And we thought, how many children? Did we get all 100 at one time? No, we only had 38, but we thought we had all 100 at one time trying to get him in and out of that room. But it was really beautiful to know that when we do something wrong, we have someone that we can go to, that we can lay all our sin before him. And this is what this song says to me. Something beautiful, something good All my confessions He understood for him was loneliness and strife but he did something beautiful with my life if there ever were dreams that were lofty and noble, they were my dreams at the start. And the hopes for life's best were the hopes that I harbored deep down in my heart. But my dreams turned to ashes, my castles all crumbled, my fortune turned to loss. So I wrapped it all up in the rags of my life and laid it at the cross. Something beautiful, something good. All by confusion, he understood. For him was loneliness and strife, But he did something beautiful with my life. Thank you so much, ladies. Let's take our Bibles tonight, shall we? And open them up to the book of Judges, Judges chapter 6. And before we dive deeper into Gideon, if you were here last Sunday morning, actually we started Gideon last Sunday morning, so I'm assuming you remember last Sunday's message, but let me just say at this point, it is impossible to know exactly why we go through what we go through in life. There is no one reason why. It's impossible to know that. To know exactly why some people go through some things and others don't seem to have to go through those things. We want to be careful as we look at, because we're not looking at the entire topic of pain, suffering, and trials, and why people have it. We're looking at one particular instance in the life of Israel. And so we want to be careful that we don't paint anyone, including ourselves, with a broad brush and say, ah, so this is why I'm having troubles, or that's why they're having troubles, okay? We don't want to do that. That's not the purpose of this study here tonight, to look at the topic, but rather, tonight we're simply going to look at a portion of God's word and prayerfully, hopefully, prayerfully, apply it to ourselves, okay? Before Gideon could become Israel's deliverer, before he could be used by God, He first, he had to come to know God in a very real and personal way, in a reverent way even. God revealed himself to Gideon in a very, very special way. Look with me at verse 11, Judges chapter 6. And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, or that pertained unto Joash the Abizrite. And his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. Verse 12, here it is. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Now, we're gonna look more at what he was called there, not tonight, but here in the near future. The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. That almost sounds contradictory, because what is he doing right then? He's threshing wheat in hiding. Oh, thou mighty man of valor who's living in a den in a cave and hiding his food so no one will steal it. This revelation here, this was a prime motivator for Gideon. One of the important keys to serving God is to know God well. We must know God well if we're going to serve well and to have a right relationship with God. There must be a closeness and understanding about God. Folks, our relationship cannot be cold. It cannot be distant. It can't be vague. One of the types of relationships, like what I just described, that type does not allow a person to be faithful in spite of circumstances. Now, can we just apply it to earthly relationships? Okay, you know, I tend to do that. Because we can relate to it, most of us here can. Let's relate it to a marital relationship. And the relationship between this husband and wife could best be described as cold, distant, and vague. There's no closeness. They don't really know each other. They don't spend time getting to know each other. They're not constantly studying each other. It's cold, distant, and vague. And what can tend to happen generally in that type of a relationship is it's very hard to remain faithful when circumstances get tough. Some people do, praise the Lord. But many don't. Circumstances in life happen, and because of the cold, distant, vague relationship elements, the faithfulness to the relationship is not there. And I'm not saying that one or more are going to go off and have an affair, but they certainly leave the relationship. Today there seems to be, folks, an emphasis on methods and programs for doing God's work. Whether it is methods and programs for corporate worship setting, you've got to do it this way. You've got to have this element, or you've got to change that element. In order to do God's work today, you've got to do this. Sometimes those programs or methods, this pragmatic approach, is not just applied to a worship setting, but it gets applied to teen programs. You've got to do it a certain way. Or even Bible schools. This is the way we've always done it, right? We have to be careful about that. God is not restricted to do things our way. Whether it's in here, out there, or wherever. And what happens is this, I'm afraid. Because of the emphasis on methods and programs, what happens is we seem to forget the most important thing is to be right with God. That's what matters, is just to be right with God. In our personal life, of course, but in our interactions with other people that we're serving with, we have to be right with God with how we interacted with others. If not, our power only comes from the program at that point. And program power doesn't save anyone, folks. God power does. So what do we do? We plan, we organize, we enlist helpers for a ministry or a program, and that's all good. We need to do that. But we also need to come to know and bow down to God and his word when we approach this idea. God revealed himself to Gideon Let's look again verse 12 and we'll also include verse 13 the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and said unto him the Lord is with thee thou mighty man of valor and Gideon's response Excuse me and Gideon said unto him. Oh my lord if the Lord be with us Why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles, which our fathers told us of? Saying, did not the Lord bring us out from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. Wow, what a response. The angel of the Lord. Folks, I know this took place in the Old Testament, okay, and the angel of the Lord would come and talk with people, but not that often. This was a rare event. Gideon is speaking to an angel of the Lord, and look how he responds to him. Now, the angel of the Lord, who was that? Was it Gabriel, Michael? Most believe that it was an appearance of Jesus Christ. The first thing that Gideon was informed of in this message from the angel of the Lord was that God cared. God cared. God said to him through the angel of the Lord, the Lord is with thee. And look how Gideon responded to that revelation that God cared. He protested. He objected to it. God says, I care. Gideon says, no you don't. Have you ever heard that from your spouse? I love you, honey. No, you don't. I never have. Just saying. Look how Gideon responded, though. He protested, he objected. Basically, God said he cared. Gideon said, no, you don't. But let's look at this. When God spoke the words, the Lord is with thee. That phrase meant that he was for them. God is for you. God is concerned for you. God cares for you. Okay, so prove it. Perhaps was Gideon's mentality or God knew that Gideon was going to be protesting and so the proof came, the evidence, the evidence of that caring came. God heard their cries and what did he do in verse 7? He sent a prophet. Look at that, it'll be on the screen. And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried unto their Lord. This is what we looked at last week. Because of the Midianites, verse 8, the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel. And then the prophet proceeded to remind them of how God delivered them up from Egypt. And the angel of the Lord, in fact, is telling Gideon that. But greatest evidence, folks, that God cares is God's presence with us. Demonstrated, we see this in Genesis chapter 39 with Joseph. Chapter 39, verse 2, it says, the Lord was with Joseph. when he was in the pit. Very, very, can we say, dark time in his life. Literally, he's in a pit. The Lord was with him. Joseph not only survived, but he prospered, didn't he? Then, circumstances changed. Thrown into a prison. another very dark time in his life. Circumstances were not ideal, we might say. And what do we see there in verse 23 of chapter 29? We see the words again, the Lord was with him. Even when things were bad, Even when, you know, you have in life the good, the bad, and the ugly, this was the ugliest of the ugly, okay? This was beyond ugly. And some of you have experienced beyond ugly in life before. And God said to Joseph, the Lord was with him, all right? When the Lord is with us, we need not fear the bad. We need not fear the bad circumstances in life. The question is, is God with you, right? Is he with you? Do you have the closeness of relationship with him when those times hit? So God showed Gideon this. He evidenced his presence to Gideon And what did Gideon do? He protested. Now, as humans, it's hard for us to believe that God is with us when we maybe have been in the desert for such a long time. And it doesn't look like we're ever going to get out of the desert. It's just hard to believe that God is with us. when the circumstances in life, it's not just one, but there's multiple, and they begin to pile up, and they leave us asking, when will it end? Or asking, will it ever end? It's hard to believe that God is blessing us when materially we're doing very poorly. This was Gideon's situation. I mean, he had nothing. And so, walking by sight and not by faith, he lashed out at God and protested a biblical truth. He protested, in fact, three things about God that are very similar to the protests today. Now here's where we prayerfully consider and ask ourselves, does this apply to me tonight? He protested the fairness of God. Why then, he says, is this thing befallen us? Blaming God for the troubles. God, you say you're with us, then why is this happening? Why is God letting all these things happen? It's a question, actually, that ignores the real cause of the problem that we looked at last week. The real cause of the problem that we see there in verse 1. It was idolatry in the life of Israel. Idolatry is something that prevailed in the land. And Gideon, Gideon himself could not plead ignorance in this matter. In fact, his own father had an altar to Baal. I mean, it was everywhere. But Gideon shut his eyes to the real and obvious problem and blamed God instead. Sometimes we do that. Blaming God never has and never will bring solutions. Generally, it brings more problems. So I would caution you against doing that. But what happens? Men continue to blame God. Maybe not God, but they blame a church. They blame a man. We sometimes ignore God's Word, don't we? We envy, we hate, and then blame God for fightings and wars. Do men do that? We choose, speaking of humankind, we choose to live immorally and then wonder where God is when we're plagued with terrible diseases and the problem of abortion. We're greedy. I mean, how could God let innocent babies die, right? Blaming God for decisions to live immorally. You say, pastor, he's saying every aborted baby is because of immorality. No, I'm not. But isn't it interesting that statistic is never given? How many unmarried ladies get abortions versus married ladies? I've never seen that statistic. We are greedy, we're violent. Crime fills the front page of the newspaper. We wonder, where's God? We choose to covet, we choose to desire to have more things, to hold back on our financial giving. And then when the financial pressures mount, we wonder, where's God? I can't pay my bills. We manage our homes, our home lives with a little sprinkling of God here and there when he fits our schedules. And then when things fall apart, when our children wander off, when they reject God in ways that we never would, we wonder, where's God? The problem is not the inadequacy of God, folks. but rather man's iniquity. That's the problem in our world. It's a sin problem. Gideon, he also protested the power of God. He questioned it with that phrase that he utters, where's all the miracles? Gideon's problem with this protest was mistaking God's will for God's power. If for some reason God is not willing to answer a prayer the way we want it answered, some people conclude that God is not able and He's not so powerful after all. And we can sometimes be slow to allow for God's right to exercise His will. His plan. We can be even slower sometimes to recognize that our sins may be the reason. Isaiah chapter 59 verse 1 and 2, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy that it can't hear, But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear." Sometimes that's the reason, folks. So it wasn't God's power that was deficient in this case, rather it was, again, man's impurity. So Gideon protested God's power, he protested God's faithfulness as well. He said, the Lord hath forsaken us. He once was with us, and he has turned his back and left us, questioning his faithfulness. Gideon had it all mixed up, folks. God had not forsaken them, they forsook God. God says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So why is it there are times in my life, you say, when I don't feel like God is near me? Well, God hasn't moved. He's right where you was. Let me clean up my grammar here. He's right where He was when you chose to wander down a different path. Because God doesn't change. We change. Daily, sometimes. Israel is the one that had gone after Baal. So, these protests of Gideon, they didn't reveal any deficiencies in God. They did reveal that God, or that Gideon, he still had some growing to do. Do we examine ourselves? Do we offer these protests? Do we question God at times? They reveal that we have some growing to do yet. And I believe we do still have some growing to do, don't we? Can we bow our heads, please? Folks, So it is with us. We cannot serve God if we are not right with God. So I want us to take a few moments here tonight before we observe the Lord's Supper. Take a few moments and examine our hearts. Are we right with God right now? I'll ask our pianist if they would play as we just take a moment and let the Spirit speak to us.