The book of Jesus, chapter 6. As you are turning, I shall pray to ask God that He would work in our hearts, He would give us a hearing heart. You know, I like Solomon because when he, the Lord asked him, What should I do for you now that you're king? He said, I want an understanding heart. Well, in the Hebrew word understanding is the word hearing. And so I often just say, give me a hearing heart. One that I might hear to be opened. And so let's have that and be attuned to what God has for us. It might only be a phrase or a sentence or a word that I might say, but God that might use that in your life. That you be different. Every time there is a chapel, there's an opportunity to exit in this place different than what you were when you came in. As was always the opportunity, anytime we're before God's Word, before God's messenger, help us to be different. Help us to change from the things that we hear. Give us a hearing heart. Father, I do pray that, and I pray that often. I pray, Father, often, as you know, that I might be able to walk consciously aware of my life and my steps, and I pray for these students, dear Lord, that this morning that they would have a hearing heart, open to the words that are proclaimed that are your words, I pray, not my words. I will pray, Father, you will dampen, that you will filter out anything that I might decide to inject that is unnecessary, unprofitable, and just all about me. But it is about you in which I wish to convey, and about them, and your relationship to them, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Let me tell you what I really want to try to accomplish. As I talked about the hearing heart, what I really would like to see at least to occur is that you in the process of hearing and percolating and processing in your mind to examine where God is leading you. I want to look at the calling. I want to look at how God worked in leading an individual, in this particular case Gideon, but I can identify with the facets, the aspects that are in this passage with my own personal life and my own personal calling. And so what I would like, that's my objective, to see what is it that God does in leading a person to calling. leading to the point where we respond to what God wants in our life. Now, I'm going to make a concession. And the concession is this. Looking at Gideon, we can look at a lot of other characters in the scripture. We can get a lot of testimonies from those that are in the ministry. And I know it's going to vary. It's going to vary widely. It's not going to all be the same. There's no question about it. It's not going to be the same. But God's got a purpose for each and every one of our lives. He's got a purpose. And I think, and I would hope, obviously being here, you want to know what that is. Now, some of you may already know. Some may know, but yet have some sense of, I need a little bit of reassurance. As I look down the corridors of time, as we were sharing with me all this a little while, that corridor of time isn't necessarily that long. I mean, I can only see, Man, I'm near graduation, but what's after that? That's as far as I can see. But then again, maybe there's some that are just muddling about, just waddling along, or maybe only pursuing the things that they have a personal interest in and have no connection between that desire and the things that relate to God. a redemptive service, something that makes transformation and change in our society in which we live, and seeing the local church built, or a mission field built, or people grounded and growing in the Lord through you. So I make the concession that yes, there's probably, it's a wider type of possibility and phases and steps that might be there. But I think the three that I'll ultimately share here in a moment, I think they're very foundational. Now again, why the message? The message has to do with the fact that yes, you are here to prepare for life. Here to prepare for that. You are, depending upon how that age range, and I'll take the age range between 20 and 34, which be millennial, the millennial generation, in 20 to 30 years, maybe a little longer, 20 to 30 years, that generation, your generation, will be filling in the higher leading positions in the world or in our nations, whether it's government, education, business, church, the mission field. You're about a generation and a half away, because the Generation Xs are moving, are in pretty much that position. My generation, the latter group within that group of baby boomers are coming to the end, where the baton totally passed. They're no longer in play, at least in our nation. So that challenge is in light of that as transitional people of God going into the world. You're transitional. Gideon is transitional. His dad is still in position. His dad is still in the elders and perhaps maybe grandparents are still there. They're still in the forefront. Gideon is working in the land of his father. When I took verse starting in verse number 11, we find that the angel of the Lord, that would be a Christophany, that would be, we would believe that would be the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. He came under the Tirbeneth tree, which was an orpah, which belonged to Joash the Abizrite, which his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, The Lord be with you, and you mighty man of valor. Gideon said to him, O my Lord, if the Lord was with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where is all the miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. Then the Lord turned to him and said, Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the land of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? So he said to him, O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my father's house." And we'll just basically stop there. I want to look at Gideon, as I indicated, because I think there are three facets here that ultimately clarifies the calling of Gideon. And I find these same three facets in my own personal life. as the Lord ultimately put me into the ministry. Let me give you the three in summary, just in case we get detracted in length of time in different places, so that you know what I'm referring to. Number one, there is a concern about what's really taking place, I could say, in society, in our world that is around us. There is this vital concern, there's an awareness that things are not really, really right. Secondly, there's a clear understanding of what is very, very foundational for life. What really makes life right? That's our understanding. But yet, there's this inconsistency with that. And then thirdly, obviously, I would say it is connected. You know, there's a sense of inadequacy. I mean, who am I? I'm just a, I'm a small fry, I'm a small fish in this huge ocean of humanity with a lot of high up people, a lot of hogs at the trough, head hogs at the trough. as compared to me. So those are the three. There has to be some sense of awareness of the world in which we live. I often sometimes take young pastors when they go out and I say, all we're going to do is just go out and look. And I want you to tell me what you see. What is it that you see? And the idea is that, boy, you see humanity just waddling about, struggling in life, trying to make ends meet. I have to go to... Physical therapy, I'm down to my last. I've had shoulder surgery. And one of the attendants there, I mean, she's always, every time I might have a, I have a meeting, maybe on a Tuesday, and I say, well, three more days, and on this Friday, four more days, it's weekend. Or if I go on a Thursday, well, boy, just one more day, and it's Friday. I said, you live for the weekend? Yeah. Well, what about those other five days? She said, I'm just living for the weekend. That's all. I'm trying to get out of here. So let's look at Gideon, if we might, at those three. First off, we'll look at Gideon's concern. He had a profound social, spiritual concern. When the angel of the Lord responded to him, and then obviously our writer tells us, being in the capital A, depending upon how your translation is, the New King James, it lets us know this is the translation that would be related to Yahweh, or Yehovah, however that wants to be pronounced. We typically say Yahweh, and since that word Lord is Yahweh, the angel capitalizes it as a. But Gideon, when Gideon responds in verse number 13, he said unto him, O my Lord, O Adon, O Master, I mean he doesn't recognize him first off, he doesn't recognize him as Yahweh. But what he does is basically share his whole, basically, sense. We get this sense and the sense, what's he doing? He's working for his dad, he's working in the farm, he's working as the family, and he's hiding food because the Lord has allowed the Midianites to come in because the generation before them had let things get out of whack. And so the Lord turned them over to the Midianites, and the Midianites is just really wreaking havoc over it, taking all their food and ruining their crops, bringing their animals in, feeding off the land. And so what they're doing is trying to preserve themselves. I'm going to hide this food. We're going to hide it in a place so they don't find it. And so the Lord comes to Gideon and says, hey, As he responds, he says, the Lord be with you, a great blessing, but also the Lord is making a real statement that is very personal, so it's much more than a greeting, it's a very, very personal affirmation that he's making to him. And he called him a mighty man of valor, a victorious man, a warrior, somebody that can get things done for the glory of God. And he says, wait a minute, how can God be with us when this is what's going on? I mean, look what's happening in the world. Look what's happening in our world. And if God is with us, then where are those particular miracles? I mean, we should be, things should be far better if God was with us. And he isn't, at least that was his, as he assessed things, things are not good. And so there is this real concern that he has. And one of the ideas of this concern is a concern like I basically have. I kind of divided my life in, really I got four, and maybe one time over time I'll share all those aspects. But I'll just give you from college, when I sat in your seats to perhaps maybe up to today. Starting off, sitting in your seats, unsaved collegian, baby boomer, front end baby boomer, because I'm at the front end. Radical in thinking, looking at my parents and the world that was around me, it says there's got to be change. We used to talk off on the side, just as young people, 18 years old, 17, 18-year-old kids, talking about how we're going to change this world. That was our concern. We did not like what was taking place and said, we're going to change this world. And unfortunately, being unsaved, the change was not necessarily for the better. It really wasn't for the better. Our approach was revolution. Our approach was a radical change. And certainly a lot of the changes did occur. I think they're really, well, I won't go down too far, dress. Music, you know, prior to my generation, there was no music for a teenager or for a young person. It was all for older people. But in the late 50s and 60s, songs were being written that dealt with our kind of problems and concerns. And so music changed. Dress changed. Obviously, immorality changed. Sexual freedom changed. And as I indicated to you, drugs came into play. And revolution came into play. And now you live in part, as that's been manifested through your parents, And then obviously, as we find ultimately today, as things have gone worse and gotten worse. Being aware of what's going on socially, which has a spiritual foundation to that. Spiritual foundation. Gideon had that. I had that. When I got saved, so it says radical, professional, and missional. After I'd gotten saved. is that what was most important, while all the things that I had done under those other two categories and phases of my life, I could see the real answer was missin' them. And I can remember going down, and I was in this church that had a seminary, very similar to this church here, and just want to know, guys and gals, where are you going? Where are you going? Can you see what's going on out there? Can you see what is taking place out there? People need the Lord, as the hymn writer wrote. People need the Lord. And if you've got that sense, that's a very, very key facet in the calling. The calling of Gideon, my calling, and perhaps others' calling. Let's look at the second. The second was that Gideon's foundation for life is also in verse number 13. He understood the singular extraordinary event that set the course for Jewish life. So in verse number 13, Gideon would say, well, oh my Lord, okay, oh my master, if the Lord was with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles? And then he says, which our fathers taught us about, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? Very foundation. We might say, this is what I learned in Sunday school. This is what my parents taught me. That our life, the very foundation of our life, has to do with the crossing, the exodus, the deliverance from Egypt. The very foundation for that is what the Lord has done to us. But the seemingly is that, is this a powerless faith? And perhaps maybe some might think, well, just like Gideon, well, is God working? Is this a powerless faith? He says, where, you know, has the Lord forsaken us? We're in trouble this generation because of how bad my father's generation is. I mean, he's got a, he's got a, uh, uh, an altar to bail. His first action is after he decided, okay, Lord, I'm going to take your call. I can just imagine destroy his dad's bail altar for his first action that he does. but he's saying something is being wrong and what is needed is the presence of God and that what is very foundational for our life is what took place crossing the Red Sea or what took place coming out of Egypt. And by the way, that being taught historically to Gideon was also a contemporary message. Because in the Judges, when the people of God got off track, He would rise up during this period. He would rise up a judge. And this particular case is quite interesting. He rose up a prophet, then he raises up Gideon as a judge. So he raises up a proclaimer. And so if we were to go back in chapter 6, up to verse number 8, on down to verse number 10, he says, But the Lord sent a prophet to the children in Israel, who said to them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage and delivered you out of the house of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all those who oppressed you and drove them out before you and gave you their land. Your problem is, and not to fear the hammer, the problem is you haven't obeyed me. So the message was the same. Even though what he had learned as a younger man, God brings in a prophet in contemporary times and proclaims that very same message. What is very central to the existence of the Jewish people is what took place with the deliverance, the crossing of the Red Sea. And that's very important to at least understand what is foundational in our faith. Let's take it to the New Testament. What is foundational in our faith? A different cross. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. That becomes very, very foundation what Jesus Christ did on the cross and dying for our sins, raising again for eternal life, but also quality of life. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the keys as I teach in in our seminaries, certainly in pastoral theology, is how do you enter into the ministry? How do you go in? And so here's what the Lord, Lord Jesus Christ, after baptism, after the temptation, this is how he enters in. And he goes into the synagogue and he complains, what's his purpose? Why am I here? And he quotes in Isaiah several places there, and he says, you know when I'm here, as I look, if I might elaborate and make commentary, as I am here in light of the society and the way things are, I am here to proclaim good news to poor people. economically poor or spiritually poor. I'm here to proclaim something good for them. People struggle. They need to hear something good. I'm here to do that. I am here to heal people who are struggling emotionally and psychologically. I am here to heal the brokenhearted. You know, one of the sad things, and I mean, it's just amazing, I'm trying to keep a little bit of a tune, stay in tune with what's taking place in the lost world, in our world in general, and over in Queen Creek, 65 teenagers have committed suicide. What does that tell me? They're kids with no hope! Here are people that are, kids that are struggling, of course, with all the peer pressure and all the kinds of stuff that goes on on the internet and all the pressure that you get trying to, I want to be somebody, and there's a way in which we just intimidate. 65 kids have committed suicide. Just amazing. It's just gripping. It's gripping. They have no hope. And because our society, my generation, by the way, I taught mathematics in both junior college and regular four-year college. And early on, 1999, probably up to about 2003 or so, I used to apologize to the class for my generation for what I did. I just apologized. I'm on the front end of the baby boomer. I'm the oldest of the baby boomers. So baby boomers go, they're now 54, I believe 54 to 72. But the front end are the ones that kind of set the stage. Now things change, and they can change. But we were radicals of the highest rank, of the highest rank. And so there is no civil religion. which means there's no acknowledgment of God, whether they know God or not, there's an acknowledgment there is one, and that he has ordained life to be a certain way. The Lord Jesus Christ came to heal those that are hurting, physically hurting, those that feel the sense of oppression. Because what is foundational in our faith, and it should be from the cross, if we were to institute that in our life and however God has you and your calling, and you should want that wherever that might be, it needs to be one of a redemptive agent, are these perhaps. Honesty. The family, which is foundational. Gratitude. Paul says, you know what? The lost, neither were they thankful. Even though they were aware of God, they weren't even thankful. And hope. This is what Gideon kind of sensed as he understood what he had been taught, what he expected to see, that he wasn't seeing, but he held to that, because then the Lord will say, go in that might. Go in the fact that you would understand that was as foundational as what took place in Egypt, it was miraculous, and I was with you. Go with that. Which brings to the last facet is the fact that obviously he felt inadequate. I felt inadequate. This thing is huge. This is big. This is more beyond no human ability to be able to do. And so, in verse 14, he says, the Lord turned to him and says, okay, go in my might. Go in this might of yours that you've got. And then 15, he says, oh Lord, you know, how can I save Israel when I'm just a little fry, a small, small cog in this whole thing? And so, yeah, that is a legitimate thing. But having deep concerns, understanding the very foundationals of life, there's no question about it, we can have legitimate concerns. Can I be used by God in light of how I view who I am? But that's okay, because the Lord makes this statement, which is very, very key. If God is not with you, and you probably have heard it many times, if God's not with you, it's not going to get done. It's not going to be efficacious. In other words, it's not going to be worked out in a way that perhaps you hope. If God's not with you, it's not going to sustain you in difficult times because it isn't always just a smooth slide. You need Emmanuel with you, not me. That's my name. But you need God with you. Emmanuel is who you need. And so therefore, young people, It is critical and vital just to consider getting, consider my testimony. Those three that are very, very vital and then assessing where you are in your seat. When I was a freshman, I look at my three years, my four years, really four and a half years. There's probably three significant points in my life that I thought were very, very instrumental and key. And the first one was as a freshman sitting in freshman orientation, Dean and Min presented a message to all the freshmen coming in. As you see and understand, that as a 12-year-old, I knew what I was going to be. I'm in the 2% category. I knew before teenager what I wanted to be. And I think that helped guide me to avoid some of the other garbage that I could have fallen into because I kept that focus. But I was very, very fearful. I wanted to be an engineer, but I was very, very fearful, good in math, good in science. But I was afraid that I don't know if I would be a good engineer. I wasn't worried about the classwork. I was worried about the profession. Would I be good at that? So I sat there, and I says, oh, you know what? I'm going to change my major. I'm going to be maybe a technician. That sounds like easy. And the dean said, and I don't know all he says, because you're 45 minutes like I'm 40 minutes here. I'm about to close here. Some of you are sitting here that are going to make your major your minor. How did he know that? That was me. I was about to make my major my minor because I was afraid. And I made a change. And he said that, some of you are about to make your major, your minor. And I said, yes, that's me. And I did not. I says, OK. Now again, I'm not saved. But I would consider wholesome types of decisions that were being made. Another guy was also like me. And he didn't choose that. I remember when we graduated, he came up to me, he says, Daniel, I wanted to be an engineer, too, but I didn't. I went into marketing. I went into whatever it is, basket weaving. And he said he wanted it easy. He wanted it easy. He graduated. He'd go on there 18, 3 years, 4 years, 22, 23 years of age. He re-enrolled. Amazingly, he re-enrolled as a freshman because he had made his major his minor. And then he went back and got his major. Now I don't know your majors and what you're doing. My challenge is obviously that you genuinely seeking the call of God, however that might go. I think three of those, those three facets there, I think they're pertinent. Certainly they're in verse two. I mean, and apprehension needs to be there too. Don't think we're big and bad and that we're the best thing since sliced bread. But the point is that we need to have a certain fear. You know I have a certain fear because of the boss that I work for. I proclaim the Word of God to God's people, and I am God's instrument. I want to be careful. I've got to stand before Him. The things that I say to you, I've got to stand before God. And I want to be careful. And even though maybe I've done it for years and months and time and time again, every time you pick up the scalpel, I want to be careful. When that surgeon worked on my, or say, have you ever had a surgeon? Nope, but I want you to be careful. You might have done this a hundred times. I want you to be careful. And I want you to cut and then say, this is the arm. Not this one. Not this. This is the arm. Put an X on it. By the way, they do that. Put an X on it. It's not messed up here. I don't want to wake up and, hey, where's my arm? OK? You want to be there. I want to challenge you. You're in transition. You're in transition. And you want to get in that pipeline and being used by God that as you see our society, as you see the world goes, you're in place. Why? To proclaim the good news. To assist those that are struggling and are brokenhearted. And those who think they're victims. You've got the answer. If the foundationally, it's the cross. You can hold that together and understand the implication and the import of that. Father, all these are your people coming forward. I pray you to hold their hearts. Speak to them as you did with Gideon and others, me. You understand the weakness of the human spirit. Our sense of inadequacy, fear, reluctance. But I pray, Lord, they don't make their major their minors. And being willing to be genuine, to say, here I am, Lord, send me. Because they see what's around them and they understand the foundations of where truth really, really lies. Bless them, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen.