Chapter 7 this evening, judges. Chapter 7. We'll finish the story of Gideon tonight. One of the great, great, great guys in the Old Testament. Had a lot of weaknesses, so I can relate to that, right? So we saw last week that the great God brings distress to a nation. Chapter 6, verses 1 to 10. The great God brings distress to a nation. or a person who runs from him, Judges 6, 1-10. And then we saw the great God has an incredible vision for an impoverished leader, Judges 6, 11-18. Then we saw the great God demonstrates his power to a reluctant leader, Chapter 6, verses 19-24. And then we saw a great God demands obedience in his leader, Chapter 6, verses 25-35. Then we saw a great God condescends to an unbelieving leader, chapter 6, verses 36 to 40, we saw last week, that Gideon is the most unlikely hero ever. I mean, he ignores God, he contradicts God, he tries to tell God that, you know, he's not with them anymore, and he doesn't, he's not like Isaiah, and Isaiah 6, And he sees the Lord and he said, I dwell among a people of unclean lips and I'm a man of unclean lips. He doesn't take any responsibility. He offshoots all the problems. God, why have you forsaken us and why have you done this? And I mean, he's just, he is like full of himself, completely full of himself and demanding that God give him signs and reassure him. And I mean, it's just, he is, he is absolutely the most, He is about the most reluctant leader you're ever going to find. And he struggles with God. Let me just tell you something. Some of you young people, one of your issues that you have is not your parents' rule or the school's rule. Some of you, your issue is God's calling you into ministry and you don't want to go into ministry. That's why you have a bad attitude. You're just like Gideon. You are just like Gideon. You are struggling with God's call in your life and so you have this problem and you have this difficulty and you don't like this thing over here and you don't like this thing over there because you're doing that to make up things in your own mind because God's calling you and burdening your heart for ministry and you don't want to do it. That's Gideon. Gideon was going to do anything other than. And he was going to try to push God away. We saw that last week. Quite, quite, quite remarkable. We start tonight with point number six. The great God limits man's ability to boast at God's victory. Number six, God, the great God, limits man's ability to boast at God's victory. Look at chapter 7 verse 1. Then Zerubbabel, that is Gideon, and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the well Herod. If you go with me in May, we're going to go to this spot. We're going to go to this spot in Israel where God talked to him. These spots are very, very well known. So that the camp of the Midianites was on the north side of them by the hill of Mora in the valley. So they're camping. 135,000 Midianites with thousands and thousands and thousands of camels are camped in the valley. 135,000. That is a massively large army for that day. Frankly, that's a large army for today. That's several divisions. In an American military, that's about seven divisions. Most likely, that would be two corps of troops. I mean, this is a large army. And it's a mixture. It's not just only Midianites. We know that they had Edomites and Ammonites. They had the other Ite brothers from the east side of the Jordan River. which is going to play into the scenario here, what's going to happen. But they were dominated by the Midianites. So the Midianites are the ones that the name is used. They were the leaders. And they were on the north side. And the Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many. Too many. Now, we know, I'm not sure Gideon knew, but we know that there were 135,000 Midianites, and what we're going to find out is that there's 32,000 on Gideon's side. 32,000 against 135,000. Generally, unless you have atomic weaponry, you're going to lose that battle every single day and twice on Sunday, right? But it's even worse than the day he lived because they had camels. They had thousands of camels. So I mean just literally run down infantry. Run over, run down them, run through their lines. Because remember in those days how you fought is you just got in a big long line, put your shields up. They would have cleats on their shoes, later Greeks anyway did it this way, and it was a similar battle. And you just rushed against the army, and you kind of bulled at the army and tried to push them over, and you would stab underneath your sword. So, you know, if you had 10,000 and the guy had 5,000, you almost won every single time. You just, because you had more people pushing on the line, and you could envelop the line. So if you went out and stood in formation, with 32,000 and there's 135,000 and 25,000 of those are on camels that are going to come and attack the line. There is absolutely no way under God's green earth that in that day and age 135,000 are going to lose to the number that he has. And then God says to him, they are too many. You see, the great God is going to limit man's ability to boast at God's victory. This great God in your life, God is going to put you in places when you serve him in which it's absolutely impossible for there to be any explanation other than God did this. I'll never forget when we were building this property. And the whole economy started to fail. And I'll never forget the construction company that had built the dorm. The guy that owned it came to me and he said, pastor, pastor, he said, there is steel that has been bought and it's in the refinery. And all of a sudden, the company that bought it went out of business. And it's about $2 million of steel. And he said, they're willing, if you'll take delivery in 90 days, we've got the plans for the building, even though you're not ready to build, and we didn't build for another two years. He said, but we have the plans for the building. We can have them cut the steel. It's already there. They're willing to sell you the steel for about $800,000, and it's $2 million worth of steel. we had borrowed money to put up the dorm and we had some money left over and plus we were raising money and so we went to the deacons and we said we think that so we bought for this building two million dollars worth of steel for about eight hundred thousand dollars and we stored it many of you remember we just stored it out in the field out there where the soccer field is and we just stored all the all the so that when we got ready to build we'd already bought God saved us 1.2 million dollars in just steel in this building by God's hand by just God's plan, by God's hand. And God, when you depend on Him, and I could tell you story after story after story in our last New Members class, Larry and Lynn Templeton, Larry got me asking me stories, and I started telling, I spent 45 minutes just telling the New Members all the incredible stories of how miracle after miracle, incredible stories of how just God brought us here through this and that and how God brought a buyer to our property. And we had it for sale for two years and finally just gave up, lifted the sign out of the street. And my wife came to me and said, what are we going to do? We built a dorm down here. We had 13 and a half, 14 acres. And we were carting our kids back and forth. And they were living down here and eating, going to school up there. And she said, what are we going to do? And I said, I have no idea. I have no plan B. I said, I guess we're just going to pray. You know, we prayed. I know I fasted several times and prayed. I mean, I fasted one day all the way from 11 a.m. to 12 a.m. It was, it was a killer. But I did. I mean, it was, it was tough, Jerry. It was tough. But I made it without any chips or anything for that whole hour. So, but we fasted. We prayed. I went to lunch. Some of you have heard the story. I came home. I came back to work. My wife was sitting there in the office. And she said, I think I sold our property. I mean, I spent hours, hundreds of hours, with one deal after another, after another, after another, on how to sell the property. And this woman, this woman who really doesn't know anything about real estate, she's going to tell me in a half an hour she found a buyer? and saved us about $150,000 in a commission. And sure enough, that guy walked in and said, this is what I'm looking for. And I was wondering if it was still for sale. And we started doing negotiation. And he took the top price that we were asking, $7.35 million. And we kicked in that we would rent it back from him for about a year. And so we did that at a very low cost. And that let us get into this building. We had no plan, and yet God just walked in off the street a guy who was willing to write a check for 7.35 million for our piece of property. Great God limits man's ability to boast in God's victory. So he says to Gideon, and the Lord said to Gideon, the people are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself. There is absolutely no way the people of Tri-City Baptist Church can claim any glory for themselves in a congregation of 600, 650 that builds a campus that is probably today worth $30 or $35 million, and only has $5 million of debt on it, and did that through the most horrific economic downturn that our nation had seen since the Great Depression. There's no possible way that anybody at Tri-City Baptist Church can say, somebody smart at Tri-City Baptist Church did that. It was all of God. It was all of God and God's people's hard work and sacrifice. Well, God hasn't changed. This story takes place 3,200 years ago. God hasn't changed. He said, I don't want anybody to claim glory for itself against me, saying my own hand has saved me. Now, therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn and depart at once. toward Mount Gilead. So, that's actually in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy, that if you're afraid going into battle, you shouldn't go into battle, because God doesn't want people to run away. You know, once you're in the fight, God doesn't want people running away. It's why Paul, it was so difficult to let John Mark go with him the second time with Barnabas, because Mark had left. It causes discouragement, it causes dissension, it causes problems in the team that's under attack from Satan. When this person just runs away, especially in battle, if you're in that line and three or four people run away, that's where the enemy comes through that hole in the line. So the law in the Old Testament was, if you're afraid, you don't have to go to war. So, he does that, 22,000. He's got an army of 32,000. 22,000 go home. You're facing 135,000 troops, and they have tanks and battle carriers called camels, and they already outnumber you, what, four and a half to one? And now 22,000 go away, now you're outnumbered 13 and a half to one. I'm sure, now remember, Gideon is afraid anyway. Gideon is like the most reluctant leader in the entire Old Testament. Gideon didn't want this job anyway. Now all of a sudden, his name is on the line. Everybody knows he's this commanding general gathering an army against the Midianites. He's knocked down the altar of Baal in his town. Everybody knows Jeroboam, let Baal plead. They all know there's a price. There's a Midianite price on his head. He's on the Midianite top FBI list. He is at the post office. Everybody knows Gideon, and now he's outnumbered 13 1⁄2 to 1. And then God comes and says, verse 4, but the people are still too many. Too many? Lord, I thought you were going to send me reinforcements from Judah and Benjamin. I thought Naphtali was going to come online. I heard that Dan was going to come and join. What do you mean too many? I'm outnumbered 13 1⁄2 to 1. And God says, I will test them therefore. This one shall go and the same shall go with you. Or whoever I say, the one shall not go with you, the same shall not go. So he brought up the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, everyone who lapsed the water with his tongue as a dog, in other words, leans over into the water face first and lapsed like a dog, you shall set apart by himself. Anyone who cups with a hand and drinks out of the hand, it's a different one. Different scholars have said different things, but I think the most natural one may be that one that cups with their hand and is on their haunches is more awake, more alert, more aware. Well, it ends up being that one is only 300, right? And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men, but all the rest of the people got down on their knees. The Lord said to them in Gideon, By the three hundred who lapped, I will save you and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place. So the people took provisions and their trumpets in their hands, and he sent them away, every man to his tent, and retained those three hundred. Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley." Well, of course it was. 135,000 of the enemy down in the valley with thousands of camels. And I have 300 guys. You understand that here tonight at Tri-City, there are more people than there were in Gideon's army. Not necessarily in this room, but in all the PM discipleship, Awana people. There are more than 300 people here tonight. You understand, this is Gideon's army. And we're taking on an army that's the size of half the population of Chandler. And we don't have a horse. We don't have a camel. We are all on foot. We are light infantry against accomplished people of war. We're farmers. God limits man's ability to say, I did this. So the people took provisions and the trumpets and they went away. Number two tonight, the great God encourages a fearful leader. So number one, God limits man's ability to boast of God's victory. And then number two, the great God encourages a fearful leader. It says it happened on the same night. So after he sent them all away, the price tag is on Gideon's head. He's on the Midianite most wanted list. And that same night, now he's got 300 guys. I mean, 300. This auditorium counting the Koirilof sees about 1,100. So, I mean, here is, right over here, this area right here is about his army. That's all he's got. I mean, I understood he might be afraid before. Now I understand why he's really afraid. And God is so good to encourage a fearful leader. Let me tell you something. When you're going through difficult times, God will inevitably, as you seek his face and you go to him, God will encourage you. It happened on the same night the Lord said to him, Arise, go down to the camp. For I delivered it into your hand, but if you are afraid to go down to the camp with Pura, your servant, and you shall hear what they shall say, and afterward your hand shall be strengthened to go down against the camp. Then he went down with Pura, his servant, to the outpost of the Armin." In other words, they had patrols out, right? They had sentries out, to use that kind of... out away from the main body. So if an invading force came against them, the sentries would set up the alarm. The enemy is coming. So it went down and snuck close to one of those sentry posts that says, now the Midianites, the Amalekites, and all the people of the east were lying in the valley. So this is going to play into how the battle goes down. Remember, it's not just one people with one language. There are several different ethnic groups that are under the tutelage, under the leadership of these two Midianite kings. But they have different languages. And we're going to notice the time of the attack is very, very important as well. It says, they were as numerous as locusts, and their camels were without number as the sand of the seashore in multitude. When Gideon had come, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. So as he sneaks up on this sentry post and listens in, the one guy is telling a dream to his companion. Whoa, okay. So what's the dream? And he says, I had a dream, and to my surprise, a loaf of barley bread. It's symbolic of what they had been stealing from the Israelites. They'd been stealing wheat. They'd been stealing their produce. And it's barley. And this barley bread represented in the dream Israel, Gideon. And it tumbled in the camp of Midian, and it came to a tent, and it struck it, so that fell over, overturned the tent, collapsed. Then his companion answered and said, This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, the man of Israel. Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp." Wow! Wow! In other words, Gideon now sees that God has already brought fear. Any general will tell you that morale in your army is worth double the number of your army. Your morale is good and you're sure you can win and you're gonna, as it were, charge hell with a squirt gun and you have that kind of morale, that can go a long way than a defeated enemy. So when the United States military will go after, in modern war, after the enemy, it goes after its command and control, it goes after its communication, it goes after its network of those kind of hubs. So that the troops in the field aren't getting communication from above. They don't know if their leaders are dead. And then we put out all kind of misinformation on all different vectors over the internet, through the airways. We put all kind of misinformation, disinformation out there. And then we start bombing certain places. And people are going offline. And special forces come in. And pretty soon, those troops are just so, they don't know what to do. Because we know that morale is what keeps an enemy in place to fight. Well, these guys had no morale. They were already defeated, even though they outnumbered Israel 135,000 to 300. God encourages this fearful leader. And so it was when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation that he worshiped. What a great moment. He understands that God is going to do this. And this is his moment. This is his moment of true belief. This is his moment where he's not saying, hey, show me another sign. I'm going to lay the fleece out. Hey, do something with the food. Light it on fire. He's past that. This is his moment of true belief. Let me tell you something. In every place and phase of life that you go to, there will be tests that come into your life where you will be tested. You think, oh, I'm an accomplished Christian. I've been a believer for many years. And it's going to get easier. No, it doesn't get easier. There are phases in your life that God comes back to you, and Satan attacks you, and there's another place where you're going to have to get down, and in faith, trust the God that's carried you that far, and you're going to fall on your face, metaphorically or physically, and you say, yes God, you're in control, this is who you are, I'm yielding to you, and you worship. You've struggled and struggled and struggled and struggled. For some of you young people it's your struggle with whether you're going to give if you can trust God with your life. What he's asking you to do. What he's leading you to do. always amazes me with young people. They tell me, oh, pastor, I've placed my faith in Christ. I'm on my way to heaven. So I say, so you think you can trust God with trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years of your eternal soul, but the next 50 years, you're not so sure that you can trust him with the next 50 years, that he will lead you and guide you to the exact place that he wants you to go. You can trust him with trillions. Let me tell you something. If you say, I can trust him with my eternal soul, but I'm going to keep this life, let me tell you what I think. I don't think you're a Christian. Because there's no sense in saying, I can trust him with trillions of years, but I won't trust him with the next 50. That makes no sense. Well, you need to take a step back and say, am I even saved? Because it makes no sense to say that I can trust an unseen God with a place I've only ever heard about called heaven, and I'll trust that and my whole life. And my whole eternal destiny, but I can't trust Him to find me a mate. I can't trust Him with my job. I can't trust Him with His calling in my life. I can't trust Him with that. God will always encourage us. And then our response is to worship. It's to worship. He heard that. He worshipped in verse 15 and it says he returned to the camp of Israel and said, arise for the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand. Now get the time frame. It's that night he has just sent another several thousand home, right? 9,700 have gone home. 22,000 went home the first time. They were afraid. Then he went down to the creek and another 9,700 go. So it's not been like weeks later. It's happening boom, boom, boom. They're still walking home or they're just getting home. And that same night he goes down and he hears this story at the Century Post. He goes back and he says, everybody get up. He said, God has delivered them into our hand. And he divided the company into three companies. So 100 here, 100 here, and 100 here. And he put a trumpet in every man's hand with empty pitchers and torches inside the pitchers. Now, I've seen a lot of battle tactics. I've read a lot of stories about battle organization. And I've been a part of operation planning teams that have been organizing insertion and taking out bad guys. And I've been a part of those kind of things as the chaplain to make sure that everything is on the up and up and that we're not doing anything outside the Geneva Convention, the whole planning system. I've done stuff like that. I have never seen something this stupid. We're going in, guys, with a flashlight and a trumpet. I've seen some pretty hairy stuff being planned. I have never seen... So what's our battle plan? A trumpet and a flashlight boys! Yeah. And he says, and he said to them, look at me and do likewise. Watch. And when I come to the edge of the camp, you shall do as I do. So they're above the camp and he's going to spread them out around the camp at intervals. I don't know what the intervals are. I don't know if it's how many paces. I don't know. But he said, when I blow the trumpet on every side of the whole camp, you say the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. So this great God encourages a fearful leader, but number three tonight, the great God is miraculous in victory. The great God is miraculous in victory. Verse 19, so Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outpost of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch. Beginning of the middle watch. So in Gideon's time, the early watch lasted from 6 o'clock, 1800 in the evening, to 2000, or 10 p.m. The middle watch was 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., so 2200 to 0200. And then the last watch, or the morning watch, starts at 0200 or 2 a.m. and goes to 0600 or 6 a.m. So what they're doing is, they're going to attack, they're going to attack right after the guard change. So it's 10 o'clock at night. People really haven't yet really gone to bed. The returning from all of the outposts around the camp, those sentries, have all just been relieved and so they're all coming back into camp. So that could be actually at a camp of 135,000, you could actually have several hundred men walking back into camp. Now remember, they have different language groups. There's the Midianites, there's the Malachites, there are different different groups of ethnicities that aren't necessarily always going to speak the same language. The leaders might be bilingual, but it doesn't mean that the army, the common army soldier is. Now, what you're going to have is you're going to have hundreds, maybe even a couple thousand guys walking back into the camp. They've been relieved of sentry duty, and now they're going to go to sleep. You've got the whole of the The camp is just starting to bed down. It's about 10 o'clock at night, 1010, 1015, and they're just going to start getting, they're just in their tent, getting ready to put out the lights. The guys are coming back from the sentry post, and they're already afraid. They've already heard the rumors of this large Israelite army, and they've heard, they know that they have been robbing, and raping, and murdering. And we're going to see some of the murders that they did that cost the two generals their lives. They've done all this stuff, so they have a guilty conscience. They know they're in the heart of Israelite territory, and the Israelites hate them. And then all of a sudden, they hear, doo-doo-doo, and it's a blaring sound. It's 10 o'clock at night. They can't see. It's pitch black. And all of a sudden, all around them, 300 lights go up, and these guys are coming back into the camp. It says so, Gideon and the three hundred who were with him came to the outpost of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch. Just as they had posted the watch, and they blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers that were in their hands. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers that held the torches in their left hand, and the trumpets in their right hand for blowing. And they cried, The Sword of the Lord, and Gideon, and every man stood in his place all around the camp. And the whole army ran and cried and fled. These guys are coming back into the camp. All of a sudden 300 lamps go up, trumpets are blaring, there's screaming voices, and all of a sudden the Midianites see these men coming to their camp and they immediately start to rush out and kill those guys because they think they're the Israelites. And then the pitch blackness and the different language groups going on, they immediately start turning on each other and they start killing each other. And it says, when the 300 blew the trumpets, the Lord set every man's sword against the companion throughout the whole camp, and the army fled to Beth-Akashia. Now, Beth-Akashia is about where they were. That's probably about the valley, as they start to move away from there, towards Zerah, as far as the border of Abel-Moholah, by Tabith. In other words, this is about a 25-mile run, in the middle of the night, with no flashlights. with no, you know, with no street signs. They're running to the Ford to get across the Jordan, to get back on the eastern side of the Jordan River, where they're from. And they're running pell-mell. Tens of thousands, and as they're running through the darkness, then somebody is hacking somebody else, and they don't know where the bad guys are, and they're hacking at each other, and they're running pell-mell 20 miles in the middle of the night. Because it's 10 o'clock at night, 10.15 when this all starts, and they're running all night to get to the Ford. So we see the great God is miraculous in victory. And it says, then Gideon sent messengers through all the mountains of Ephraim. So Ephraim was just south of this valley. So he sends, and Ephraim, remember, is the dominant tribe of the north. Remember, it's the two sons of Jacob, Joseph, or two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim is the dominant tribe. It's the biggest tribe. They think they're the most important. We're going to see that in a second. They think they're the most important. They think we're, you know, the cat's pajamas and the cat's meow and whatever other little homespun verbiage you want to use, but they think they're it. And so he sends messengers and he says, come down against the Midianites and seize the watering places as far as Beth Barah and the Jordan. In other words, he says, go seize the fords. Get all your guys out of bed. Get all your tribe and go seize the fords. Because they're not going to come across in mass, a hundred thousand troops. They're going to come across in fives and tens. And you can just, as they can't They can't cross everywhere, they can only cross at the fords or the shallow places. And when they do that, you sit there with your bows and arrows and your sword, and you can just hack them up as they come across the ford. So it said, then all the men of Ephraim gathered together and seized the watering place as far as Bethpara and Jordan. And they captured two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeb. They killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb and Zeb. They killed at the winepress of Zeb. They pursued Midian and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeb to Gideon on the other side of Jordan. So now Gideon crosses over Jordan. He's been moving through the night directly east. He's moved about 25 to 30 miles in the night. He's crossed over the Jordan River and now he's on the other side with his 300 men. So now we see number four this evening. God's great servant exhibits tremendous wisdom. So he's just won this great victory. And now the men of Ephraim, verse 1, chapter 8, said to him, Why have you done this to us by not calling us when you went to fight the Midianites? Why didn't we get the glory? Remember how God said nobody was going to get the glory but him? Look who's interested in the glory. I know why God didn't call the Ephraimites. They were more interested in glory, their glory, than God's glory, weren't they? Let me tell you something, if you're more interested in your name, and somebody thanking you, and you getting the credit, and somebody, oh how wonderful you are, God's not interested in you getting glory. God's interested in His own name getting glory. Anything good that happens in Mike Sproul's life is because of God. Anything that bad happens in Mike Sproul's life, as far as what I do, is because of Mike Sproul's flesh. Anything good in your life is God's work. Don't take the glory for it. Ephraim gets upset. More people get upset. More people get jealous. There's more... I love the phrase my daughter uses, drama llama. Because people want glory for themselves. This is drama llama. Oh my goodness. Instead of saying, yay, we've rid ourselves of the Midianite hordes, they're like, hey, why didn't we get the glory? Why isn't this about us? Some people, you know, life is all about them. Life is not about you. It's not. It's not. They're all upset. And they reprimanded him sharply. So here's this general that's just routed 135,000 Midianites, and they're angry at him. I feel Gideon's pain. It's amazing that Churchill, likely, certainly the greatest prime minister, well, There might be one or two in the 20th century. There's probably four or five British prime ministers, Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher. There have been four or five Penn, William Penn. There are a handful of, it's not Penn who I'm thinking of. It's in the 1700s and I just lost the name. But anyway, there's three or four great British prime ministers. You know with Churchill, he won World War II, right? We'll fight them at the beaches, we'll fight them in the, we'll fight them. Remember that great speech he gave after Dunkirk? If you haven't ever had a chance to watch Dunkirk, especially for some of you older folks, you would love the movie Dunkirk. My wife and I watched it. What a great, great movie and the great speech that Churchill gives. And do you know that Churchill is voted out of office? as soon as World War II is over. In fact, he's voted out of office, I think, right at VE Day or right after VE Day. Churchill, who carried them through the war, when they literally, for a year before the United States came into the war and before Russia came into the war, they were literally, it was Germany and all of Europe against the little island of Britain. For a solid year, it was Churchill against Hitler and nobody else. And as soon as the war is over, they fired him. People are fickle creatures. People have very short memory spans, and they are very, very disloyal. The British people proved that because they voted out one of the greatest Prime Ministers their country had ever had, in one of the greatest crises their country had ever had, and as soon as the war was over, we want somebody else. And until Thatcher comes on, 35, 40 years later, Britain then goes into a long period of decline until Thatcher comes and begins to bring them back out of it because they didn't want Churchill. Well, the Ephraimites were just like that. And listen to God's great servant, number four, who exhibits tremendous wisdom. What wisdom this guy has. He says, what have I done now in comparison with you? I think I would have been, what do you mean? Hey, my 300 guys go chop their heads off too. He doesn't say that. He says, what have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abazer? He's from Abazer. And he's saying to them, the gleanings, in other words, the leftovers of Ephraim are better than the vintage, the best of my hometown. I mean, the worst stuff that you have is better than the best stuff that I have. You're way better than I am. Oh, what a humble leader. What a wise leader. Way to diffuse the tension. Diffuse the drama llama. Way to diffuse the whole situation. Because you could have had now, instead of this great victory against the Midianites that we're going to see finished off, you could have had Israel falling into a civil war. What great humility. You know what? With strife comes contention. With humility comes peace. With humility comes peace. Letting the other person have the last word. Most marriages would be great marriages if they could figure out how to let the other person have the last word. But I have to prove my point. No, you don't have to prove anything. If God knows, that should be enough. Really, it should be. More destructive behavior happens because somebody has to have the last word than almost anything else around. Gideon is just so gracious. I mean, he is in the, he's being wronged, he's being slandered, he's being, God told him who to go get and it wasn't the Ephraimites, because the Ephraimites are more interested in their glory than God's glory. And he doesn't say any of that. He deprecates himself and says, the worst thing you produce is better than the best thing I produce. Oh, look, and look, and God let you capture and kill two of the princes. And it says in verse three, then their anger toward him subsided when he said that. Then notice the great God's leader calls for aid from God's people. The great God's leader calls for aid from God's people. I'm gonna make a point here. So this city, Succoth, is a city in the tribe of Gad on the east side of Jordan. Remember how a couple of the tribes stayed on the east side of Jordan? Gad was one of those. And so when Gideon came to the Jordan, he and his 300 men who were with him crossed over, exhausted, but still in pursuit. Now they've been running at this point 25, 30, 35 miles and fighting as they go. Exhausting effort. Work. Hard work. And they're exhausted. All night. They've been up now probably 24 hours. And then he said to the men of Succoth, Please give loaves of bread to the people who follow me, for they are exhausted and are pursuing Ziba and Zalmunna. Those are the other two Midianite. There are four Midianite princes. And they're pursuing the other two. And give me loaves of bread. And the leaders of Succoth... Now these are Israelites. These are men of Gad. And I'm going to make a point here in a second. He says, Are the hands of Ziba and Zalmunna now in your hand? that we should give you your bread. Wait a second. Should we help you, Gideon? Because have you really killed these guys? Because if we help you and you lose, they're going to come back and they're going to kill us. So let me just tell you something. When you're struggling in your spiritual life, sometimes it will be other Christians that will be the most demonstrably evil to you and unhelpful to you of anybody else. They will. I mean, Satan uses Christians to harm Christians more than he ever uses unbelievers to harm Christians. And sometimes they'll be in your family. Sometimes they'll be in your church. Just buck up. It's not unusual. Here they are fighting and winning an immense victory. And here another tribe of Israel says, no, we're not going to help you. We're not going to do anything for you. Verse 7, so Gideon said, for this cause, when the Lord has delivered Zeba and Salmona into my hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briars. Then he went up from there to Penuel and spoke to them in the same way. And the men of Penuel answered him as the same as Succoth. So he spoke to the men of Penuel, saying, when I come back in peace, I will tear down this tower. So they had an offensive tower. of their city that was probably 40, 50, 60 feet high and you could store soldiers and weaponry and food so that if your town was attacked you could put soldiers in the tower and they could shoot down on the enemy with their bows and arrows. This is a very strong, fortified defensive position. And he says, what he's saying is, I'm going to destroy your defensive capability. your security. You think you're getting security by not helping me because you don't know what I'm going to do with the Midianites and if they're going to win. But I'm going to tell you what, what I'm going to do is I'm going to come back and I'm going to wipe out your security. You know, sometimes we build up, and we save, and we plan, and we do this, and I'm going to have my life, and I'm going to plan my life the way I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do what I want to do, and God's not going to have a part of my life, and I'm going to do it the way I'm going to do it. Let me tell you something. God has a way of wiping out all of your plans so He can accomplish His will in your life. One of my favorite sayings that I've used all my life is, if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plan. If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plan. So we see that the great God's leader calls for aid from God's people. And then we see the great God's general finishes off Jehovah's enemies. The great God's general finishes off Jehovah's enemies. Verse 10, Now Ziba and Zamuna were at Kecor, and their armies with them, about 15,000, all who were left of the army of the people of the east for 120,000 men who drew the story had fallen. This is the verse by which we know how big the army was. 120,000 dead, 15,000 left, 135,000. Now where is this K-Corp? This K-Corp is a long way away. This last battle of this two battle front is about 130 to 140 miles away. It's all the way down by the Dead Sea. It's near modern day Petra. So it's way down by the Dead Sea on the east side of Jordan. So it's, they have now been traveling and traveling for days. And they think, the Midianites now think they're safe finally. They're hundreds of miles away, 135, 140 miles away. And certainly the Israelites aren't chasing us down into what is the modern southern Jordanian desert. Certainly the Israelites are not chasing us down here. And they're safe. They feel comfortable. They've only got 15,000 left. I mean, this huge army has been decimated. The power of this army has been decimated. And Gideon went up the road. And those who dwell in tents in the east of Noba and Jaga Beha. And he attacked the army while the camp felt secure. Now, we don't know how many men he had. He may have picked up a couple thousand here and there. We know that some of the men went to the fords of the river. We don't know, but he still was outnumbered. And a lot of times, this part of the story is kind of a throwaway. Well, he killed 120,000, and there's only 15,000 left. But even if he had 2,000 or 3,000 men, he's still badly, badly, badly outnumbered. And he says, when Ziba and Zalmunna fled, he pursued them, and he took the two kings of Midian, Ziba and Zalmunna, and routed the whole army. The great God's general finishes off Jehovah's enemies, and then next, the great God's man teaches a lesson to those who reject him and his family. So there's two lessons that are gonna be learned here. The great God's man teaches a lesson to those who reject him and his family, verse 13. So then Gideon, The son of Joash returned from the battle, from the ascent of Heres, and he caught a young man of the men of Succoth." So he goes back north about 80 miles, 100 miles, he goes back north. He's still on the east side of the Jordan, so he's still in modern-day Jordan, he's not over in modern-day Israel yet, he hasn't crossed back over the Jordan. And he caught a young man of the men of Succoth, and he interrogated him, and he said, write down the leaders, in other words, who are the elders, who are the leaders of Succoth, and it's the elders, and it came to 77 men. But he came to the men of Succoth, and he said, Here are Ziba and Zalmunna, of whom you ridiculed me, saying, Are the hands of Ziba and Zalmunna now in your hand, that we should give bread to your weary men? And he took the elders of the city and thorns of the wilderness and briars, and with them he taught the men of Succoth." What did he do? He beat them with thorns and thistles and whips, publicly humiliating them. Then he tore down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city. So he went back to the tribe of Israel that had rejected helping him, and he's going to teach them a lesson of now who's the leader here. Then he's got these other two guys, the last two Midianite princes, Ziba and Zalmuna, and he said to Ziba and Zalmuna, what kind of men were they whom you killed at Tabor? Now, it seems that there's an extra biblical story that we don't know about that Gideon's referring to. Tabor, is remember Tabor is where Beric and Deborah had won their great victory what 47 years before or something like that because they'd had 40 years of rest and then they'd had seven years of the Midianites. So a generation and a half or two generations ago that had been where the great battle scene was with Deborah and Beric and Sisera. Well, it seems that sometime earlier, these Midianite princes had killed his family or some of his relatives. And he says to them, what kind of men were they who you killed at Tabor? And they answered, as you are, so were they. Each one resembled the son of a king. Now, in their custom, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, if you killed my brother, I'm going to kill you. In some ways, it's still like that in the Middle East today, is it not? It is. They still live in that Old Testament kind of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. What the Middle East desperately needs is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, doesn't it? I mean, that's what the Middle East needs. Because then they could worship together, Arab and Jew, Kurd, Sunni, Shia, of their religious backgrounds, and it would be one new man in Christ, no more Jew nor Greek, no more Arab or Jew, no more Kurd or Turk, but one new man in Christ. And I tell you, one day when we are in heaven, And one day, when we're in the millennium, there will be people from every tongue, and kindred, and nation. And that day, there will be peace between the Turk, and the Kurd, and the Jew, and the Arab, and the Persian. There will be peace because there will be people from all those kindreds, and tongues, and nations that will gather around the throne and sing praises to Jehovah God. What a glorious day that's going to be. Nobody's going to learn war no more as the old Black spiritual said. Well, Gideon. talks to these men and he says to them, they were as my brothers, the sons of my mother. In other words, I know you killed them. They were my mother's sons. As the Lord lives, if you had let them live, I would not kill you. It was common in those days for one general to let the other general live. And we already saw that a couple hundred years ago, they would cut the thumbs and the big toes off them, but they would let them live. So he's saying, if you hadn't killed my people, I wouldn't have to kill your people. But he said to his firstborn Jether, rise kill them. But the youth would not draw his sword. He was afraid because he was still young. I mean this was a very great honor. Kill two great generals. Kill the two men that have been oppressing our people for seven years. But the young man was afraid, so Ziba and Zalmunas said, rise yourself and kill us. For as a man is, so is his strength. So Gideon, in other words, they wanted to be killed by the general. It was a greater honor to be killed by the general than to be killed by a woman or a youth was dishonoring. That's why Sisera was killed by jail, right? It was dishonoring for a woman to kill a man. But they wanted Gideon, so Gideon rose and killed Zeba and Zalmunna and took the crescent ornaments that were on their camel's necks. And I must quickly give you two more ideas because the end of this story, everything up to this point is just great. But remember that even though God does great things with weak people, that sometimes how we grow up, we stop walking in faith, and how we grow up, comes back to bite us. At any time in your life, you can go back. Some of you were reared in pretty not good homes. Even if they claim Christianity, the home itself was not all that great. The marriage of your parents wasn't all that great, and you learned ways of talking from how your parents talked to each other. You learned ways that they did things from them, and you think you have that all beaten back, and then you realize later in life, whoa. It's not all beaten back. What Gideon had grown up with was something called syncretism. Gideon had grown up, remember? The Baal and Asherah pole, the Baal idol and the Asherah pole was in his front yard that he tore down and built an altar to Jehovah. So his family had syncretized. It means they had tried to merge the worship of Jehovah and the worship of Baal. America does this really good. It's called merging the American dream and Christianity. We're very syncretistic. And we try to merge materialism and God. And God says you can't serve God and money. You can't serve them both. You can't. And Gideon had grown up in a syncretistic environment where you worshipped Baal and kind of a half of Jehovah and Asherah. And you synchronized, you syncretized or brought together or tried to meld together two completely opposing systems. God and money. God and mammon. And you can't do that. You can't serve. That's why the Bible says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In other words, don't serve the gods of this land. Tear down their altars. Don't make a peace treaty with them. That's Judges 2. Romans 12, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed. 1 John 2 verse 15, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Well Gideon, after winning this great victory, goes back to his default setting, which is to be syncretistic. And let's look at how he sets the Israelites up to be demolished. The great God's commander is both wise and foolish. Second to last point, the great God's commander is both wise and foolish. Look at verse 22. It says, then the men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us. They want to make him a king. Now, it's about another 150, 180 years, 200 years until Saul's going to come on the throne. But they already are, we need a king. This thing about just God being our ruler, it's not working out. We need a king. We need someone to lead us in the battle. And you did a great job. Rule over us, both you and your son and your grandson. Set up a dynasty. That was normal Middle Eastern custom. For you have delivered us from the hand of Midian. But Gideon said, I will not rule over you, nor shall my son. The Lord shall rule over you. That's wisdom. He's obeying God's law. It would have been easy for him to say, yes, you're right. I'm going to set up the Gideon dynasty. Gideon didn't do that. Very, very wise. But then he does something very foolish. Then Gideon said, I would like to make a request of you, that each of you would give me the earrings from his plunder. They were Amalekites, and they were Midianites, so they were nomadic, and they wore, they didn't have a bank deposit box or a CD safe, so they wore their money on them, generally in earrings, gold earrings, gold lockets, gold... They bedecked themselves in their finery and they wore it. They took it with them. You didn't want to leave all your money back at home because some other nomadic tribe might come and steal your home and get your money. So the best way to protect yourself and your money was to carry it with you. That's why in the camps of an invading army, when you beat the army, they took the plunder in the camp because they didn't keep their money in a savings box back home. It was on them. And if they died, they didn't need it. And if they left it back home, some other army could come and get it and capture it while they were gone. So they had all this gold on them. So Gideon says to them, Gideon says, hey, listen, spread out a garment and throw your earrings from the plunder. So it's only a small amount. Throw the earrings. Now the weight of the gold earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold. Beside the crescent ornaments, pendants, and purple robes, which were on the kings of Midian, and besides the chains that were around the camels' necks, they put literally hundreds of thousands of dollars around the necks of their camels in gold. And you thought, our football and basketball players wear a lot of jewelry, not any more than these camels. Then Gideon made it into an ephod. So the amount of gold is about 43 pounds. Or in our money, about roughly $65,000 of gold. And he turns it into an ephod, like a robe, that you would use in temple worship. So now he's syncretistic. It's an ephod. It's something that you would use in the worship of the tabernacle. But it's not down at the tabernacle in Shiloh, which is quite a ways away. It's at his own place. And I'm sure in his mind he's thinking, well it will remind people of God's great victory. It'll be a symbol of God's great victory, this ephod. And it'll be a symbol to future generations of what God has done. But God never told him to do this. And it says, and all Israel played the harlot with it there. It became a snare to Gideon and his house. In other words, people started worshiping the ephod. I've often been asked, why didn't God preserve the original writing of Paul? I mean, if God can open up the Red Sea and drown Pharaoh's army, he could certainly have, so we would know exactly what it was, and we could show it, and we could say, look at Paul's handwriting. People would worship that manuscript, wouldn't they? I mean, all over the world we have little pieces supposedly of the cross or of a bone of a saint and you build a whole church around it and then you can be healed because of... What is different between that idolatry and this idolatry? Are you tracking? It was foolish for him to create something. God doesn't want us to create a thing to worship. He wants us. God is spirit, he said to the woman at the well in John 4. God is spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And then lastly, and I am done, the great God's chosen vessel prepares his nation for their next defeat. What a sad ending to Gideon. God's chosen vessel, the great God's chosen vessel prepares his nation for their next defeat, verse 29. Then Jeroboam the son of Joash went and dwelt in his own house. Gideon had 70 sons who were his offspring, for he had many wives. And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son whose name was Abimelech, which is introducing us to the next story next week in chapter 9. Not next week, the week following, because next week is First Fruits Banquet. Now Gideon, the son of Joash, died in a good old age and was buried in the tomb of Joash, his father in Orphra of the Abizurites. So it was as soon as Gideon was dead that the children of Israel again played the harlot with the bales, made Baal barith their God. Thus the children of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side, nor did they show kindness to the house of trouble Gideon in accordance with the good he had done for Israel. What a sad story. They had quiet, according to verse 28, for 40 years. All the days of Gideon. And then he sets this ephod up, and it becomes the bridge. As soon as he's dead, it was a snare to his family, and they started to understand, syncretizing Jehovah and false gods, so that when he dies, they throw out the real God. There's no more syncretism. They just go worship Baal and Ashtaroth. Let me just say this to you as parents, grandparents. Be very careful what you do because your kids will always go further than what you do. Be very careful what you do because your kids will always go further than what you do. Always. It's a rare kid. My wife is a very, very, very rare kid who her dad was over here. doing and living his life. And my wife said, I want nothing to do. I want to live over here. That's a rare. And her family bears that out because of her brothers, and her half sisters, and her stepsisters. Her family bears that out over the last 30 years. When you say, I can do this and it doesn't hurt me, hmm, hmm, maybe, maybe not. But remember, your children are watching you. Your children are watching what you do, what you say, what you watch, where you go, and they are smart. They are whip smart. And where you go, and what you do, and what you say, how you act, what you drink, Let me tell you something, the history of the Word of God, if we learn anything from it, Romans 15, four, they were written aforetime for our learning that we through patience and comfort of scripture might have hope. If we learn anything from the Word of God, we learn that the next generation goes two, three, four steps beyond, and they go beyond an evil. That's why I put up a tweet this week, and I said, immorality, sexual predators, evil behavior, knows no political party. It knows no religious tradition. Because every political party, every religious tradition has evil people in them. And what America needs is a revival. That's what America needs. Your home needs a revival. This church needs a revival. Our college, our school needs a revival. Or else, in 30 years, they're going to be saying the same thing about this ministry that they said about Gideon after Gideon died in Israel. Let's not let that happen. Let's not let that happen. Father, thank you so much for your word.