Just then they came in sight of 30 or 40 windmills that rise from the plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, 30 or 40 hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. Were there spoils, we shall begin to be rich, for this is a righteous war, and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service that God will bless. Giants? What giants? asked Sancho Panza. Those you see over there, replied his master, with the long arms. Some have arms well nigh two leagues in length. Well, do you know where that came from? Okay, we got one. That comes from a book entitled The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha. that we know as The Man of La Mancha or simply Don Quixote. It was written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. It is recognized as one of the great novels ever written in the Western world. And the story follows the adventure of a noble named Alonso Quijano. I almost got that out. Now, in the book, Alonzo read so many romance books having to do with chivalry that he loses his sanity and decides to set about to revive chivalry in the world, to undo wrongs and to bring justice to the world under the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer named Sancho Panza as his squire. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is. He prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. And so when he sees a windmill, he sees a giant. And he attacks it on horseback with his jousting lance. Now, that was called The jousting was called tilting. And so we have the phrase tilting at windmills, which has come to mean chasing imaginary giants. I suppose after a fashion, Gideon was a man who chased after imaginary giants, idols. imaginary gods. And the problem with imaginary gods, as both Don Quixote and Gideon would discover, was that they become real when we breathe life into them. Now we're picking up the story of Gideon. We started last week. Last week we were introduced to a particularly brutal and heartless foe of the Israelites. They're called the Midianites. They destroyed anything living, stealing crops and livestock and human life as well. Gideon was called to be the next judge and savior of Israel, but Gideon had a problem. He was an insecure and fearful person. That's a bad combination for a leader and for a military commander. He would see a giant, maybe more real than imaginary, but when God called on him to tilt at that giant, he would hit pause and ask for some sort of reassurance. We saw that God appeared to Gideon as the angel of the Lord, which is a pre-incarnation appearance of the Lord, the second of the Trinity. Remember, the Trinity is eternal. The Son of God, the eternal Son of God, always existed and would appear from time to time. In the Old Testament, Gideon saw that. And Gideon is fearful because he has looked into the face of God and God had said, no one may look at my face and live. And so Gideon was fearful for his life. But God shows mercy and Gideon lives. Today we pick up that story. And what I hope to show you today is that there are, in Gideon's life, three altars, and three enemies. First, the three altars. After Gideon came face to face, having met Almighty God, and having lived by the mercy and grace of God, Gideon made an altar to worship Jehovah, to honor him as the God who made peace with him, and to thank him for his grace. And it was called, that altar was called Jehovah Shalom, meaning the Lord is peace. That's a good thing. It's a good thing to worship God Almighty who raises up the weak and the insecure, who uses the smallest, the lowest, the foulest, the most cowardly to stand in, to stand in the gap for his people. Billy Graham tells a story on himself. I'm going to paraphrase the story, but it was while he was at Florida Bible Institute in Tampa as a fresh-faced 18-year-old freshman. He was invited to preach at a country church. And he had prepared what we might call stock messages. messages that an itinerant preacher might preach from place to place to place. And he had four of those messages, but he couldn't decide which of the four to preach at that church in that early preaching experience. He made it a matter of prayer that week, and as the end of the week approached, he still couldn't decide which of those four messages to preach. And as Sunday morning came upon him, he still could not decide which one to preach, even as he mounted the pulpit. He couldn't decide which of the four to preach. And so he says, quote, I preached all four. In ten minutes. And yet God was God was able to take that fresh-faced freshman, that raw piece of clay, and God used Billy Graham in great ways because it's never about who we are. It's always about what he can do with us as we yield to him. But there's something very troubling about even this good gesture of Gideon to a God who makes peace. there still was the matter of the family altar to Baal and the totem pole, which is called an Asherah in the Bible. And that Asherah generally stood beside the Baal as the male and female deities. And the Israelites had completely sold out to Baal at that point. And so they saw nothing wrong with erecting an altar to Baal and his Asherah. They've been told to wipe out Bail's adherence. They're told not to adopt their practices, and yet here they were, completely sold out to Bail. A local leader, Joe Ash, hosted that statue and that totem pole. And Joash was Gideon's father. He had a shrine to Baal and Baal's female counterpart, Asherah. And the Israelites had turned their backs on the God of peace and they'd thrown in with the Canaanites to worship their gods. They had bought into the notion that their Canaanite gods would provide all that they needed. They were the giant windmills. But instead of tilting at them, they took up residence inside of them. And they saw no problem worshiping them side by side with the God who brought them out of Egypt, having performed miracle after miracle, and then said, you shall have no other gods beside me. Now, one might read that and say, oh, how open-minded and tolerant, when in fact it was a slap in the face every bit as much as a gold calf to the God who rescued them in spite of themselves. The Israelites were perfectly content with syncretism, co-mingling religions, in this case, a little truth, the worship of Jehovah. with a lie, the worship of Baal, an altar to Jehovah and an altar to Baal. That's a recurring problem in Israel and a recurring problem with us. We breathe life, that is, we worship and serve gods of security, and comfort, and enjoyment, and power, and wealth, and acceptance, and ambition, and self-indulgence. We worship political programs, and economic theories, and philosophical movements, and then we kneel before the idol of entertainment. So Jehovah God said, take it down. Take it down. It must come down. So Gideon got one of his father's bulls and used his father's bull to tear down his father's bell statue and cut down the totem pole, that ashram pole. And 10 servants helped to accomplish that task, but He did wait till dark for fear of his family and fear of the townsfolk. Not necessarily wrong, but so Gideon. God wanted obedience, but not necessarily heroics. Gideon pulled down the Baal and the Asherah as directed and in its place constructed an altar to Jehovah and on it sacrificed the means of the destruction of the Baal statue. Three altars there were. There was one to worship Baal. Next to it, one for those who hedged their bets, a worship to Jehovah as well. But there was only one true altar that was constructed, and that was the one that God directed for the worship of the only living and true God. We read this part of the story in Judges chapter 6 from verses 24 through 27. It's in your bulletins. You can follow it on the screens. Then Gideon built an altar to the Lord and called it, The Lord is Peace. To this day, it stands in Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites. That night the Lord said to him, take your father's bull and the second bull, seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it, and built an altar to the Lord your God on top of the stronghold here with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah that you shall cut down. So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night. So there were the three altars. And then there were three enemies that Gideon had to deal with. In addition to those three altars, the first was the enemy that was with them. The first of those three enemies, the enemy that's with Gideon is his family and the people of town. Gideon took on the task. He took it on with some due haste, though he did wait until nightfall for fear of the town folk. Gideon didn't exactly do as Elijah did and have a public face-off, Baal versus Jehovah, but he did meet the minimum requirements of obeying God The people of the town started asking around and they discovered that it was Joash's son. They were likely the town's father, so already they had decided a sentence once they caught the culprit, and the sentence was the death penalty, but first there was the mitigation phase. Joash testified during mitigation, does Baal need help? What kind of God needs help from mortals? If Baal is truly a God, a living and true God, then don't you think he could offend for himself? Don't you think he could contend for himself? By the way, we don't see Gideon in this scene. The heavy lifting here is done by his daddy. And we see this in Judges chapter six from verse 28 through 32. When the men of the town arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the asher beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built. And they said to one another, who has done this thing? And after they had searched and inquired, they said, Gideon, the son of Joash, has done this thing. Then the men of the town said to Joash, bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asher beside it. But Joash said to all who stood against him, will you contend for Baal, or will you save him? Who contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down. Therefore, on that day, Gideon was called Jerubal. That is to say, let Baal contend against him, because he had broken down his altar. That was the first enemy, the enemy that was with Gideon, the townsfolk, and his family. But there's also an enemy without. There's still that pesky Midianite situation. The Midianites not only took everything that was living, but in reinforcements, they brought in the Amalekites to contend with them. The Amalekites and the Midianites were pagan tribes, they were broadly considered Canaanites, but with their own distinctives. And Gideon already had the Benjamites and his family. There's an unusual word that's in this passage. In Judges chapter six, it's one that I have trouble saying, it's the Abiezrites. But that word is used here, it's a nickname for the family of the tribe of Benjamin. Judges chapter six and verse 11 says, the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abiezrite. Remember, Joash is Gideon's father, and they were Abiezrites. Well, the word Abiezrites means my helping family. So Gideon already had the IBS rights there, and by definition, they were there to help. But Gideon, as we've said, is a little secure. He saw giants all around him. He saw the giants of the Midianites, and he saw the giants of Baal, and the Asherah. So against this enemy, he sounded his trumpets, and the family came, and then the messengers went out and gathered four more tribes, fully five tribes of the 12 were called in, in exercising the Kolan Pal doctrine, the doctrine of overwhelming force. But there was a problem with this. We'll see it later. But Gideon over-conscribed. We read in Judges 6 and verse 15, And Gideon said to God, Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. Without God, Gideon was nothing in his own mind. Without God, Gideon was the least and the smallest. But then we read in Judges 6, 14, 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? And verse 16, And the Lord said to him, But I will be with you. And you shall strike the Midianites as one man. And so we read the enemy without in Judges chapter 6, 33 through 35. Now all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east came together and they crossed the Jordan and encamped in the valley of Jezreel. But the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon and sounded the trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called out to follow him. And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh And they too were called out to follow him. And he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. And they went up to meet them. So you had an enemy that was with Gideon. You had an enemy that was outside, without Gideon. And then you had the enemy that Gideon contended with that was the enemy within. That was his third and final enemy. Gideon struggled with great insecurities, which led him to difficulty in trusting God. And even when God had revealed himself in a most spectacular way, Gideon needed constant reassurances. So he asked God for two miracles. The first is a lesser miracle, because a fleece tends to hold water. So when he asks for the fleece to be wet and the ground dry, well, that's odd, but it's explainable. But the next miracle he pushed God to, well, that was just plain cool. He wanted the fleece dry and the ground around it wet. That is antinomious. That is against the laws of nature. Yet God complied. And we see that in verses 36 through 40. 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's dew on the fleece alone and it is dry in the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said. And it was so. When he arose 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 complied. God took this one's insecurities, the struggles of faith that Gideon experienced, and he came alongside of him and he said, I'm with you, and you will save Israel. That brings us to the first of our takeaways today. The first of our takeaways is that God is patient with our weaknesses. God doesn't mind humbling himself in order to bolster our fragile faith, our wavering grip on his word. If God were to expect perfection in our faith, heaven would be sparsely populated So while he may demand perfection, he doesn't expect it, and he settles for humanity. That is the first of the takeaways, that God is a God who is patient with our weaknesses, with our struggles. The second of our takeaways is that Baal is tolerant Baal is tolerant. Augustine, Saint Augustine, who lived in the fourth century AD, great theologian, had a rather checkered background before he came to believe in Christ. And Augustine wanted a tolerant God, and so he prayed famously, God, grant me chastity, but not yet. He was looking for that tolerant God. And the true God is a jealous God. And in the first paragraph of the passage we talked about today, Jehovah lays down his demand that commits us. He tells Gideon, verses 25 and 26, that night the Lord said to him, take your father's bull. and the second bull, seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has. Cut down the asher that's beside it. Build an altar to the Lord your God on top of the stronghold here with stones laid in due order. Then take a second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the asher that you shall cut. down. God says pull down your idols. Why does Jehovah make such a demand? Why is he so unreasonable when Baal is so tolerant? because two altars cannot exist side by side. You cannot have an altar to Jehovah and an altar to Baal. They are mutually exclusive. I like the illustration that Ralph Davis uses for this idea. When our little boy, he writes, comes bawling into the kitchen, with knees skinned up from a headlong fall on the driveway. We don't simply slap a giant two-inch band-aid over the mess. Rather, we cleanse the grit and gunk out of the wound before the band-aid goes on. And that is Jesus' way. He did not hand the rich young ruler a decision card and tell him to check the box beside follow me. Instead, He exposed that man's moral transgressions of the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. And he called on him to smash his idol. Then he can follow Jesus. Such was Jehovah's demand on Gideon and Israel. which is exactly the point Elijah made to the Israelites hundreds of years later when Israel was at the same place in 1 Kings 18.21. And Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. Jesus picked up on the same theme in the Sermon on the Mount. And he said, you cannot serve two masters, for either you will love the one and hate the other, or you will follow the one and despise the other. Don't be fooled. You can't keep your idols and follow the Lord at the same time. The third takeaway, Gideon asks for more and more confirmation from God in spite of evidences of God's spirit on him and a growing army. What we will see in the weeks to come is that there's a perfect judge that will lead and judge his people perfectly, no fear, even though all the created world and devilish schemes were against him. Jesus, and he will strip away our confidence in our flesh and leave us with nothing with which to commend ourselves. He will be heroic, and we will take on the idols of the flesh on the cross. And yes, there would be darkness, but at the darkness, at the day of Jesus' crucifixion, all the works of Baal and his buddies would be judged. God would pour out his wrath and his fury on Jesus, not because he deserved it, but because you and because I dabble with idols. And Jesus took that burden upon himself and stood in for us. And he made him who knew no sin to be sin. so that in him we might be the righteousness of God. So then it would no longer be in the strength that we could muster, but the faith that we have in his strength, as God said to Gideon, go in this might. And so we go into the presence of God not armed with a legion of good deeds, but with nothing in our hands. Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross of Christ I cling. The giants that we face, the idols that we face, are brought down, not in our own might, but in the might of the one who overthrew the might of the devil and his minions, and it won't, and it wasn't even close. Jesus conquered the windmills, And it is that real world in which we live. Would you pray with me?