Bigger Than I Thought

Introduction

Good morning Point Harbor Church. My name is Tim and I’m your newish, at this point, Student minister. Before we get started this morning, I want to give you all an opportunity to flip to our passage today. We are going to be in Judges 6 this morning. I have loved getting to know all of you, I am so excited to be here with all of you and I am excited to get tucked into some scripture this morning.

When the conversation about this series, OBX playlist started to form I got really excited. Music is so so important to me. Music is a wonderful gift from our loving God that allows us to emote in a way that we just can’t with typical spoken or written language. Further, music is a wonderful teaching tool. Often, when we leave a church service, we aren’t humming the 3 points that the pastor delivered, we are humming the song that stuck with us the most.

This morning I want to discuss the story of Gideon. Because Gideon is easy to relate to

Judges 6:11–14 ESV

Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “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.” 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?”

Unpack

I want to take a second and unpack what is happening here.

At this point in history, you have the nation of Israel doing their thing but they are being oppressed by the surrounding nations. Ch 6 actually starts with

The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.

l Gen. 25:2; Num. 25:17, 18; Hab. 3:7

So, the people of Israel were being oppressed by the peoples around them in a big way. Scripture says that they were literally hiding from their oppressors in caves, and the passage then goes on to say that it was so bad, that planted crops were stolen by the Midianites and the Amalekites! So the issue of the time was that the nation of Israel was feeling the effects of their sin. They were defeated, demoralized, hungry and hiding. Mighty Israel, the nation that left Egypt and conquered the promised land with the help of God himself, was reduced to hiding in caves and having their crops stolen from neighboring enemies. That’s a tough spot. Israel cries out to God asking him for help, God sends a prophet to chastise them, but ultimately we get to our passage here and discover that Gideon was called on to do something about the mess that they had all gotten themselves in. Even though the Israelites did not deserve it, even though they caused everything that was coming to them, God had a plan for redemption. God called Gideon.

God is Big Enough to be Relied On

Often times, we as christians take God, our giant, massive all powerful, created all this out of absolutely nothing creator and shove him into a tiny box and say. “God can’t handle this situation”. Look, I am just as guilty. Us doing that looks like a lot of different things. It looks like us panicking and taking out a terrible loan to pay a bill instead of waiting for God to provide. It looks like us forcing the issue when God is asking us to wait and let him. It looks like us taking on more and more and more stuff, wether it be commitments of our time or our Check Book to make us “feel” something. We as humans have an amazing ability to look at a situation in our lives and immediately panic and make rash decisions instead of waiting on God to do what God does, and what God does is deliver. God is a deliverer of His people.

God has a plan. God makes it happen.

Small rabbit trail on Gideon’s calling.

Judges 6:36–40 ESV

Then Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all 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 next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, “Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night; and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.

God is big enough to grow our faith.

Last week John told to us the story of a parent bringing a demon possessed boy. It was said “I believe, help my unbelief” What a wonderful thing for us to pray. Gideon was vastly aware of what it was he was being called to do. He was being called to come out of hiding, build an army and conquer the people that had their grip on Israel. That’s a big task. Let’s live there for a moment, God, asked Gideon, the guy that was making bread inside a winepress, to go full George Washington on the surrounding nations that had their number. That’s a lot. Gideon clearly doubted God here. Can I just say this:

Doubt is normal

Doubt is nothing to assign guilt too, it’s a normal part of our human condition. When God is calling us to do something that feels huge, it’s normal to feel a sense of doubt. While it’s normal, it’s not okay to live there. What I love here in this text is that Gideon and God work out Gideon’s doubt in a way that is tailor fit to who Gideon is. Gideon needed in his spirit, confirmation that he was doing what God asked him to do. Now you could debate whether or not that was a good thing back and forth all day, but what I want to discuss here is just hod gracious God is to Gideon. God could have zapped Gideon there because of a lack of faith. God could have punished Gideon for not just going and doing what he was called to do. But God is big enough to handle all our questions and doubts.

Birdy story

The idea that a doubt or a question is not okay by God is a lie from Satan! God wants to hear our doubts and fears to that he can minister to our hearts and minds as we seek to serve him. God wants to grow our faith. Questions are great. ask them. Doubts are normal, voice them.

We as humans can become painfully aware of how much our faith is lacking when we study the word of God, and hear from the Lord as to what he would like for us. But God is big enough to grow our faith and that is because...

God is big enough to understand us.

Who here is a parent of a high school student Students, I love you but you are about to be SOLD OUT.

How many times have we heard “but you don’t understand”.

How many times have we heard from God and said back “you don’t understand”. I am just as guilty of this. Often, I say things like this to God when I feel like my plan is being challenged by the Holy Spirit. Here is the deal. God does understand. God created you, he sent his son here. God is 100% aware of the human experience, and scripture says that he knit you into your mothers womb. He made you, he knows you well. He knows what you need to learn how to trust him, he knows what you need to heal and he knows what you need to carry out what he has called you too.

I find it interesting that we as humans like to tell God why we can’t do things. When we feel a pull to a ministry or to a sacrifice or anything we have a list for God.

But God a)knows the list and b) has the solution for the list.

God is big enough to intimately understand everything about us. God has called us by name, we are his. Don’t ever forget that.

So, Gideon is called, he tests the spirit of God to make sure that he has everything under wraps. Just like our song today, God has come in what was objective silence to speak to Gideon, God in his gracious understanding of Gideon soothes his heart of doubt and calls him out. God helps Gideon reach into the faith that he has in his heart, Gideon stops the negotiating and casts all his fears and doubts out there and we get to the Super Bowl moment here:

Judges 7:19–22 ESV

So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch. And they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. They held in their left hands the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow. And they cried out, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” Every man stood in his place around the camp, and all the army ran. They cried out and fled. When they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army. And the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.

Unpack - 100 dudes with flashlights and jars defeat a whole army.

God is bigger than we think.

The song that we picked for this Sunday, “Bigger Than I Thought”, is a song that is important to me in my walk with Christ.

The song was written for the Passion Conference 2019, and the song is written in such a way to name all the issues that we typically take with our relationship with God, and answers them with truth that can be found in scripture.

We Doubt God.

We fear what he has for us.

We lack belief in him and his plan for us.

We try and negotiate.

We worry.

Then, the truth of scripture,

Isaiah 45:5–7 ESV

I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.

Or as the song puts it: You’re bigger than I thought.

I often anticipate the release of the Passion album. The music that is written for that conference has often been a blessing to me personally, and as a former Worship Leader, I was often looking for what God would have me use on Sunday Morning.

I had heard the song loads of times before and filed it away as something that I liked but wouldn’t fit the congregation I was serving at the time. Well I was driving home one day and I was defeated.

I was dealing with discouragement, sleep deprivation, anger, fear, frustration. I had just had this “mountain top” moment with God a few weeks earlier and I was struggling to accept how I could get from here to there.

I remember driving my car and being furious that I had to deal with what I was dealing with. I was like screaming at God in my head asking him why things had to be the way that they were. I had gotten to a point where I was just venting and I knew what all the answers were to my questions.

This album was playing in the car and I looked down at the infotainment system in my car as the last track and I thought to myself, If this song starts playing I am going to loose it.

I lost it.

God placed something before me and I was angry and frustrated at the process that he was putting me thought to get me to the thing that he promised.

So what do we do?

Accept that God is bigger than we think.

At some point we need to just do it. We need to just understand that we will never understand...

Actively rest in who God says he is.

God tells us so much about himself in his word. All we have to do is rest in it. I am about to say the most Christian at the Pulpit thing ever. “We have got to be reading our bibles”. God gave us his word to study and to read so that we can know who he is.

Honestly, in my own life I know that my doubt has come from me not knowing who God is because I haven’t spent a lot of time with him lately. Please take the time to spend time in God’s word.

My method:

It’s not a religion thing, it’s a relationship thing!

Rejoice and remember when God revels his power in our lives.

Let’s get excited about all the stuff God is doing instead of being super focused on how much the world is terrible.

I don’t want to come off irreverent here. We as a global people, the human race, we are suffering. We all should be calling out to God like the Israelites. But let’s look at Gideons example. Ch 6 V24 Gideon builds an altar because we recognized that he was spoken to by God. When God shows up, we should rejoice in what God is doing and build a remembrance so that we don’t forget.

Contractor story

Church, God is big enough.

Gospel

We just have to lean in, accept that and sit back and watch God work.

Pray to close.