Judges 6:1-18
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
The Lord turned to him and said, “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.”
Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.”
And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.”
I want to speak to you about a continuation of this passage, about finding remote places in the desert, dark places in your life where you feel isolated and you wonder where god is. Today, I want to talk about these three words “I Have Heard”. Like any piece of scripture, it describes a very sad situation. You have the people of Israel seated there and they have an enemy. Whenever they go see the enemy and watch for them, they come and destroy it all. So it seems like its someone committed to destroying them. The reason why the children of Israel find themselves there, is because of incessant sin, they have been living in rebellion to god and in opposition to themselves for years and years. As a result, God decided to rectify the situation, he sends pain to their brain in order to wake them up and this has always been his way of dealing with people. C.S. Lewis said “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
When we have become deaf to what God is saying in this world, Deaf to what God is doing in our midst, we have decided to close our ears to what he is doing in our life. God will sometimes you a different megaphone to talk to us such as pain, prosecution, exile, personal health. God will use ways to speak to us. When you are in that moment of pain, it is God’s way of saying, I have heard the cry of my people.
In order for God to hear the cry of his people, somebody has got to call upon the name of the Lord. That’s what the bible says. There is something about the prayer of the faithful. The people of God have called. You must call in order to be heard. We hear about how God’s people were in exile for 400 years. The people of Israel were just living their own ways and God said I want to do something in their midst. When he wants to do something, he makes us uncomfortable. Just like the mother eagle, when its time for the baby eagle to fly, mother eagle stirs the nest. She takes down everything that makes the next comfortable. The mother eagle knows if you leave the baby in the nest for too long, the baby will not be able to fly. Every eagle is meant to fly like people are supposed to grow. If we are not, God will find a way to stir the next and make it uncomfortable for you.
People don’t like pain, we like our comfort. We have a culture of pleasure. The baby eagle flies when the nest is uncomfortable. This is how God dealt with Israel. The people are paralyzed, the enemy will come and paralyze you.
I want to share several sentences with you. Here is the first from the story of Gideon: “God does not see you as you are, he sees what you will become.” Gideon met God doing the ordinary thing, not the extraordinary. When it seems like there is nothing but defeat and fear has paralyzed us all, Gideon found courage to do one ordinary thing. He is not just sitting there. He snacked some grain and prepared it to eat. He saw the Lord and he greeted the Lord. The Lord referred to him as the mighty man of valour. Gideon asked if God is so mighty, why are we under occupation, why are we being persecuted. He began telling the human experience. Gideon is a model of a church. A church that is saying to itself, I can do nothing anymore, the enemy is too powerful for me. We have no people, no money, no way to survive. His story speaks to our story as a family. We don’t know what to do, we have no solution. The vast majority of us go to our grave without knowing who we are. We live someone else’s expectation of ourselves. God doesn’t see you as you are, he sees you as what you shall become.
You define yourself as your appearance. God doesn’t see you as that.
Second. “Private victory is a prerequisite to public trust”. This is the story of how Gideon took over. He had doubts. One day, God told him to go to the enemy camp and spy on them. When he goes, he overhears two people talking. One man says he had a dream that a man named Gideon would come and crush our tent and destroy us all. Gideon knew the Lord was working so he went back home with courage. Your private victory in prayer is a pre-requisite to public victory. Whatever you are facing, it is imperative that you personally take your matter to the lord and meet God. I cannot be the change the world wants unless I transform myself in God.
Three. “Start with what you got and you go nuclear”. We meet Gideon, he asks the lord “what am I going to do?” and the lord says, “start with what you got“. Always start with what you got. When God called Moses, Moses said “no, not me”. Moses’ staff became a snake when he dropped it. You can do the extraordinary with what you got. Samson defeated thousands. You have a nose, ears and eyes, these are all weapons. You have a voice and you can make a difference.
Four. “He dealt with the curse of his bloodline”. Worshipping foreign Gods and God said I cannot save you until you destroy it referring to monuments to adultery. In order to go ahead, you need to deal with what has been in your past. You must repents and demolish those curses. Gideon demolished his old history. Otherwise, you will not find your destiny. Do not make idols out of your pleasure.
Five. In Gods plan, destiny is closely linked to gift offering. The first thin Gideon did was make a sacrifice. Whatever he had, he sacrificed the animal and gave an offering. He said the food of yesterday will not sustain me for what you have for me tomorrow. I have no safety, no inheritance. He surrendered everything. He said he will survive on the Lord. If you start a business, you have to give everything to it. The journey of God is a journey of surrender. We give it all up.
Six. We must learn to obey, even if the result doesn’t make sense to us. It might not make sense, but it will awaken the enemy as the enemy expects you to fight another way. Jesus is our strength to fight with the word of God. God can guide in ways that make no sense.
Seven. We must learn to confront and defeat fear. Three key emotions that dominate us, fear, shame and anger. Gideon needed to learn to defeat his fear. We must learn how also. God said if you want to fight my battle, you can’t use human materials. God told Gideon to recruit for his team. Gideon grew the congregation to 300 men of valour. The Lord said, the power is not in numbers. If you make a mistake of making a friend a comrade, you will be demolished. You need a confident, they will fight for you, they will be there for you. If you can find three confident in your life, you will prevail. The church and congregation is run by 20% of people. They are the people who commit to it, they devote their resources to it. A confident will make you look good despite what the whole world may think. They have our best interests. Even Jesus operated like that. Don’t be enamoured by a crowd. When the presence of the lord is with us, there is only confusion in the enemy. He who is with us, is greater than he who is against us. “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect through weakness, I will boast all the more about my weakness so that christ’s power will rest on me. That is why, for christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties”. Corinthians 12:9,10