Holy Spirit helps us in WAR!

June 30th 2024

Series: Who is the Holy Spirit?

Sermon Title: Holy Spirit helps us in WAR!

Holy Spirit delivers us – Part 1

Topic: Journey to help us learn who the Holy Spirit was, is, and will always be and how the Holy Spirit is active in our lives today.

Key Passages: Judges 3:10, 6:34

Topic: Holy Spirit, Deliverance

Sermon Blurb: In today’s message, we will see how the Holy Spirit can help us go to war with things that keep us from God’s best plan.

***1st week ODD months add communion & target message at 15 pages.

***1st week EVEN months add space for dedication, baptism, or ministry highlight & target message at 15 pages.

***Green in sermons means illustration, something we are looking for a response from, and/or a picture that goes on the screens.

***Yellow means what is yellow will be on the screens and in the handout.

Dedication, Baptism, or Ministry Highlight (1st Sunday even months):

Sermon:

Hello Family Church!

Family Moment –

Start with something personal from your family life recently to help people get to know you.

Celebrate salvation / re-dedications / baptisms last week.

Those of you newer to Family Church, we are SUPER happy you are with us today!

We are in a series taking a DEEP dive into who the Holy Spirit was, is, and will always be.

How God the Father.

The Son Jesus.

The Holy Spirit….

How they are ALL the SAME…

And how they are ALL different…

PAUSE

We are in the process of reading the Old Testament and examining how the Holy Spirit was active there.

We have already examined the role of the Holy Spirit in the first five books of the Bible, and today, we move on to the book of Judges.

You might wonder why we are skipping over the book of Joshua…

Well, it is because in that book, God does work through Joshua but not in a way that directly references the Holy Spirit, and that is what we are studying in this series.

PAUSE

The book of Judges also contains over 1/3 of ALL the references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament historical books.

You can see those locations in your notes and on the screens for further reading.

Holy Spirit in Judges: Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6

Today, we will focus on Judges 3 because it gives a good overview of the typical pattern in the entire book of Judges….

PAUSE

Grab your Bible and open it up to

Judges 3

And by the way…..

New Person Bible Connection:

If you do not have a Bible, that is ok!

After service, we will give you an AMAZING leather-bound study Bible!

Just go to ADD YOUR CAMPUS PLACE and get one for FREE!!!

PAUSE

Let me just give a little background, and then we will jump into the Bible.

If you remember from prior sermons, Moses had been guiding God’s people.

Then Moses tapped Joshua to lead God’s people.

The Israelite people turned away from the faith after the death of Joshua, and this led to unrest and disillusionment.

During the period of Judges, there was no King in Israel.

This, in turn, led to the appointment of Judges to guide them through particularly turbulent periods.

PAUSE

There is a cycle in the book of Judges that we will see over this week and next week.

You can see that cycle in your notes and on the screen.

The Cycle of Judges: · Abandonment of God: Israel turns away from God, leading to moral decay and idol worship. · Oppression: Enemies oppress Israel. · Cry for Deliverance: Israel cries out to God. · God Raises Judges: God appoints judges to deliver them.

Leave that on the screen and I want you to think about your life.

Does that pattern describe your relationship with God?

I know SO MANY PEOPLE….

That they walk away from God…

Their life goes into a spiral the wrong direction…so they blame God for that…

Life gets harder and harder…. Right oppression….

Then I have seen so many people cry out to God AFTER walking away from Him…

And crying out can be yelling at God.

Being mad at God…

Or ask God for help…

BUT….

God usually waits until the anger turns to recognition of what we did and asking Him for help out of what we CHOSE to walk into…

Then God delivers us…

Just like he did with the Israelite people in the book of Judges…

PAUSE

ADD AN EXAMPLE FROM YOUR LIFE…

I kid you not…

The night before I wrote this message.

I was sitting at home with Belle, watching funny videos, and my phone rang.

It was a guy I have been disciplining with the Jesus book we gave you all a few months ago.

This guy is a friend I have had for a long time.

And he had been in this pattern for sometime.

And that night God met him!

He cried out to God and God showed up in a way he had NEVER experienced before!

So he called me and I came over and we sat and talked for 2 hours about it!

Church…God will help you IF you choose to seek and follow him…

It is your choice…

PAUSE

So, let’s read part of Judges 3 and see this pattern…

This about the Judge Othneil

Judges 3: 7-11 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

Now to make sure we all know what that means.

Those two names Bail’s and Ash-Ear-Ah’s were names of false Gods.

Names of Idols that were worshiped by people groups that lived around Israel at this time.

The pattern we see in this book, and in our lives if we are honest…

Is that we walk with God for a season?

Then something comes into our life to shift our focus AWAY from God.

Something comes into our life that takes priority over God.

Now, I know there is probably not a person here today that would say, “I worship an idol.”

But I can promise that there are a lot of people here who do have idols in their life.

Bear in mind an idol is simply ANYTHING in your life that you place before God.

And let’s be honest….

There are a lot of people who place their careers before God’s plans for their lives.

There are a lot of people who place sports before God. I mean think about HOW EXCITED you get about sports vs God…

There are a lot of people who place their money before God and there is NO WAY you are going to tithe and give God 10%.

There are a lot of people who care more about their comfort than following God.

There are a lot of people whose kids becoming the next sports star or getting into the best school is a MUCH HIGHER priority than their child becoming a fully devoted follower of God.

Be honest about a past struggle of yours…

I will be honest….

For YEARS my career, my wealth, my comfort was a MUCH higher priority in my life than God.

That is why I ran from the call of ministry in my life!

My career…my future wealth…was a MASSIVE IDOL in my life!

And it took God a good 29 years to break me of that!

PAUSE

Church, in your sermon notes, you will see a question, and I want to encourage you to HONESTLY look at your life this week and answer it.

What is an idol in my life that I need to remove? ______________________________________________________

I want to encourage you to HONESTLY look at your life this week and answer it.

PAUSE

Let’s keep reading…

8 The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.

Church, what that means for you and me is that you and I can choose to walk away from God.

If we choose to walk away from God, He will remove His hand of protection over us.

That is what is going on here.

God tries to teach us and show us that we should NOT go in the wrong direction…

He tries to stop us…

But God is a gentleman and does not force us.

So often…

We walked away from God’s best…

And into pain…

PAUSE

Isreal chooses to walk into 8 years of pain.

But then…verse 9….

9 But when they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, who saved them.

10 The Spirit of the Lord came on him, so that he became Israel’s judge and went to war.

Stop here…

We see something new about the Holy Spirit here!

Look at verse 10.

It says, “The Spirit of the Lord came on him,”

Came on Off-Neo.

“So that he became Israel’s judge and went to war.”

So Off-Neo becomes a leader under the Holy Spirit’s power.

We keep seeing that over and over again.

It is interesting to me how often we see the Holy Spirit making people into leaders…

Maybe if you strive to lead you should just seek God more!

PAUSE

But that is not where I want to focus today because we have talked about that at length already.

I want to talk about this second part…

The Holy Spirit making Off-Neo into a leader who can go to war…

PAUSE

War…

Not something we talk about too much in church is it…

But again I want us to pause here and think about this.

Write this down.

The Holy Spirit can help me win the war!

Repeat

Now….

I can see some of you looking at me with that questioning look.

I can see the former military guys thinking YES, finally, a GOOD message!

I can see some of you are utterly confused…

PAUSE

Church, yes, this is talking about the Holy Spirit literally helping a man lead people in a literal war to reclaim the priority of God in their lives.

Let me repeat that because the context is important.

This is talking about the Holy Spirit literally helping a man lead people in a literal war to reclaim the priority of God in their lives.

And this is NOT a man only thing!

Because if you flip forward one chapter in your Bible…

Look at chapter 4 & 5…

It is about a WOMAN named Deboarh who LED Isreal as a judge!

And by the way Deborah is the ONLY judge to do a super good job according to the Bible!

So this is NOT a man only thing.

This is the Holy Spirit literally helping men, and women, lead litteral wars to RECLAIM the PRIORITY of GOD in their LIVES.

The key is the end of that….

Write it down.

The Holy Spirit wants to help us wage war to reclaim the priority of God in our lives.

Repeat

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against the idols in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against alcoholism in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against video games being a higher priority in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against drugs in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against your lust issues in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against the stranglehold money has on everything you do in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against you getting divorced in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against being an absent parent in your life.

That means the Holy Spirit wants to help you wage war against making your career the #1 priority in your life.

And I could go on and on…

Church, the Book of Judges is an amazing book.

And amazing book that is all about us learning to recognize destructive patterns in our lives…

So that, hopefully, we can choose a different path by learning from the pain of people who lived before us!

I used to think History was a worthless subject…

But the older I get the more I realize that mankind just keeps repeating the same mistakes of our past.

That is why we are wandering into so many stupid things in our country!

We are repeating what history has already taught us does NOT work!

Teens…

Young adults…

Please let me encourage you….

Study history!!!

Study the Bible!!!

Because you can be saved from SO MUCH PAIN…

IF you will CHOOSE to learn from the lives others have lived.

PAUSE

Let’s finish this passage…

The Lord gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel, who overpowered him.

11 So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.

Do you hear what that says?

The people of God…

The people of God CHOOSE to seek God again.

They people of God CHOOSE to fight for what is right again.

And God honors their desire to go to WAR with the things that go AGAINST God’s ways….

And it leads to 40 years of peace…

PAUSE

Does anyone here want to say you would LOVE 40 years of peace???

Godly peace…

Anyone????

PAUSE

That will only happen when we are seeking God…

When we are filled with the Holy Spirit…

As a nation….

PAUSE

Let me share your life application with you today….

For those of you who are new, or newer, to Family Church.

We end our messages with a Life Application.

It is simply something to help you go home and process this message with someone else.

Something to help you continue to ponder how you can apply today's message to your life.

So here is what I want you all to spend some time processing and talking with someone about.

Life Application: What area of your life do you need to go to WAR with to reclaim God’s place in it? As a result of today’s message, I will _________________________.

Next Month! And church, before we pray, I want to let you know about next month here at Family Church…

Next month we are going to do something fun…

We will rotate pastors around the campuses and have them preach about one of their favorite Biblical Characters…

It is going to be fun!

Pastor Adam is taking off on the first part of his sabbatical…

Pray for him and his family as they recharge and get a fresh new vision for our church in the month ahead…

He will be spending some time here working on his doctoral stuff…

The family will spend some time in Italy and at the Vatican as he tries to become the next Pope!

Their family will also be joining our Summer Family Missions Team in Kenya as well.

So again,

Please pray for his family during this season and God to meet them all in fresh and new ways.

Prayer:

Make sure to do salvation call!

Offering: