Gideon week 3 | Total Dependency on God

joining us online really glad that you're here and let me say hello to everybody at the washington campus it's great to be with you in person last week it's always great to be in beaufort county it's also great to be in pitt county here in winterville so glad to see all of you we are in the middle of a sermon series about a man from the old testament named gideon and i'm just saying today's part of the gideon story is one of the most amazing yet perplexing stories in the entire bible and so to get at this story i want to start by talking about what i would say is an important spiritual concept that will help us understand everything that we're going to study today in this part of gideon's story in the book of judges one of the most profound statements that's ever been made is is found at the very beginning of this uh this document called the westminster shorter catechism you may never have heard of that before catechism basically is a statement of faith about what we believe as christian people usually it's in the form of a question and an answer so that you can commit it to memory and so this one statement is so profound i'm just telling you it would be good for every one of us to commit this statement to memory and again it's at the very beginning of the westminster confession and this is what it says and i cleaned it up for 2020 audience but it's the chief end of humanity is to glorify god and enjoy him forever it is to glorify god and enjoy him forever now what does that mean well i think it means three things first of all god wants to display his nature to everyone so they get to see his incredible love and goodness the second thing it means is the way the primary way that god displays his glory is through people we are the people that display his glory we were made in his image and he works through us to display his love and goodness to the world and the third thing and this is a pretty important third thing is that the most satisfying way for people to live their lives is to be pouring out god's glory and when we do that we end up being the beneficiaries which is we get to enjoy his glory forever and it is a powerful thing for us now having said that that is makes it understandable why two things are true why so many people in the world are unhappy first of all because it's all about them and their own glory rather than about god and his glory because when it's about god and his glory then you get to enjoy him forever and when you're not enjoying him you're enjoying or not enjoying you all right the second thing is this statement helps us make some sense of something that really is kind of a strange thing the way god works is that sometimes god chooses the most unlikely people for his purposes people that don't really seem to have the gifts or the abilities or the resources those are the people that god tends to choose paul wrote it this way remember dear brothers and sisters that few of you were wise in the world's eyes or powerful or wealthy when god called you instead god chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise and he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful god chose despised things despised by the world things counted as nothing at all and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important as a result no one can ever boast in the presence of god okay which says this that the more unlikely the hero the more unlikely the situation the more likely the credit is going to go to the right place which means that the glory is not going to go to us but it's going to go to god because when it seems impossible and it happens everybody says oh my goodness that could only have been god only god could do something like that now all of this comes to fruition in judges chapters 6 through 8 in the story of gideon because god came to gideon and if you were here a couple of weeks ago you might remember the greeting he said you know greetings mighty warrior and of course when god spoke to gideon spoke to gideon he was down in a hole hiding from his enemies the enemies of the israelites were the midianites a coalition of marauding desert dwellers that were so ruthless that everyone was afraid of them and they were so numerous that the bible says that the israelites saw them like a swarm of insects when they were coming there were so many of them that there's no way the israelites could ever stand up against them and so all the people were afraid just like gideon was afraid the book of judges tells us that the israelites were hiding in caves they were eking out in existence they were trying to find a way to feed their families and they were in a state of fear and depression and all they knew to do was to call out to god for some help please deliver us from our enemies and that's when god showed up and spoke to gideon and said gideon you are to lead your fellow israelites to victory over the midianites and if you were here you'll remember gideon had more than one excuse for why he was the wrong guy right i'm not very brave i'm not a warrior no one would ever follow me i'm not very well known my family is not a prominent family you know i don't want to do it he had every excuse in the world and yet god was just persistent the lord was just continued to say yeah it is you you're the one you get in i've called you but don't worry i will be with you all the way and you will win this battle you will defeat the midianites like they are one man they will seem like one man to you as long as i am with you you have nothing to fear and last week we picked up the story and something natural happens when god calls someone to do something great that they don't think they can do they need proof they ask questions and didn't you love it that god didn't mind gideon's questions and he didn't mind him saying hey if you just don't mind just one one more proof if you're really going with me if this is really true could you just do one more thing now the first thing that that gideon did was after he heard this call he said to the lord could i offer could i make an offering to you would you wait right here let me run get it and he ran and got a a young goat it says and some bread and he put it on a rock as an altar and offered it to the lord as a sacrifice and the lord reached out and touched it touched the rock and fire came from heaven and it vaporized the goat and the bread and of course gideon went whoa you're the lord and the lord said i've been trying to tell you that i'm the lord and i will be with you now gideon you go do something for me i want you to go back to your hometown and i want you to tear down the shrine that your father built in the middle of town to the false god baal tear it down and in its place i want you to build an altar so that people will be able to worship me and there i want you to sacrifice a bull on it and proclaim the lord he is god and gideon went and did it and as soon as the people of the town realized that their baal idol shrine had been torn down they were furious with him and they swore that they would do nothing else until they killed him but gideon's father said well now wait i'm the guy that built the thing but don't you think it's strange that we would have to stand up for baal if he's god he can take care of himself let him take care of gideon but if my son has only done what the lord god almighty told him to do none of us will be able to stand against him and this is what it says at the end of judges chapter 6 it says so that day they called gideon jerubal saying let baal contend with him because he broke down baal's altar now listen i believe that none of this was an accident this was all part of god's plan because at that very time the midianites decided to attack they came with their hordes thousands and thousands of troops and you remember they rode camels so they just came storming in ready to attack the israelites again and this is what we read the spirit of the lord came upon gideon this is the guy who was in the hole remember the spirit of god came upon him and he picked up a trumpet and he blew it and he's and he summoned all of the fighting men of israel to follow him into battle and defend their nation against the midianites and listen here's the amazing thing you know gideon said no one will follow me because i'm not well known well now after he broke down this altar everybody in the whole nation now knows gideon and most amazingly all the people from his hometown who wanted to kill him now get in line behind him and say you're the man jerubal the guy who would stand up against baal we'll follow that guy anywhere and that brings us to where we are today chapter 7 of the book of judges and i'll just have to say this probably is the strangest pre-battle scene in all of human history it says early in the morning jeremiah that is gideon and all his men camped at the spring of herod the camp of midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of morocco the lord said to gideon you have too many men for me to deliver midian into their hands now just a couple of things here chapter eight of judges says that there are 135 000 midianites who have come to attack the israelites and chapter 6 the end it said that 32 000 israelites showed up to fight so if you're doing the math that's four to one those are not good odds those are long odds now imagine uh you know if you've got you know like a nuclear bomb four to one's okay right but if you're fighting with a sword just imagine you gotta fight four guys with your sword you got somebody on the north south east and west and you've got to be good you know to be able to do that so every israelite is outnumbered four to one again long odds but this is what god says your odds of winning are too great so i need to take away a few of your soldiers and this is what it says in verse 3 announce now to the people anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave mount gilead so 22 000 men left while 10 000 remained now in case you're doing the math again it that's now 32 to 1. all right four to one seems good doesn't it 32 to 1 odd so god intentionally reduced the size of gideon's army why would he do that so that they would have no choice but to depend on him i mean they might have locked up in one if it was four to one but at 32-1 there's not much chance so don't you can't you just picture gideon going all right i cannot figure out your strategy lord i mean i don't understand this we only had 32 000 and now you've cut us down to 10 000 that makes no sense at all i mean what are you doing i mean i thought you wanted us to win and the lord says well i do want you to win but i want you to understand my reasoning here the reason i did that look it's verse two is in order that israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her i mean if listen if if you win with your own strength you get the glory but if you win with my strength alone then i get the glory and you get to participate in a miracle now here's the problem y'all i'll speak for me but i bet i speak for many of you is that i mean while we'd love for god to do a miracle we would rather depend on ourselves we'd rather depend on our own strength we'd rather do it ourselves see if we can do it ourselves we know we can always kind of depend on us and that's what we really like and so what happens sometimes is that in order that we not depend on ourselves god kicks out one of the legs of our stool of self-sufficiency because his goal is not to make sure that we're self-sufficient his goal is to get the most glory so we get to enjoy him the most forever because we get the benefits when that happens and so this brings me to the first of two spiritual principles and it's this now remember we talked about it earlier the chief end of people of human beings is to glorify god all right so god gets the most glory when we are completely dependent on him not kind of dependent not sort of dependent we are completely dependent on him now here's the question that we ask all the time when something happens don't you ask this question god what are you doing this is not the way i would do things i don't understand what you're doing he is simply giving you and me an opportunity to trust him by removing by removing all barriers to our total dependence so you think about it what are the things that we depend on what are the things we lean on i think about for myself i think about hey i i am a physically fit person you know i can do things because i've got enough energy or because my body will be able to do those things a lot of times we trust in our good health or we trust in our bank account or we trust in our group of friends or our network or our title or our job or the fact that we our job is not going away we lean on all kinds of things for ourself but god is not interested in building up self-sufficient people god is interested in us being dependent on him because the more dependent we are on him the more glory he gets and the more we get to enjoy who he is now not ironically did you notice the way that god uh separated the army he said hey if anybody's afraid you can go home so let me just ask you how many out of 32 000 were afraid 32 000 they were all afraid including the guy who was leading them i mean his trumpet was shaking right because you're going into battle against the most uh ruthless powerful most well-equipped army that exists in the world and you're and you may die i mean it's this is war so they were all afraid but the difference between the 10 000 and the 22 is that the 22 did not believe they had what it took to be able to win the battle they they looked at their own resources they looked at themselves and they did not believe that they had enough to be able to do it themselves and the 10 000 they were going with a whole different math equation because this is spiritual math y'all it doesn't make sense okay it doesn't make sense but this is the spiritual math it is 32 000 men plus god is greater than 135 000 middle nights okay and let me just tell you 10 000 men plus god is still greater than 100 135 000 mennonites it just is this is why this is this truth is really important for us to hear this is a truth that you ought to write down it's that fear is always a result of pride see as long as you trust in the sufficiency of god you will not be afraid when you start looking at your own ability to meet your own needs then you will shake in fear every single time you know i'm afraid i'm afraid i don't have what it takes i'm afraid that the odds are too great and yet from the very beginning god told gideon if you just remember this one thing you will not be afraid i am with you and listen it's the same thing for us jesus says i will be with you to the very end of the age i'm not going to leave you or forsake you i mean you can go over scripture after scripture i am with you so that means that you plus god is greater than whatever you got to face every time by the way this is why pride is sin because it's it's either one thing or the other it's either uh i believe i have enough to meet my own needs and i don't need god or i don't believe that i have enough and i don't believe god has enough to meet my needs either way that's unbelief and it's sin see this is what paul wrote again to the corinthian church he said god said to me there's an important word in it my grace is all you need my power works best in weakness so paul finishes he says so now i am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of christ can work through me that's why i take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults hardships persecutions and troubles that i suffer for christ for when i'm weak then i'm strong when i'm weak i'm strong one more truth before we move on and you ought to hear this because i think this is true for every one of us it's my strengths that hinder my dependence it's the things i'm really good at the things that i think that are unshakable about me my abilities my resources my great personality my group of friends whatever it is that you lean on that's the part that hinders your ability to be able to be totally dependent but when we're totally dependent on him he gets the most glory and that's the goal all right you're with me we're at 32-1 odds and then it gets worse it says but the lord said to gideon there are still too many men take them down to the water and i will sift them for you there now if i'm gideon i'm going i didn't like the way you sifted them the last time i mean it was a lot of sifting i thought you'd take away a few you took more than half so he does it he takes them down to the water so they're they're supposed to demonstrate how they would drink water at a creek and so some of them get down on their hands and knees and they put their face down in the water and they drink others of them cup some water and they lap it from their hands and it says 9 700 got down on their knees and 300 cupped their hands and the lord says okay i've sifted them for you and i think gideon said well you know i could probably still win with 9 700. you know so i'm gonna lose 300. and god said oh no no no you got it backwards the lord said to gideon with the 300 men that lapped i will save you and give the midianites into your hands let the other men go each to his own place now again god intentionally cut gideon's army down to a ridiculous 300 people again if you're taking notes that's 450 to 1. now later in the bible we're going to read about elijah standing up on mount carmel and there are 450 prophets of baal and just one prophet of god again 450 to one apparently god loves those odds 450 to 1. now why did god want to do that why did god want gideon to go into battle with just 300 men it's so there would be no doubt who won the battle i mean only a lunatic would go fight the biggest army in the world with just 300 people either a lunatic or a guy who knows spiritual math right that 300 plus god is greater than however many midianites come our way which brings me to a second spiritual principle and it's this that god gets the most glory when all other possibilities are made impossible you know as long as there's somewhere else besides god to look to we usually look there but when there's no other way except to fall on your face and say god if if you don't come through then i don't believe there's any hope at all then we're exactly where god wants us to be in fact i would say we're ripe for a miracle now listen this story is so wild that there's no way you can make it up one of my friends is the president of a large christian organization and for a number of years about a third of the annual budget was provided for by a christian charitable trust multi-million dollar charitable trust about one-third of the resources came in from that one place well then the man who owned the charitable trust died and his children took over and they decided to cut this organization out and so there was a little bit of panic if you can think about a third of your resources going away like that so my friend called the the president of the board of this charitable trust and said is it possible that i could come at least make a presentation of why um mr so-and-so has funded us for years and why we hope you would continue to and they put him on the agenda and he bought a ticket on an airplane to be able to fly there to talk to them he's on their way tight schedule he's got to be there at a certain time well the day he was supposed to fly his wife woke him up at 6 30 and said aren't you supposed to be at the airport right now and he went what time is it she said it's 6 30. he had a 706 flight and he said you have never seen me dress so fast he said i threw all my clothes i jumped in the car and i'm driving down the road toward the hospital he's a hospital toward the airport it is a 30-minute drive to the airport and he said lord i've been praying all week that you would change these people's hearts but now i'm not even going to get there unless i mean he said i need a miracle he said in fact for this to work out i'm going to need 10 miracles but i'm going to just put it in your hands and so he drove really fast and he said he made it to the airport in 15 minutes so he broke a law or two but he said that what happened is that the reason it takes so long is because you have to hit all these red lights and he said for some reason he didn't hit one red light on the road to the airport he said it was like green green green green green he said he pulled into the airport he went to the short-term parking and he pulled in and there was a there was a spot open right next to the entrance which he pulled in he said he ran in and there was no one at the ticket counter because everybody had already bought their ticket so he got the boarding pass really quickly he went to the tsa no one was at the tsa they waved him through he ran all the way to the uh the turn right through the terminal got to the gate and the man said i'm sorry sir but the plane has already left and he said well tell it to come back i got to get on that plane he said sir the plane is not coming back you can look right out this window you can see it is already taxiing toward the runway and he said well i'm just telling you i got to be on that plane god wants me on that plane you got to tell them to come back and he said i've been working here for 30 years i'm just telling you that plane is not coming back and he said no lie the plane stopped and started to back up back down from where it was taxiing and the man's jaw dropped open he said what is going on he got on his radio and he said what is something wrong and the pilot said yeah i think we left someone here we're supposed to take with us he said is that guy there and he said he's standing right here so the plane backed up and the guy jumped on the plane and he he he said he got on there and everybody's looking who is this guy and he goes i made it and the plane everybody on the plane cheered like that's incredible so he's going toward his seat and the flight attendant said wait uh sir we didn't think you were coming we gave away your seat we only have one seat left would you mind sitting in first class so he said he said in in seat one b which made him the first person off the plane when the plane got there and they were they were running late because they had not left on time he said he jumped off he ran to the bus which takes people to the terminal and it was full but he banged on the bus and he said can't you just take one more person and they went okay they opened the door he got in which made him the first one off the bus when he got there he ran to the ticket counter for the for the rental car the person said you're good to go handed it to him he took it he went he got in the car he got there with five minutes to spare and he stood up and he said this is why i've come this is why it is so important and he gave his speech and then he said and i just need to tell you this this is what i've done today to get here this is what god has done because every step of the way it was him when all the doors were closed and when he got through the chairperson of the board stood and said ladies and gentlemen i believe we need to give this man some money and they doubled the amount that it would that he would have had taken away only god could do it don't you love that story it's incredible now let me ask you how many of you would like to participate in a miracle like that right right so let me tell you that will never happen unless this one thing happens this truth it's an uncomfortable truth if i want a miracle god will have to lengthen the odds right because if if there's anything i can do to make it happen it's not a miracle it's only if god does something and it's i'm totally dependent on him but again the odds are always in our favor aren't they it is it is me plus god is greater than whatever i'm going to face and listen that's the story of gideon because haven't you felt there been times when you've said god what are you doing you know what i thought i had a bunch and now i got less god what are you doing i mean look i i thought we were i thought the odds were in our favor now they're not there's no way well there's always a way if god's in it right some of you came today just to hear me say i am with you and as long as i'm with you you have nothing to fear listen the gospel is all about this same kind of um this same kind of story where it doesn't make sense at all where the odds are against us do you know how many people in the world have been able to go through life and not sin how many is it none the chances of going to heaven the chances of having a relationship with god are zero there is no chance at all the bible says there is no one good no not one and yet god changed the odds and he came to earth in the person of jesus christ and he offered his own life for people like us so that we could be saved when there was no way at all uh i love the way paul puts it in romans 5 he says you see it just the right time when we were still powerless christ died for the ungodly aren't you glad aren't you glad that it's whatever the odds plus god is greater than whatever we'll face uh maybe today you didn't realize that the odds were so poor in your favor that is the day that you give your life to jesus christ you give your life to him so that you might be able to receive the miracle of salvation listen i want to live a miracle life i just don't like the bad odds so i've got to start to do spiritual math the spiritual math is whatever i'm facing plus god is greater than whatever i'm facing right and it is for you too lord thank you thank you for this word today i thank you that you're able to defeat the midianites and the midianites in our lives with 32 000 or 10 000 or 300 or one yeah you say i'll be with you and you will defeat them like it's one man i mean that's incredible if you're with us then we have nothing to fear if you are with me i have nothing to fear lord i just pray peace over us today because you're with us and we have nothing to fear unless we start looking for ourselves to meet our own needs but you promise you'll meet them you'll you'll be right there as long as i have you i have nothing to fear and lord thank you thank you for that word in jesus name amen

Channel: Covenant Church

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Keywords: Covenant Church, Covenant, Church, Gideon, Teaching series, Branson Sheets, Bible, sermon, Christian, Dependency on God, God, Church in NC, North Carolina, Greenville NC, Winterville NC, Greenville Church

Id: 5Erq6ATyWwE

Length: 38min 52sec (2332 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020