Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 5, God Uses Gideon

And, this morning, one of the questions that we're gonna deal with is should we follow Gideon's example? Should we follow Gideon's example? Let's go ahead and pray. And then we're going to jump into the text and.

And wrestle A little bit with this section. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your blessing. On us, just being able to be.

Here in a country where we have the freedom of religion, freedom of speech. That we can gather together not just in our churches, but also in the public square to declare the gospel, and we ask God that that freedom would continue. we ask God that you would, guide us, guide our leaders. we pray, Lord, as we look at your word this morning that You would open it up to our eyes and that you would teach us.

just thank you for the great opportunity to be here on the Lord's Day and all the activities that we have before us today, both in Sunday school, worship, and then the afternoon of lunch and fellowship. we ask that you would just, be with us throughout the, the whole day in Christ's name we pray. Amen. All righty.

Everybody doing alright? Cool. Everybody awake. There's some coffee out there if anybody needs any coffee.

let's, do a little bit of review here. Our curriculum is called Obedience and Disobedience. So we're moving into, we've been talking about Joshua, Judges. We will also eventually get to Samuel and a little bit of Kings.

And so we're going to finish up, our talk about Gideon and that's gonna allow the, the high schoolers and the kids to catch up with us. And so it's providential that we didn't get through all the material last week. So, let me ask a couple of questions of you guys. Oh, that came out really small.

That was huge on mine. what is, what problem is presented in Judges 6? What problem? OK, but what causes That's good.

OK, so we got the Midianites. But what's the What's the problem that causes the Midianites? Yep, Stan. Yeah, so they fell back into idolatry.

Remember, we've got the 2nd commandment. The first commandment is to worship only the Lord. Second commandment, we are to not make any idols. And so here we have another cycle.

In fact, it's the 4th time in the book of Judges that we see God's people going back to worship idols. what did God do about that problem? OK. Does he completely wipe them out?

He, he does, he does do some destruction, that's for sure. Yeah, Robert. OK, cool. So, so they fall into sin.

And not cool, but you guys know what. Yeah, yeah, that's cool, yeah. So, God, first of all, in the, in the cycle that Robert's talking about, he delivers them over to an oppressor. That's, that's the first thing he does in response to their sin is he actually delivers them to the Midianites.

and then there's some things that happened, so how did Israel eventually respond to their oppression? Yeah, they cry out to the Lord. So they go through, anybody remember how many years they're under the oppression of the Midianites? Nobody?

no, it's the perfect number 7. There you go. OK, so it's 7 years underneath the oppression of the Midianites. If you think about it, that's quite a time.

So it'd be like 2010 to now, under the oppression. of the, of the Midianites. Then they cry out to the Lord. who is the angel of the Lord according to our study last week?

OK, Brian says Jesus Christ. How would we come to the conclusion that the angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ? What's aristohani brand? OK, so an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.

OK, good. So Brian's kinda putting some systematics together for us. Clearly, the angel of the Lord is identified as the angel of the Lord, but then in a few verses like verse 14 and 16, it's, it, it calls the angel of the Lord, the Lord, right? And so, and, and the angel of the Lord is speaking in the first person as Yahweh.

So that would indicate there's, there's some visible appearance. Of God, and then when we put our system acts together, could it be, is it the triune God that is appearing or is it one person of the Trinity? And so, theologians have speculated that it could be the second person of the Trinity because we know God is invisible. No God, no man has seen him nor can see Him, but God can choose to manifests himself in a physical or visible way.

So, since God chose to send Christ in the New Testament, by implication, theoretically, he may have sent Christ preincarnate. In the Old Testament, what was the term that Milton used last week for, he quoted somebody. it was Jesus trying on his. His New Testament clothing.

Who said that? You remember who he was quoting? That was a killer quote. So Jesus trying on his New Testament clothes.

So, so by implications, Christ, but we do know it is an appearance of the Lord. What is Gideon's first mission and how did it go? This is all from last week. Say it again.

OK, so spying on the land, they did later go down and, and the, and listened in to a dream. They overheard a dream that gave Midian encouragement. That wasn't his first mission though. Yeah, there you go.

So, destroying this altar to bail, some people call them ball, bail. I was being corrected last night by my daughter, one of my children, and And so, so bail or ball. How did that mission go? destroyed All right All right.

Yeah, so dad steps up for son. It's a very strange scene that, God says, OK, here's your first job. You're gonna get, go destroy your dad's altar to bail. And so Joe Ash is clearly involved in the bail worship.

Either, they, they must have quite some property. Maybe they had a hill and maybe he's just being a good citizen and the bail worshiper say, can we put an altar up on your hill? And he's got a good business and he's like, well, go ahead, put an altar up there. How about an Asra pole?

OK, yeah, go ahead and do that. The wife of bail, go ahead and do that too. And who knows, or maybe Joe Ash was also caught up in the worship or maybe he was caught, caught up in the syncretism. now, did, when did, how many folks did it take to, for Gideon to destroy the altar?

Yeah, so he takes 10 guys. so this is not a little tinker toy. This is a big deal. And what, what's another circumstance that's unique about When Gideon destroyed this altar.

So he does it at night, so he's afraid, right? Of what's gonna happen. Sure enough, probably one of his 10 men rats him out. Next day, everybody's like, who did this?

What was Joa's son. Joash comes out and says, hey, let, let Bale defend himself. If you guys come after my son, you will be dead by morning. So there's some standoff going on here.

who in church history cut down Thor's oak? I couldn't remember the guy last week. I know now, but anybody know who it was? We had mentioned this last week as a by way of comparison.

It was a missionary Anybody know your church history or can you dust off your church history? I was having my Alzheimer's attack last week, so I couldn't remember. It is Boniface in this around 7:20, 722. He's considered, how like Saint Patrick is considered the missionary to Ireland.

Boniface is considered the missionary to the Franks or the Germans, right? his, his initial name is Winfred, but then the Pope pronounces him Boniface, says go into the German lands, pronounce the gospel. Boniface and some of his compatriots, they show up, they start preaching the gospel, but someone's already been there before them and, but has preached Christ but not Christ exclusively. And so they are worshiping Christ in a sense, but they're also worshiping Thor.

They're also worshiping the spirits in the forest. they're worshiping feminine deities, male deities, and Christ is just one of the many deities. And if you guys remember the history. They're out preaching, they're trying to preach the gospel, very little success, and, and then there's this big storm and lightning storm that comes through and everybody's like really worried.

They're like, hey, Thor is mad now and you need to hit the road. And so it's, there's this face-off. It's either they're gonna hit the road and give up or something else has to happen. And so Boniface goes out to this big grove of oak trees.

There's one particular tree that was the tree dedicated to Thor, where all the pagans would dance around this tree and so on and so forth. And Boniface basically took an ax to the tree in front of everybody. And as the story goes, we don't know if this part of it's true because some of these Medieval stories get exaggerated, but you, you don't know. So it's, he, he takes an ax to it, but then a big wind comes and blows it over.

And, and then people are waiting for lightning to come down and strike Boniface. The lightning never comes. Thor just doesn't show up for some reason. And, and so they all, the, the city largely converts to Christ Christianity to Christ, and they cut the tree up and they make a church, a chapel right there in the, in the grove.

And so that's, that's the story of Boniface. Pretty bold dude, yeah. Exactly. It sounds a lot like Elijah.

Yeah, let your gods cut yourself, cry out to your gods more, let your gods. Yeah, exactly. which sets up what you see Gideon doing and Boniface doing. It really contrasts with our general attitude today.

obviously, we're part of, the church is different from the role of Israel. the Lord is not calling the church to go take up swords, but the Lord is calling the church to go out and spread the gospel. And so Boniface does do damage to false gods, not to people. do a little bit of research on Boniface.

I, I was doing this week, and there is hatred and vitriol for guys like Boniface and even Gideon today. For Boniface, it's partly, it's a couple of different things. One is, is the whole idea that's, that's being taught in schools today, the concept that a Christian group of Christian missionaries would go in. To these peaceful Germanic tribes that are just worshiping their own gods and peace and they have their own culture, and then they would come in and say, hey, convert from your false god to Christianity.

That's just anathema to today's idea. And of course they always lay out the story that the Hessians, the Franks, these are just peaceful people who are just loving Thor and the spirits in the trees, and that's not the truth at all. Idolatry always brings bad consequences to a culture. The myth that is being taught today is that you can worship idols and everything's OK.

You can just be happy go lucky with your idolatry and there's no bad consequences. the other reason why people hate Boniface is because he cut down a tree. And in modern, in that, in modern times, that's just anathema to go cut down an oak tree. and so Boniface is not beloved by the modern pagans.

He is not beloved by the modern green people. He is, in fact, I, I've, if you, I don't know if you ever waste time like I do and, and go on YouTube and, and look at the comments, like you'll see videos of Boniface and then look in the comment sections to see what people really think about Boniface. And there's some nasty words, he, he is spreading demonic Christianity and he's a murderer. I've never read anywhere in history of him murdering any Franks or whatever.

not No, there does seem to be an, a real conversion in that area. I think the, the town's Geisler, Geyser, and there is a, a definite move towards Christ exclusively worshiping Christ rather than just as a syncretism of the gods there. It's always tricky when you talk about the medieval period, right? Because there's some confusion.

On, on, on what's going on. But we as Protestants, we have to be careful that we don't just refer to the whole medieval period as Roman Catholic history. No. That's our history as any, as much as it is their history, right?

The good, the bad, and the ugly, the medieval people, medieval Christianity is our history and we can criticize our history, but we need to be careful about not just giving that all up to the Roman Catholics. it was out of the medieval period that people began to recognize, hey, we've, we've allowed false teaching to come into the church. And many people tried to reform the church within it and then eventually people felt like we can't reform it from within, Martin Luther and others said we've got to separate and reform from and out from without.

So all that to say, people like Gideon and Boniface, there are real enemies of Christianity.

They are real enemies of God. And, and God and throughout history, the church throughout history does real battle. let's go ahead and, in your guys' Handout. You guys have a section called Faith and Fleeces.

In your book, I think it's page 41 or in your handout. We're gonna turn there and we're gonna read. Through Judges 6:36. To the end of the chapter.

And this is that famous passage. About Gideon looking for a sign. But I, I wanna set it up by starting actually back in 33. So back in 33, then all the Midianites and Amalekites, the people of the east gathered together and they crossed over and encamped in the valley of Jezreel.

But the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. And this phrase came upon, it means he was clothed with the Spirit of the Lord. one version, I think it was the revised Standard Version, says that he was possessed by the Spirit of the Lord. and he blew the trumpet and the Abbe Iris gathered behind him.

Does anybody remember who the Abbe Iris are? I don't know if we talked about this last week. OK, good. Yeah, so we see him over at the wine press.

So remember, he's from, is Gideon from Mannessa or Ephraim? He's from Manasseh, that's kinda like the big one of the 12 tribes, right, of Israel. But then he's got a clan that he's also a part of and that's the Abi Israelites. And then he says, I'm low on the totem pole, so to speak, of the Abi Israelites.

so he blows the trumpet. They gathered behind him. He sent messengers all through Mannessah, so that's his, big, tribe who were gathered behind him. He also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulom, and Naphtalai, and they came to meet him.

So you've got 4 of the 12 tribes that are gathered together against the Midianites and the Malekites, and this is just the Midianites gathering for their yearly, just let's take everything from Israel fest, right? Kinda like bug's life. We talked about bug's life last week. Here come the big locusts and grasshoppers.

They're gonna take everything away from the ants, and that's what these guys are doing. Yeah. So this is the tailgate party prior to the invasion. Everybody's like, yeah, all right, here we are.

We're gonna go just take everything out of the land. And so, but this time, normally, what do the Israelites normally do according to what we learned last week? Yeah, they go up into the hills. There's caves and dens, and they're still there at the time of writing, right?

At the time the Book of Judges is being written, the, the writer can say, look, up in those hills, those caves, that's where they used to go. so, but here we have Gideon being clothed with or possessed by the Spirit of the Lord. Then verse 36, so Gideon said to God, If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, look, I shall put a fleece on wool, a feast, a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only and it is dry on the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand.

As you have said, And it was so, when he rose early in the morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more. Let me test, I pray just once more with the fleece. Let it now be dry only.

On the fleece, but on the ground, let there be dew, and God did so that night, and it was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground. Who is unfamiliar with this story? This is your first time engaging this story. OK, good.

That's fine. And so you guys understand what's going on here, right? There's a, a piece of wool. Gideon basically is saying, hey, Lord, we're about ready to go to battle.

This is pretty fearsome. We find out over in chapter 8, verse 10, there's 135,000 Midianites and Malekites. It's a lot of people. so he's shaking in his boots a little bit, perhaps.

He says, Lord, if you're really gonna deliver them into my hand, I'm gonna put this piece of wool out on the ground overnight and I want you to make the wool wet from dew, but the, but the ground all around it dry. And that happens. Next day, he says, Lord, please forgive me. I wanna try one more thing.

I'm still, I wanna make sure that you're with me. Can you make it really wet on the ground overnight, but the piece of wool will be dry. Does that and the Lord performs that miracle. And so then he seems to have his sign.

How are we to interpret this passage? How should we think about Gideon? You guys probably read the material that's in our curriculum. Maybe you read the article I sent a couple of weeks ago.

What do you guys think? Let me ask, I guess the first question. What literature is this? OK, so this is historical narrative.

So we always have to remember when we're coming into historical narrative. is every action meant to be didactic? In other words, is every action prescriptive? We should follow the example of every single action carried out in historical narrative.

No, OK, so we know that sometimes in historical narrative you see some really cool things, you're like, that's great. Other times you see the other things you're like, I'm not sure that's not so great. Maybe other things it's neutral. Yeah, Stan, you had something.

To keep God to the test once he sees that yes, there's a God, yes. Yeah to OK, yeah. So Sam saying it's not necessarily bad to have an adolescent level of your faith, right? We see the, excuse me, the disciples, the first time Christ comes along, the disciples, he just says, follow me.

Right? He does say leave everything and follow me, but he doesn't say, oh by the way, when you follow me, there's a good chance that about several years from now, you'll be crucified upside down. It doesn't necessarily tell them that. or you're gonna be hated by all men for my name's sake right out the gate.

You pretty much follow me. so yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Barbara. Yeah, so, why, yeah, how would we say this is not testing the Lord, right?

We do see commands not to test the Lord. So yeah, that's a good question. Let's go, Alison then Stan. me That Right.

Yeah. Yeah, so theoretically, the Lord could have said no, right? Yeah. one's heart.

Gideon wasn't being Right. OK. OK, so yeah, maybe he's not being disrespectful. He just wants to know what the truth is, Joe.

Yeah Yeah Yeah. Yeah, are you sure, Lord, and yeah. Yeah, he's probably got at this point he's got what is it 27 or 32, I forget. Yeah, the 135,000.

You almost have this vision of like Lord of the Rings, you're looking out over the orcs, you're just like, oh my, what in the world? How are we gonna do this? Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah, Zachariah, the angel appears at Zachariah and says, you're, Elizabeth's gonna have a baby, you're gonna name him John.

He says, how am I gonna know this? Well, you're gonna be dumb for until the birth of the baby and then you'll realize that Yeah, I for what happened to him. Yeah, Manoah. You might remember What happened to him or But it's, it is an interesting question that's been debated for really many years, not just in church history, but Jewish history.

Yeah, Gary. Yeah. Yeah. So Gary says, God chose not to punish Gideon.

I think it's a good point. as we're seeing the narrative, I think what we're seeing is, is a very human hero as it were, right? This guy, when the angel first appears to him, where is he? He's he's threshing wheat, hiding in the in the wine press.

Remember we talked about it's a low area, very difficult to do the work down there but he's hiding. The angel of the Lord says, oh mighty man of valor, you will deliver Israel. And he's like, how, how's it gonna be me? Very typical when the Lord calls some of his leaders.

Moses acted the same way. just a, it's, it's a very interesting scene. Throughout scripture, when God calls upon people, they frequently are self-effacing. Lord, I, how, how is it that I'm gonna be able to do this?

And so Gideon has that response, and then he says, hey, let me do something just so I know that this is really you, Lord. I'm gonna go make some food here for a second, stick something in the microwave, come back and let, and, and let's see if this is really the Lord. Actually, in that scene, I'm almost wondering if that isn't pretty wise. Given how many false prophecies, false angels that you see throughout redemptive history, that Gideon wants to know that this really is the Lord telling him that he's going to be this deliverer.

So when you guys remember from last week, the Lord consumes the sacrifice, then what's Gideon's response? I'm gonna die. Oh, I've just seen the Lord and God, then God has to speak more direct divine revelation to him. One of the things that we can miss, overlook is that God is speaking directly to Gideon.

This is not a period of direct divine revelation. Not everybody is having these conversations with God. And so God is revealing direct divine revelation to Gideon. You're gonna go do this, OK.

Now, I want you to go destroy the altar, OK, but I'm gonna do it at night. And then the Lord, then he's about ready to go do his, his business. He says, OK, Lord, can you please give me these signs? And whatever we think about Gideon's request, the Lord accommodates.

The Lord accommodates. He gives, he, he does the miracles that Gideon is asking for. And, and then from there, Gideon goes out and, and with his army. And so I wanna, I wanna lay out.

I guess what would amount to 3 different perspectives of this. Yeah, Wade had something, yeah. All right. Yeah.

Yeah Right. Right. Yeah, That's a great point, really good point. Yeah, Cynthia.

Yeah. Great point. So God looking on the heart, He knows what's really going in there. Wade was talking about the Lord even given another sign that Gideon really didn't ask for.

They go down there listening, over listening, almost is kinda has like this Henry the Fifth feel. He overhears this Dream and there's this big rolling, what is it? A bagel or what is it? It's a, that comes rolling into the, into the, the village and then they say, I had this dream and the God of Israel stood up for them and, and beat us.

yeah, Barbara had another thing. Oh. Quarreling. OK.

Is that when they were, that's when they were like complaining about why do we have to keep eating this manna and I wish we were back in Egypt, and so that was their testing. As you did back there. That's interesting. So, they tested the Lord with their complaining and, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, it seems like the, the heart might be part of the issue here, Nate. Yeah. Right. Right.

That's good. Yeah. So, is it, what's the attitude? Is it like, oh God, you must prove yourself to me, almost like God's got to do my bidding?

Or is it like Gideon, Gideon, some commentators say that Gideon sounds very much like Abraham back in Abraham or in Genesis 18. 0 Lord, do not be angry if I might ask another question. What if there's only 30 righteous? Lord, if I could just ask one more question, I hope you're not angry.

What if there's only 20 righteous? And he seems to be having that type of disposition, even the way he's asking this. There was one other hand, yeah. Oh.

Right. Right. Yeah, that's good. So, beginning of his faith walk.

What was the thing you said at the very beginning of your statement again? That's right. Test the spirits. Yes, we are commanded, especially what Gideon does earlier in the chapter, he's testing to see if this is really the Lord.

That's great. So I think there could be three different views on, on this is, either Gideon is, testing the Lord in a way that's borderline sinful, but God accommodates him, understands his fear and immaturity, and, and goes, goes and accommodates his request, but Gideon should have just trusted what the Lord had said previously. Or another way to view it is Gideon. is, is testing the spirits or just, he's just looking for confidence.

It's not necessarily sinful. It's, he's just looking for a confidence boost and here's the Lord giving direct divine revelation is more than willing to accommodate that confidence boost. I wanna suggest That, we, we may not know exactly, but we do know that God did accommodate his request. And we do know that this is a time where God was giving direct divine special revelation to a guy like Gideon.

And because it is in a narrative passage, here, here's what this passage doesn't say. It doesn't say Gideon requested for this miracle about the fleece. God accommodated Gideon. Therefore, all you Christians for all the rest of the church age, whenever you have any doubts about God's written word, ask God to give you a special miracle sign to know that what God's word says is really right.

So here's an example of what you should never have to do. God, I know that, 10 years ago I got married. But I've fallen out of love with this woman. And there's another woman at work that I really love.

And so, if you will cause that woman to call me from work, in the next 15 minutes, I will know that it's from you for me to divorce my current wife and go be with this other woman at work. Is that what the Lord would call us to do? Is that what he's trying to teach us from the fleece passage? Clearly not.

And yet, you will, I remember chatting with a gal years ago who had fallen back into a relationship with an unbelieving boyfriend. And when I was questioning her on it, she said. Well, why did the Lord bring him into my workplace that day wearing the type of cologne I love and, and brought him into my work at when I was most vulnerable. And to her, either God was unfair in testing her that way, or it was God that brought the unbelieving ex-boyfriend into her work to basically say, I want you to date this guy.

And that's clearly not what the Lord is never going to say, hey, look for a fleece as a way to disobey my written word. The other thing we need to remember is, is this is a time when the written word was not available. God is giving special divine revelation to his deliverers and prophets, not to everybody in Israel, but today, we've got his written word right here. And there's so much right here that we can obey and give to our children.

when it comes to other questions about, what school should you go to or what job should you take. There's lots of other wisdom on the pages of scripture like getting wisdom from your church, talking, how would the Lord guide you when, as you're talking to your church leadership, if you're married, are you consulting with your husband or wife? If you're a child, are you consulting with your parents? are you walking in obedience to the Lord in all other known areas?

delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. There's lots of places we can discern the wisdom of the Lord. In my opinion, from a New Testament Christian perspective, we have to be very careful about laying out our fleece, so to speak, because how do whether, the devil is a being in the universe too, and we are all prone to deception. The Bible, the New Testament tells us that.

And, I've, I've, I, I've had people tell me things like, I. I, I, I was thinking about whether I should take this job over in this other state and then All of a sudden, like that guy called me and said, hey, would you like to take this job to this other state? And I was just thinking about it. And then he said he was gonna offer me more money and I was just thinking we need more money.

And then, my favorite city in Arizona is Phoenix, and he said, it's gonna be in Phoenix. I'm like, whoa, is this the will of the Lord or what? I was just thinking about that. And then they, but they didn't consult with their wife.

They're not talking to their Christian friends. They don't talk to their care group leader or anybody at their church. All of a sudden they show up and they announce to everybody, guess what? We're all moving to Phoenix.

The Lord showed me. Oh yeah, what church you're gonna be going to there? Oh, I don't know. I'm sure there's some good churches there.

We'll find one. There's the other principles. Any, any other thoughts that you guys, so for me, when I look at the story of Gideon, I see God in His love sharing divine, direct divine revelation with a guy who's, who's gonna do some pretty amazing things, but it's probably still on his training wheel, so to speak, and God's coming alongside of him. And giving him an encouragement with this direct divine revelation stuff in an era where there is no written word for him to refer to.

And but this is in a historical narrative is and and it's, it should be something that encourages us that God cares about His people and He guides them, but I don't know that it's here so that we could all do our own little fleece experiments. That's, that's my view. What do you guys think of that? And the other thing I'm thinking.

Right now, it's all about God's glory. it pleased God to do these things to show His glory, so he would be glorified, so there would be no doubt, that he was the one that was orchestrating all of this. And what was to come after it, and. Glorified by that.

He was glorified at the time and he's glorified in our reading. Great. Yeah, so God is ultimately getting the glory. He's setting all this stuff up, so he'll get the glory.

He is the ultimate hero in this narrative. Yeah, Nate. Yeah, I think, situational, how did you call it there? I like that phrase.

Situational revelation Yeah, I would say. like, in today's era, in this church age, all the revelation that God wants us to have is in the Bible. all the special revelation is right here. but it is the Bible, the special revelation in the Bible that does point us to other factors that will help us get wise wisdom for life.

He's put us in relationships with people, parents, pastors. Christian friends, multitude of counselors type stuff, and, and so as we apply those biblical principles and then we know the overarching theme that God has guides us in His providence and His love, that we can expect to see God guide us throughout our lifetimes, but I don't think for me, like when, when Katie and I decided when we went to move up north to go to seminary and move up to do youth ministry up in Lebeck, I never got divine special revelation.

There were circumstances that occurred that opened up that opportunity and I could have said, whoa, this opportunity has fallen in my lap. This must be the will of the Lord.

And, and maybe that it would have been, but in that situation, my wife and I prayed, we consulted with one another, we went to our elders. We said, especially because this was having to do with pastoral ministry, first of all, does Cornerstone think I'm qualified to one day be a pastor, to go to seminary? The elder said, yes, we see the Lord's hand on you. Yes, we are behind you, and we affirm your move up north, even to this church called Labeck Community Church.

And back at Linden Street, they laid hands on Katie and I and they sent us up north. So, when we went up there, we hit some tough times, but I'll get, I'll tell you what we didn't question. We didn't say, oh no, we made this decision all by ourselves. What have we done?

Or maybe we missed the will of the Lord. If I would have just gone by, if we'd have just gone by our heart and just said, oh, these circumstances have opened up and, and I think we're following our heart. And then we hit some of those tough times, we would have been like, oh. Maybe maybe we should have talked to Pastor Milton on this.

But the fact that it wasn't just us, but Cornerstone sent us up there, I'll tell you, that was such a relief when we hit trials and difficulties. And eventually the Lord brought us back to Cornerstone in '98 and it was just very, we, there's times where we look back and there, there's a, there's some sorrow that we have. We left the church up north where some kids crashed in their faith. We weren't ready to leave, but the Lord clearly brought us back through the elders of both churches.

And, and so we, we, we can trust the Lord that that was his will. And then as soon as I got back, I found out I had cancer and I had medical insurance and so the circumstances clearly lined up, but it was our leadership that, that we were trusting that helped guide us. And so for me, that's one of the, from a New Testament perspective, it's one of the reasons, one of the reasons why I think it's so important for Christians to be connected to a local church underneath leadership that they can trust.

Doesn't mean your leaders are perfect, but that you are willing to arrange yourself underneath your leaders and say, these are the leaders that God has given me.

I'm the leader of my home, but I'm not an island. I'm not like the I'm not some dictator of my home. I, I'm underneath the leaders of Cornerstone and my home is underneath. This leadership and that has, that has been a blessing to our family for years.

That, does that make sense? Yeah, Wade Yeah Yeah Yes. Yeah. Yeah That's great.

There was some 37 Yeah, so Wade is making reference to Psalm 375. Commit your ways to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. See, a lot of times on those, these circumstantial things, we don't necessarily know what to do. We're, we're crying out to the Lord, we're getting counsel, and then sometimes you just have to make a decision.

And even in that, I was studying this week on the concept of waiting on the Lord. What does that really mean? Cause we're gonna sing about this morning and The idea of waiting on the Lord is really to rest yourself underneath the providential care of God and realize that his, both his decisions and his timing are best. Even if it, we can't understand why it worked the way it did.

And so many of these decisions don't always turn out. It's not always, we don't always have like Gideon, God just appearing in the night and saying, go do this. We have His word and then he's calling us to use wisdom. And even then, as, as you just look throughout the pages of scriptures, sometimes things don't work the way you thought they were gonna work and yet we're called to wait upon the Lord, right?

Ultimately trust in his decisions, His providence, and his timing. And, And that's a tough lesson cause, sometimes you think you'd, you'd make a decision that you thought was the right decision. It looked like you were using all wisdom and it just doesn't work out. And that's just part of, that's part of God's providence as well.

and there's a lot of folks in our church that have been looking for work and jobs and And they they've tried to do this and that and it's been very difficult, for several years. We do know that the Lord is commanding to work, right? For our, our, our men need to work, take care of their households. Sometimes you go out there, and I know 11 couple, the guy was out there just beating the pavement every single day, just doing what he could to provide for his family.

He's, he's a middle-aged man and just couldn't find anything. So eventually, his wife just had to go out and apply and she got hired right away. And that's not the way they wanted it, but it's the way it had to be, it's just the way the The cookie crumbles. Hey, I just wanna say real quick, we all might need to get together.

Afterwards because my husband The lobby and Oh So John says, don't get crazy. He is the dictator of his home. So that's Uncle John. OK, that's, that's cool.

Yeah, proceed with caution. I saw the other Yeah Bigger, there's a bigger gig ahead of me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah Gibeonites to deceive them and say, oh, we came from. Yeah, the Gibeonites, yeah. Yeah.

Another reason why the Bible Yeah, it's just so human. And here's the Lord just entering, accommodating Himself to this very human situation. Yeah. Yeah, that whole story where like God commands Israel to go in and take the land, they come back, they're freaked out.

They know, we're not gonna do it. So then God says, OK, you're gonna die in the wilderness. They say, OK, we'll go do it now, and he says, no, don't do it now because the Lord's not with you. They go in and they get just reamed, right?

well, let's, let's see if we can do a little bit of chapter 7 before we're done. We got about 5 minutes. You guys, most of you guys probably know. The big idea, but let's read through it and make a few comments starting in Oh, let's start in verse 2 of chapter 7, and the Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many.

For me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against me seeing my own hand has saved me. Now, therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people saying, whoever is fearful and afraid, let them turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead, and 22,000 people returned and 10,000 remained. So, 22,000 people are afraid. This actually has precedent.

I think it's Deuteronomy 20:8. Somebody can look that up for me if you, if I got it right. Where, the Lord would say, hey, if people are afraid, don't make them go into battle. they'll actually reduce the morale of the other troops.

Is that it? 208? Wow, I'm so impressed. So verse 4, but the Lord said to Gideon, the people are still too many.

Bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Then it will be that of whom I say to you, this one will go with you, the same shall go with you, and of him, I say to you, this one shall not go with you, the same shall not go. So he brought the people down to the water, and the Lord said to Gideon, OK, so the, the Lord doesn't really tell him in advance, here's gonna be the test, right? He just says, take him down to the water.

I got a feeling that if the Lord would have told him the test in advance, Gideon would have been like, what are you talking about, Lord? But he just says, take him down in the water. so then in the middle of verse 5, everyone who laps from the water with his tongue as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.

Now, I read like this long journal article this week trying to figure out what in the world is going on here. And by the end of the journal article, I discovered that throughout church history and Jewish history, everybody basically comes down to this bottom line. What in the world is going on here? There's various views, there's all kinds of views on even the Hebrew here.

Some people are suggesting the Hebrew is wrong. There's no textual evidence, but they try to move phrases around because one commentator says The ones lapping the water should be the ones that get down and do the, the push-up drink, right? That should be the lappers. But no, it's the ones who get down and do the push-up.

They're the ones that are drinking like a horse. And the ones that are lapping are the ones that take their hands cupped and then lap the water out of their hands, and everybody's just like, Why would you do that? Why would anybody do that? And so, so then some people say this must be just an idiom.

it's not meant to be taken literally. In fact, one guy saw somebody in the Middle East somewhere, water was flowing out of a fountain or spigot and he was doing this type of thing. And getting water in his mouth with his hand and so they think maybe these 300 soldiers were cupping the water and throwing it into their mouths really fast, like my hand would be the tongue of a dog. Some people say, Josephus says, the ones that are getting down like this and cupping their hands are the cowards because they're keeping their eyes up because they're afraid.

Other people say, no, it's the real wise soldiers that are getting down and looking up because they're staying positioned and ready to fight. What nobody really seems to deal with, whatever the method means, why are there only 300, 3% of the soldiers end up doing the cupping, lapping thing. If it was the really, wise thing to not get down on your belly, wouldn't you think it be half and half or, these are probably well-trained soldiers. So I don't know.

But the Lord, you would never say, hey, let's get a group of special ops. And let's get all those that lick the water like a dog. I just, you would never come up with that. And so this is just pure speculation.

My wife thinks it's poppycock, so that tells you right out the gate. actually, both my wife and my daughter, I shared my viewpoint and they're like, I don't know, Dad, that's a stretch. But if we take this literally, there are people cupping water, bringing it up to their mouth and licking it like a dog. I, my speculation is that out of these 10,000 soldiers, there's some of them, there's a few of them that have been in battle one too many times and probably took a couple of licks on the head and there's just something wrong with them.

Maybe they've got some eyes that are looking wrong directions, maybe they've had massive concussions in battle, and so there are people that are just What, and I say this in, in, in the literal sense of the term, they are idiots, right? They just, something's wrong with them and so God takes the 3% of the 10,000 that something is really physically wrong with them, so wrong with them that they're lapping their water like dogs and says, yep, I'm gonna deliver Israel out of their hands.

And so you really have a motley crew of 300 people that nobody would want to go into battle with. That's my theory, tar and feather me.

What do you guys think? Trumpets, yes. Yeah, these are maybe special ops. I'm just trying to, it's either an idiom, but if it's just an idiom for drinking water hastily, why are there only 300 people out of 10,000 drinking water hastily?

Some people say it just means drinking fast. Why would that that would, it would seem like it'd be more of a fifty-fifty split, wouldn't it. Right now there are some translations, I think it's the new revised Standard or Rene Re Revised Standard. They try to go with these Hebrew scholars that say basically the Hebrew text is wrong and they move words around.

I, I'm not in favor of with no textual evidence whatsoever. I'm not in favor of just moving words around because we think that the text is wrong. so anyway, it is a problem. People have not agreed on it since at least Josephus and back, but what, what's clear is that God chooses to deliver Israel with only 300 people, and say it again.

That's the point. That's the points the left hand is toilet paper. That's the other thing I was thinking about. Well, in the, yeah, even to this day in the Middle East when you go to the restroom you use your left hand and so it could be that they're drinking water out of the right hand and they're lapping it up.

it's just hard to, hard to tell. You eat with your right, you go to the restroom with your left, even to this day that's true. There's no way. Yeah.

It seems like the 300 that are chosen, and I, there's some people think that they're 300 really studly soldiers. I think it's 300 motley crew that Gideon would look around and be like, well, I'm sure glad I did that fleece cause We're not winning any battles with these guys. And so, and then the strategy actually is interesting because remember back in Jericho, there was only 7 trumpeters that trumpeted around Jericho and then the wall, was it 7? 7 priests.

So they walk around and then they trumpet. And so, one commentator is saying the Midianites would have associated one trumpet with several 100 maybe 1000 soldiers. So to be surrounded by 300 trumpeters, all of them trumpeting at the same time, was probably a freaky experience. In the middle of the night, there's a good chance that they thought that there was 300,000 soldiers, plus the Lord obviously is doing his little thing that he likes to do.

And so they all turned their swords on one another and we'll have to finish this up. Then they take off running. Then everybody who had left rejoined. You have reinforcements now.

It's not like the 300 were running these guys down. If you look at the text carefully, the reinforcements come in, they run them down. They eventually, run him off the hills, kill many of them, get these two big kings. One is like called the literal translation of his name is Wolf, and the other one is, I forget, Wolf and something.

And so they tracked down these kings and, and the Lord, gives them peace for many years. we won't talk about at this point, some of the challenges that Gideon faced at the end of his life. Most good Hollywood stories say the end, and everybody rides off into the sunset. In the Bible, it's real human stories where Gideon leads the group and they have lots of glory and success for a while.

And then there's some problems towards the end of his life. Any final questions, comments, criticisms, or concerns you guys have? It's about the condition of the heart, not whether they're testing or not. Yes.

We're told to try and see if tithing doesn't work. That's right. I like that. Yeah, so the condition, that's a good theme that stand's given us.

So it's a condition of the heart. We're called to, yeah, try God, at the same time not test God. we were sitting around last night as a family having devotions and, Katie just said, man, I just love the Old Testament. And there's just so much good stuff in the Old Testament, so many real human stories, God entering into history, doing His will.

again, this is a period of darkness in some senses. There's not a lot of information. Remember when we set this whole thing up, Midianite worship or Canaanite worship was the number one religion. But now we've got this time, I think it's about 40 years now of peace and people are worshiping the Lord, and then it's gonna Crash again, we'll, we'll hit the next judge.

Ends with everybody did that. Yeah, it's still, still going on. All right, let's go ahead and pray if you guys, oh yeah, Brian. Remind Katie of Romans 15:4, yeah, these things were given for our instruction.

Yeah. Katie, like, she, I made this deal last year that whoever reads through the whole Bible gets $300 by the end of the year. And Katie won her $300 like in December. And I was like, well, I was thinking I, I kept threatening her I was gonna pull out a couple pages of Jude from her Bible and come back and say, oh, you didn't read the all of Jude, but she just loved reading through the Old Testament and Judges is just great.

I don't, I don't know if you've ever sat down and just read through Judges in like a couple sittings. It's just fantastic reading. It's just great. I, I know we're over.

Last thing, that story of, Boniface, if you wanna read a, a really killer version of that, there's a book series called History Lives, written by the Winthros, Winthros. And the particular book that this story is in is called Monks and Mystics, and you might be like, oh, I don't want to read about monks and mystics, but it's just, it's a little history of the medieval church, and these folks, this is a husband and wife team that worked down at Westminster. They are such good writers and they do great research and, but they make it, it's like little historical stories, there are many historical novels, novelettes, and the one on Boniface is just Fantastic.

It's called Monks and Mystics.

The series is called History Lives. It's written for like teenagers, which is probably why I like it. But it's, it's just they're very good writers and they really do bring this stuff to life. let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for, you're the ultimate hero of redemptive history. We see you, we love just seeing how you worked with Gideon, just bringing him along and building his confidence. thank you for using him. We know that there are real enemies in this world, the devil, the flesh, the world, and yet you have called us to love our enemies.

you are the judge and so we leave judgment to you. We pray, Father, that we'll be able to go out with the gospel, see many of your enemies come to know you and become your friends. we pray, Father, that these, this historical information that we're reading about would be a great boon to our souls. we pray, Father, you be glorified and lifted up the rest of this day of worship in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.