says, and that generation went to be with their fathers. That means they died. And another generation came up behind

them, and they neither knew the Lord or the works of his mighty hands. And then one of the phrases that keeps coming through the book of judges is, and they did what was right in their own eyes. So they've taken their eyes off the Lord, they've done what's right in their own eyes. And the whole book of judges is this repeating cycle of running from God, feeling the effects of that. When you get to the end of yourself,

basically turning back to God, crying out to him, and then by his grace, he sends them a leader, or what they call a judge, to help them, and then it just happens over and over and over and over. And lest you look down on the people of Israel and say, you fools, how could you go through that cycle over and over and over? I would just invite you to look in the mirror because I don't know about you,

but that is also the story of my life. I'm very confident in the Lord. I take my eyes off of him. I pay the price. I cry out to him, and he relentlessly pursues his rebellious children like me over and over and over. So that's the context. And then in Judges chapter 6, the first 10 verses, we find out that the Midianites are oppressing Israel.

The Midianite army was huge. Israel's army was pretty good, but they're getting worked because of their disobedience. God has taken his hand in favor off of them. So verse 11 says this, Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the Terribith at Ophra, which belonged to Joash, the Abbey Israel. while his son Gideon was beating out the wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites. Now, why would you, why would you beat out the wheat in the wine press?

Normally, this would be the kind of thing that you would do out in the field. And this is how you separate the wheat from the tears. So you kind of chop it all up, you throw it up on the air, the chaff gets blown away, and then you have the kernels that's like what you're looking for. And so normally, again, you do it out of the air. where the wind blows, but he's afraid. And so he's doing this job, but he's doing it in fear. He's doing it in isolation. He's hiding inside a wine press so that nobody will see him. And then look what happens. So while he's in there, hidden away, afraid and isolated,

not thinking much about himself, verse 12, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, oh mighty man of valor. Now, let's be honest. Is Gideon at this point in his life a mighty man of valor? No, no. This is why I say all the time, no one gets to define you. Don't let this world define you.

That you are not the color of your skin, you're not your ethnicity, you're not your habits, you're not your addiction, you're not your marital status, you're not your divorce, you're not your job, you're not your successes, you're not your sin, you're not the things that you struggle with over and over and over, you're not the names that your parents called you, you're not the names that your teachers and coaches called you. You are not what this world tells you you are. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. And the angel of the Lord shows up to this guy when he doesn't have a whole lot of self-confidence.

And self-confidence is overrated. You got to be a lot of. a lot of self-confidence, and guess what, one day, when things don't go your way, you'll have a lot of self-doubt because self-doubt is just the shadow of self-confidence. What's going to happen in the life of Gideon is he's not going to believe in himself. He's going to believe in what God says about himself. He looks at him and notice, it says, the Lord is with you, oh, mighty man of valor. The reason he can call him a mighty man of valor is because the Lord is with him. It does not go the other way around.

It's not like the Lord looked over all the earth and he found the biggest and the strongest and the bravest and he says, oh, mighty man of valor, can the Lord join you? That is not how it works. It goes the other way. His first statement is, the Lord is with you. So that he can say the second part, oh, mighty man of valor.

If you were a believer in Jesus Christ, you have an advantage over to Gideon. Do you know why? because the Lord is not just with you, like riding in the car with you or hovering over your vehicle as you pray for traveling mercies, but literally, if you were in Christ,

the spirit of God lives in you, so the Lord is in you. So don't let this world tell you who you are, O mighty man and woman of valor. You are bought and paid for adopted co-air son of the most high God. The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.

And Gideon said to him, please, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian. Gideon is asking the same question. A bunch of people are asking right now. All right, God, if you love us and you're for us and you're with us, then why? as our world falling apart. But you see, we don't put our faith in our circumstances. We don't measure God's love towards us on how well our life is going. We measure God's love

for us in his ultimate sacrifice for us that God so loved you and me. God so loved the world that he sent. He's the only begotten son to die on a cross, to pay for our sin. And the Bible says in Romans 5-8 that God demonstrated his love for us in this, that while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us. So, when your circumstances seem to be out of control, then you fix your eyes on

the cross of Jesus Christ as God's ultimate declaration of his love for you and me, not on our circumstances. And the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian, do not I send

you. In other words, Gideon says, all right, God, if you are with us and if you are for us, then help me understand why this world is so jacked up. What, God, what are you going to do about it? And God, what Gideon? I came here to ask you the same thing. You see, there are some people that can make excuses and some people can make a difference. I don't know anybody that's good at both. So if there is something in this world, and there are plenty to choose from right now, and you would want to look at God and say, God, help me understand how this atrocity could be a reality in your world,

then that could be the spirit of God nudging you saying, well, then what are you going to do about it? Now, look, I am not a hero by any stretch of the imagination. But when I was on a mission trip, in seminary, I lived in Kenya, Africa for the summer, and that the childhood poverty there was overwhelming to me. I mean, it was absolutely overwhelming. I couldn't reconcile it.

I couldn't reconcile it with a good loving God who was in charge of the rain. Why wouldn't he make it rain right here in Kenya so that they could grow crops and they could have food? And I cried out to God and cried out to God, God, why don't you do something? Why don't you do something? Why don't you do something? And then years later, when I got married, and Gretchen walked up to the very very,

first Compassion International table that we'd ever seen. And she grabbed a packet and said, why don't we sponsor this kid? I felt like God was saying, yeah, Jobie, you've been praying. Why don't you do something? So what if you were the something that I want to do? A part of the reason that our church has sponsored 10,000 kids is because God led us, as leadership, God led me to look at the places that bothered me. internally, and then God says, what if that thing that is bothering you about the condition of

this world is actually his prompting for you to do something about it? And so he says, go, Gideon. If you got a problem with the Midianites, I am sending you. Verse 15. And he said to him, please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manessa, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said to him, but I will be with you. And, you shall strike the Medianites as one man. And he said to him, if now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speaks to me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before

you. And he said, I will stay till your return. Notice that when Gideon has a hard time getting his mind around God's call, in his life, God's response to Gideon is not how awesome Gideon is. At no point does God lean into Gideon and be like, no, bro, I got you. I created you and you've got this. You're smart enough and you're super good with a sword and you're going to be a good leader. And if you just try hard enough and if you just set your mind to it, then you can accomplish anything. That's not what he tells him. He simply tells him this. The Lord said, I will be with you.

the reason that you can trust that God will be faithful is because God's presence with you will never, ever leave. You see, the Bible says this. First Peter says that His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. What does that mean? That means that God has given you everything you need to, to accomplish everything that he has called you to accomplish. Listen, church family, I promise you, I feel in over my head all the time.

In fact, maybe the only time I feel really good in my job and my role as the lead pastor is when I open the Bible and say, hey, let me teach this. I've been doing this for 27 years, okay? I've got degrees in it, and I love the Word of God, and I feel pretty good about trying to explain God's word to God's people. A big reason is because my job is to expose you to the Bible, but the Spirit of God exposes the Bible to you. But man, when we started this church eight years ago,

and then when we moved to our second campus at Bay Meadows, and then we begin to add campus after campus after campus, and then we've moved into prisons, and now we're online all over the world. And I have to make strategic decisions for our church about what's next. Now I have an incredible board and an incredible staff, but there are so many times where I feel just like Gideon does, and I know you do too, and you say,

God, how could you pick me? Because I'm the least of the least of the least. Like he says he is the least in his clan. Look, man, my clan didn't grow up in church. And that his tribe is the least. I come from the tribe of Dylan. You kidding me? And yet, my confidence is not in my heritage.

my confidence is not in my ability. My confidence is not in my circumstances. My confidence is in God's call in my life. And the same is true of you. That's not just true of me because I work here at church. The same is true of you. There is no sacred, secular divide when it comes to vocation.

That Adam and Eve were given this mandate to subdue and cultivate. That God called them to help co-create with him to rearrange the raw goods that he had provided for human flourishing, and you do that too. Whether you're a doctor or a lawyer or a construction worker or a mom, a teacher, whatever it is, what is God calling you to do? Is there a thing in your life that God is calling you to do that is so much bigger than you that you know, unless God shows up with you, it would be impossible to accomplish? Well, that's the story of Givian.

he's afraid he's hiding away God comes up tells him who he is in God's eyes God says I promise I'll be with you and then the next thing Gideon's going to do is Gideon's going to worship the Lord that's how we should always respond when our Heavenly Father would love us enough to invite us into the spreading of his kingdom

then he's going to call him to tear down the idols amongst the people of God and he does that then he whittles Gideon's army all the way down to only 300 men and sends them into an impossible fight. And when you and I face an impossible situation, then that is the perfect setup for God to do what only God can do. Do you know why?

Because if the tomb is empty, anything is possible. Anything like even God using nobody's like me and you to tell everybody about the somebody that wants to save me. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we love you because you love us first. we thank you that though you don't need us to accomplish your will, you willingly and willfully choose us as your sons and daughters to do great things in this world, not for our namesake, but for your namesake.

God, I pray for the men and women right now, the students right now, that you have spoken to in the past, but they ignored your call. Lord, I pray that you would meet them once again in the wine press as they're hiding away. and Lord, you would speak courage in them through the blood of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. And God, I pray that you would raise up men and women from the church of 1122 to do the things that you have called us to do and that it would all be worshiped to you, we prayed in Jesus' name.