Untitled Sermon

Introduction:

· I want you all to think of a time when you have felt terrified. The kind of fear where

o Your stomach starts twisting and turning like it’s trying to turn inside out

o The muscles in your chest constrict and feel like steel bands tightening around your ribs

o You can’t breathe in because your lungs feel like they can’t expand

o Your heart is pounding like it’s trying to escape your body

o Your throat is constricting and no matter how much you feel like you need to swallow you can’t

· Everyone feels terror over different things in their lives, there’s always going to be something that seems like it’s too big for you handle. Whether that’s a big assignment, a financial situation, a phobia, or in my case, public speaking, God will get you through it. Those physical aspects of fear I described are what I am feeling right now. But I know this is something God needs to get me through. This is a part of His plan for my life and He has equipped me to do this. No matter how big what you’re facing seems, God is bigger. This is something that is easily found in the story of Gideon. The situations Gideon had to face in order to accomplish God’s plan were downright terrifying. I can only imagine how scared he was and the immense trust he must have placed in God to follow the Lord’s plan.

God Will Call You to Hard Things

· , reading key verses throughout

Today we will be looking at Judges chapters 6 and 7, the story of Gideon. At the time of the story of Gideon, Israel had not been faithful to God. As a result, God had given them over to the Midianites for seven years. During these seven years the Midianites were vicious rulers, killing all of the Israelites livestock and stealing their crops. Gideon was terrified of the Midianites. So much so, that when we first meet him he is threshing wheat in a winepress. There are a few different ways to thresh wheat, but none of them are particularly effective when you are in a hole in the ground. So Gideon is cowering in the winepress hoping that the Midianites will not find his grain and steal it from him. He is down here when an angel of the Lord comes to Gideon in chapter 6 verse 12 and says “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” After this Gideon questions the angel, asking why God would give the Israelites over to the Midianites if He was always with them. In verse 14 the angel of the Lord replies “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”

After this the Lord instructs Gideon to go and destroy the altars of Baal and replace them with an altar to the Lord. Imagine what that would look like in today’s society. If God asked you to go and destroy the idols and altars that are sacred to Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus. I would be absolutely terrified. In all honesty, I don’t know if I would even be able to do it. Just think of the repercussions for us if we did that; we could be at the least fined, and at the most put in prison. But in Gideon’s day, they could literally kill him for destroying these altars. But Gideon did it anyway. I mean, he did it in the middle of the night so no one would see him. But he still did it. They did in fact try to kill him the next day, but his father defended him by telling those that worshipped Baal that if Baal was offended he could defend himself. Spoiler alert, Baal didn’t do anything to Gideon.

I don’t know about you guys, but I would be shaking in my boots at this entire situation. But Gideon got through it. As the angel of the Lord told Gideon in verse 12, God is always with him. And God is always with each and every one of us. No matter what He is asking us to do, He will never leave us to accomplish it on our own.

God is Patient

·

As the story goes on we see Gideon starting to doubt God. Verses 36 to 37 read “Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised – look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said”

And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. The Scriptures say that the next morning Gideon was able to wring an entire bowlful of water out of the fleece. Gideon tested God, he asked Him for a sign and God gave it to him. But that wasn’t quite enough for Gideon. God was asking Gideon to do an incredibly impossible task, and in all fairness, Gideon wanted to make sure he was hearing God right. I would too if I was in Gideon’s place. So Gideon says to God in verse 39 “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” And shocker, the next morning the fleece was dry and the ground was wet.

Gideon asked God for a sign twice, in a row. Gideon knew God had a plan for him but he doubted whether he was hearing the Lord correctly. And I know I do the same thing. But these verses are so reassuring to me. They show that although Gideon was avoiding God’s plan and questioning him, God was still patient with Gideon. God gave Gideon both of the signs he asked for, and actually gave him another sign earlier in the story in verses 17-24 when Gideon is asking for confirmation that the angel of the Lord is in fact, an angel of the Lord. That gives three specific instances where Gideon asks God for a sign. And God is so patient with Gideon, gives him the signs, and still uses Gideon for His plan and His purpose. And God will show us the same patience and grace. Just because we don’t listen to his plan immediately doesn’t mean that God gives up on us. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He will keep pursuing us and pushing us towards his plan. Which is exactly what we see with Gideon as his story progresses.

God’s Plan might seem more and more Impossible

·

After Gideon tested God with the fleece he followed God’s orders and gathered an army to fight the Midianites. He had gathered 32000 men but God told him that he had too many men. Keep in mind that the Midianite army had thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of men. Scriptures describe the Midianites, Amalekites, and all the other eastern peoples that made up the army were settled in the valley as thick as locusts and that their camels were numbered as the sand on the seashore. So Gideon was going up against this massive army with only 32000 men. But God told him that he had too many men and to send anyone that was too scared home, so 22000 men left and Gideon was left with only 10000 men in his army.

So at this point this seemingly impossible task is only getting more impossible. If I was in Gideon’s place I would be freaking out. I can’t even imagine how scared he was, knowing this gargantuan task God wants him to complete, but God’s plan is making his task harder and harder. As the story continues God tells Gideon that army is still too big. He instructs Gideon to take his remaining men down to the river and have them drink. Some of the men knelt down to drink and others lapped at the water. God told Gideon to send home anyone who knelt to drink and only keep those who lapped the water. This left Gideon with only 300 men, and he sent 9700 home. Keep in mind the incredible size of the Midianite army, and God is leaving Gideon with only 300 men to defeat them. Gideon’s task just keeps getting more impossible. What started off as an already incredibly difficult task is only getting harder. And I know this seems to be what happens in my life too. When things start to get difficult to handle, suddenly God starts throwing more and more at me and it feels like an impossible mountain of responsibility that I can’t even dream of being able to conquer. But even at this point, God doesn’t leave Gideon. He tells Gideon to take his servant and go down to the Midianite camp and listen to a conversation between two guards. This conversation is about one of the guards dream and the other guard’s interpretation of the dream. This dream and its interpretation back up God’s plan that the entire Midianite camp will be given into Gideon’s hands. This prophetic dream is what gives Gideon the final burst of courage to follow through with God’s plan. God instructs Gideon to split his 300 men into three companies of 100 men each. Each man was given a torch in a jar and a horn. Which honestly makes this task so much more impossible for Gideon. Not only is he going up against this army that Scripture says are as thick as locusts, but he only has 300 men, and instead of at least being armed with something like an AK-47, God gives each them a candle and a kazoo. Just take a second to imagine what they must have been thinking. Gideon is asking them to take on this absolutely massive army, with no real weapons. I would have been thinking Gideon was off his rocker, but this soldiers trusted his word, and the Lord anyway. Gideon instructed the men to follow his lead and they surrounded the camp. On his signal the men broke the jars and blew the horns, calling out “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” At this the Midianite men ran, fleeing and fighting each other. In the confusion the Lord turned them against each other and the army defeated itself.

Conclusion

Even against all human odds, God pulled through and equipped Gideon to accomplish His plan. God will always equip His people for His plan. No matter what we seem to face every day, God knows what He’s doing and He has it under control. God started by giving Gideon a small but still difficult task, destroying Baal’s altars. And God was with Gideon the entire time. He then gave Gideon a more impossible task, defeat the Midianite army with 32000 men. God made that task more impossible by asking Gideon to accomplish the task with only 10000 men. And finally God made Gideon’s task entirely impossible by only giving him 300 men, arming with only fire and horns. If Gideon had not trusted God, and strayed from His plan at any point during this, he would have failed. Gideon needed God. If Gideon had decided that sure he would defeat the Midianites but he needed all 32000 men so he wasn’t going to listen to God, he would have failed. God equips His people for His plan, nothing less and nothing more. We can’t accomplish God’s plan on our own, and we can’t accomplish our own plan on our own. We need God and we need Him to guide us and equip us with what we need. Repeatedly throughout Scripture we find that God gives people what they need to accomplish His plan, from Abraham and Isaac, to Daniel in the lion’s den, David and Goliath, Esther and her people, Moses and the Red Sea, the Israelites during the Exodus, Joseph and his brothers selling him into slavery, and eventually Jesus and the cross. God will always give us what we need, it may not always be what we want, but it is always what we need. What is the mountain in your life that seems too big to climb? What are you facing that just seems impossible? For me, it was preaching today. This isn’t something I wanted to do, and when I was describing terror at the beginning of my sermon I was describing exactly what I was feeling at that point in time. And still at this point in time actually. Public speaking is not something I enjoy, especially when I under the pressure of speaking for God, and being marked on it. But doing this is a part of God’s plan. If he wasn’t by my side today this would be impossible for me. So what in your life gives you that sense of anxious fear? What does God want you to do that seems too big to handle? No matter what it is, God is bigger and He will equip you for his plan. As I’m sure many of you have heard before, God doesn’t call the qualified He qualifies the called.