We're turning this evening, once again, to the book of Judges, to a very brief passage in chapter 10. The opening verses of Judges chapter 10, reading together from verse 1 to the end of verse 5. And after Abimelech, there arose to defend Israel Tola, the son of Puah. the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar. And he dwelt in Shamir, in Mount Ephraim. And he judged Israel twenty and three years, and died, and was buried in Shamir. And after him arose Jer, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty and two years. And he had thirty sons that rode on thirty-ass colts, and they had thirty cities, which are called Havoth-ger, unto this day, which are in the land of Gilead. And Ger died, and was buried in Cammon." Amen. The Lord will add His own blessing to the reading of His precious Word for His namesake. And after Abimelech, There arose to defend Israel. As I was reading this portion just now, it occurred to me that there is always an after when you deal with an Abimelech. Last week and the week before, we were looking at this prince of evil. In many ways, in scripture, one of the outstanding foreshadowings of Antichrist, a man of immense satanic power, a man who rose to crush every vestige of godliness in Israel, a man who seemed to threaten the very existence of the truth of God. When the Church of Christ is going through periods when her enemies seem to be cock-a-hoop, when it appears that the forces and furies of evil are unstoppable, We come almost to the place of giving up hope and thinking this is the last word. But you know the devil never does have the last word. No matter how powerful the enemies of the cross of Christ, no matter how numerous, there is always an after word. Abimelech's reign was not very long, only three years. He was dead and gone, buried and gladly forgotten. But the work of God went on. Those of you who have been with us in Sabbath mornings will remember for two mornings we were looking at the sufferings of God's people described toward the end of Hebrews chapter 11. In the period of time between the Old and the New Testament, there arose a Syrian king who decided that he would wipe out the worship of Jehovah. Antiochus Epiphanes. He lives today in history books. He is celebrated more because of the opposition of godly men and their faithful stand for God than for anything he himself ever accomplished. But this man arose to wipe out forever the cause of God and the cause of truth. Antiochus came, and he went, and the cause of God marched on. It has ever been that way right throughout history. And it will be to the end of time. It is good to know that when men have done their worst, and devils have done their worst, and the furies of hell have gone as far as an all-wise God will ever allow them, after it all, the final chapter has already been written, and Christ is conqueror. We ought never to lose sight of that. We ought to get out of the Church of Christ and out of the hearts of the people of God and out of all our service every taint of a defeated attitude. We ought to get out of our hearts and out of our lives every thought of the fear of man, and of the fear of devils, and of the fear of the opposition, because we should have it written large and clear on our heart that men will come and they will go. But when all is said and done, our God will go marching on, and his cause will have ultimate success. After Abimelech, there arose to defend Israel, Tola. Who on earth is Tola? And after him, there arose Jeor, beside whom Tola was a world-renowned figure. In many ways, a strange portion of scripture to read and to take for a Sabbath evening meditation. But as I thought of it, I recognized that here is a very brief passage with a tremendous encouragement for ordinary Christians. The most of us have to fall into that category. If you were to die today, America would never know that you'd ever been here. You've often heard the old saying, you put your fist in a bucket of water and pull it out and you'll see the hole you leave, that's the kind of a hole you leave behind you as far as the world's concerned when you're dead and gone. We're just the ordinary. Nothing great, nothing outstanding. The devil then would take the next step of logic and say, therefore, nothing important. But this is a passage of scripture with a tremendous encouragement for all the very, very ordinary people in the Church of Christ, amid all the stirring biographies of the great men, and indeed women, The mighty people of the Book of Judges, we think of an Atheniel, a man of immense courage, a man of military might, a man who could lead men, a giant among men. We think even of an Ehud, a man who by personal courage could go in the name of the Lord right into the presence of the most mighty to cater on the earth and bring him down by the hand of justice and announce the judgment of God. Then go out and blow the trumpet for the whole nation of Israel. What a man! We think of Deborah, a mother in Israel and as great a spiritual giant as any we find in this book. a Gideon who proved God and saw God rend the heavens and come down on his behalf. And then we come even to Abimelech, that self-proclaimed king. That man who, whatever his wickedness and his evil, was yet a man of magnetic personality, a man who could motivate an entire people, a man who could grasp political and military power in his fist and be determined not to let it go, a man who could stamp his will upon the will of a nation. And amidst all these, we have Tola, and Jair, ordinary people. Very significant that they come in where they do after Abimelech, as I'll show you in a moment. The point about them is that their ordinariness did not disqualify them from service. The point about them is that they were God's men at a specific time. And Tullah in his place was just as much God's man as Gideon had been in his place and in his day. Now, I don't think there's any evidence that these men ever reached the heights of spiritual or national greatness that Gideon reached. But nonetheless, they were God's men. In that day, for the work of God, they didn't do the great exploits of others, but together. There's some dispute among scholars over this particular detail. But together, they brought a number of years of rest and peace to Israel. If you add up their numbers, 23 years and 22 years respectively, you get 45 years of peace. Actually, in the dating of the book of Judges, they may well have overlapped in two different places for quite a lot of that time. But we leave that to the scholars to work out. There's nothing deader or drier, in most instances, than figures and numbers and working over musty dates, unless there's something very critical at the end of it. We're going to leave it for the moment. Either about a quarter, between a quarter and a half a century of rest they brought to the people of Israel. So I want us to think on them tonight, very simply, and focus our attention upon the great ministry of little men. Now, we're going to focus first on their smallness, their insignificance. As I've pointed out, they're virtually unknown. And true, the name Toa and Pua are names that were hereditary in the tribe of Issachar. They were famous family names. But this particular Toa and the son of this particular Pua, unknown. Not only so, but even in the book of Judges, there is very little record of their period of office. We're told very, very little about not only who they were, but what they actually did for 23 years and 22 years, respectively. But the big thing is that after Abimelech, God raised them up. Now watch it carefully. The Lord is teaching us here a very significant lesson through very insignificant man. Later in the book of Zechariah, he would have it panned. It is not by might, nor is it by power, but it is by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. It is a cardinal doctrine of God's Word that the greatness of the work of God depends not upon the greatness of man, but upon the greatness of our God. We tend to look for great men. We study history, and I think that is a very scriptural thing to do. The Bible is forever reminding the people of God of their history. I have no time for people who isolate themselves in the bubble of this present moment and want to forget what has passed and take no thought of what is to come in the work of God. This moment does not exist in isolation. The great theological term is that we are just part of a great continuum. I hope that sounds good to you. I'm not going to try and explain it. I leave that to the scholars. But it is a mark of weakness and apostasy ultimately, not apostasy for every individual Christian, that would be too much to say, but ultimately it is a mark of apostasy in the church when a church isolates itself. You look at every cult. That cult suddenly, as it thinks, falls like a star from heaven onto earth. That cult has in itself all the truth, all the light, all the revelation of God. That cult is God's answer, and it has nothing to do with what went before. It suddenly appears in history, and it has no thought of anything preceding it. When any movement or any church starts talking like that, you know that you're dealing with something that is not of God. It's very simple. God tells us that we do have to go back to our history. He continually reminded the children of Israel of that. Now, when we look at our history, we look at great men. Now, there's a lot to be learned from great men. Don't misunderstand me here at all. I love to think, every October I prove this, I love to think of the period of the Protestant Reformation. Some people are ashamed of that. Archbishop of Canterbury, he's ashamed of it. The leading charismatic idiot in Britain, Church of England minister, he said that the See an Englishman here, I'll tell you who he is. David Watson, he said that the Reformation was one of the greatest tragedies in English history, or in European history. I'm glad to say I have no such misconception, and I look on it as the greatest revival in the church since the day of Pentecost. But you know, people go back and they start studying Martin Luther. Do you realize that there are probably as many scholars studying Martin Luther There are studying the New Testament. John Calvin and his works have given rise to an entire body of study in seminaries across the world. And Calvin's studies are constantly making, as they say, new progress. Actually, I doubt that very much. But they are supposedly making new progress. Men are isolating great men. and they're seeing the characteristics of great men, and they're noticing the power points in the lives of great men. Now let me confess, Martin Luther was in many ways a typical German, most lovable and most hateable. Martin Luther had the gift of speech such as few men have ever had. He was an artist, a musician, a preacher, a theologian, he was all those things. But listen, you could be an artist, you could be a musician, you could add theology, you could bring it all together and you still wouldn't be a Martin Luther. You see, the point I'm making is this, that it is our want to isolate great men and then simply seek to emulate certain principles in their lives and divorce ourselves from the thing that really matters, namely a mighty living experience of the fullness of the power of the Holy Ghost. What we need to be looking to today is a great God, a great Savior. This comes out when you visit around churches. I was saved in the Salvation Army. I'm a long way from Salvation Army theology, but I'll never cease to be grateful for the honest preaching of the Word of God that I heard as a child in the Salvation Army in the Citadel Corps in Belfast. I look back in those days with a lot of happy memories. I led on to blow a trombone there as a little boy. I was the best actor in the corps. There was about as much music in the stand in front of me as there was in me. But I enjoyed that. One thing that I remember, there was a lot wrong in that corps that I was too young then to know about. And if I'd been an adult, I would certainly have left because of those things. But I didn't know about them, hadn't the maturity even to think about them. One thing I do remember is an old corps sergeant major who lived and walked in the fear of God and who stamped that fear of God largely upon that Salvation Army Corps. I remember a preacher, still remember his name to this day. I can't tell you what he preached, but I can tell you how he preached. In many ways, that's more important. And with zeal and with passion and with the love of Christ, he preached and he pleaded for Jesus Christ. Now, many of the doctrines that he preached, to be quite honest, now I have severe reservations about. Salvation Army doctrine for Christian living goes along. They have a period of self-denial, and then they emphasize greatly holiness. They emphasize, ultimately, what you would have to call perfection. They emphasize the work of the Spirit. I went to a Salvation Army meeting here in the United States just some years ago, and I was sickened with what I heard. All the preacher was up there. He was saying all the same words that Marcus Brown had preached years ago in Belfast. He was saying all the same words. He had still all the old salvationist phrases from William Booth and Commissioner Samuel Brangle and others like that. But there was nothing there. Nothing there. Just aping great men is not enough. Fundamentalism is falling into the same trap. You go around our fundamentalist churches today, you listen to WMUU. I don't mean to be unkind, for I wouldn't want these things really to change. But you hear the voice of Bob Jones Senior, dead. Is there anybody in fundamentalism carrying on? that peculiar type of ministry today? You hear the voice of Oliver B. Green, long dead. You hear the voice of Lester Ruloff, dead. These certainly were men of immense spiritual stature and spiritual ministry, men who did something worthwhile for God. We are falling into the trap in fundamentalism today of merely admiring great men, but not living in a personal knowledge of their God. That's a tragedy. Smallness in itself, personal insignificance, is no excuse for idleness or for, indeed, unimportance in the work of God. For look, secondly, at their significance. was from the tribe of Issachar. Now, if you turn back to Genesis 49, and then into Judges chapter 5, you'll find a little about the tribe of Issachar. Genesis 49, verse 14 and 15, we have the prophetic blessing of Jacob upon Issachar and his tribe. Issachar is a strong ass, couching down between two burdens. And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant, and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute." Over in Judges chapter 5, we have in verse 15, the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, even Issachar, and also Barak. Now, let's put this together for a moment. This is a tribe that in the days of Deborah stood for God. That was no mean achievement. This is a tribe that had produced a man in Tola who was willing to assume a position of service and work for God. This was a tribe of men who were certainly not pansies or wimps or people who were afraid to take their stand. This was a tribe of men noted for their ability to bear the burden. Back in Genesis 49, we find that Issachar is a strong ass. He's the beast of burden. He's the one in whom you can depend. You can place the burden upon him. He'll crouch down and he'll carry the burden on either side. Good characteristic. There's a lot to be said for the tribe of Issachar. Let me just say in passing that that, by the way, is a supreme mark of every good church. Every good church should seek to be in this respect, like the tribe of Issachar, and be willing to bear the burden of the work of God. Be willing to make itself like the lowly ass, and take that burden, bend its neck to the yoke of God, and say, I will bear the burden of the work of God. And it is a church with such an attitude that will give birth to men like Tula, Just as the Issachar tribe produced a man who would assume the burden, so a church that has this attitude of submissiveness to the will and work of God will produce young people, young men, young women who are willing to bear the burden for Christ. You see, and let's be very frank about this, in our churches today we find a lot of fault with the young people. Some people forget what it is to be young, but I'm not that far away from it so I can still remember. I take my Geritol every day and I can remember what it was to be young. Okay. When you were young, the older people were criticizing you. You weren't showing the spiritual development that you ought to show and all the rest of it. Now, I'm not making excuses for young people not developing spiritually as they ought. What I am saying is, if this is not a praying church, don't expect our young people to be praying young people. If this is not a church that is willing to bow its neck to the will of God, don't throw up your hands in horror when our young people don't walk in the will of God. If this is not a church that is standing together in unity before the Lord to say, Lord, we have the burden of your work upon us, we are cut free from the world, we're hanging loose to the things of the world, and we're giving all we are and all we have to Christ. If that's not the kind of a church it is, then we're not going to produce young people of that kind. There are parents. who want to be as worldly in their lives as they can be and yet expect their kids to grow up to be saints. There are parents who have totally worldly values. They show it by the way they live. Prayer meeting is the least important meeting of the week. Dollars are more important than souls. There's not much fire about them. There's not much zeal about them. There's not much evidence that they themselves are sold out to God. But somehow or other, magically, they expect, especially if they have made the huge sacrifice of paying the price of tuition at Christian school, they expect, we're going to see our kids turn out right. Well, I have news for you. If you do, it'll be nothing to do with you. It'll be a miracle. And it's true of the church. I like the old time imagery that the church is the mother of her children. That's a good biblical image of the church. When Zion travailed, she brought forth children. And if the church is truly like a tribe of Issachar, couched as a strong ass to carry the burdens of the work of God, If the adult members of this church are like that, then we will see God produce out of our young people, praying young men, praying young women, people who are dedicated to Christ, young people who are willing to spend and be spent for God. But it's not something that you can simply foist onto them. It's going to start with the tribe, with the church as a whole. But Issachar had a weak side to his nature, and this was shown in the tribe. He saw that rest was good. Burden-bearing was all right for a while, but he saw that the rest was good, the land was pleasant. Is that not what's happening in our churches today? Is that not what's happening in many a Christian life and in many a Christian home? That God's people have borne the toil and the burden and then they lift up their eyes and they look around and they see the ease of modern living and they simply begin to drift and they lose out with God. Is that not what's happening? Watch it carefully. He saw the rest from bearing the burden of the Lord. He shed that burden, but watch it carefully. He bowed his shoulder to bear and became a servant unto tribute. The truth of the matter is that you and I have to wear somebody's yoke. You and I have to bear somebody's burden. It will either be the yoke of service to Christ, or it will be the yoke of bondage to self, the world, and sin. one or the other. It says a lot for Tola and his constancy that when Issachar had bowed his shoulder to bear and had become a servant in many ways unto tribute, that he himself stood forth, constant in faith for God to bear the burden of the Lord. Jer was not from Issachar, but he was from Gilead. We're not specifically told which of the two and a half tribes on the eastern side of Jordan produced this man. But one thing is very clear, if you go back to Judges 5 and 17, that Gilead abode beyond Jordan. In the day of battle, in the day of national crisis, When Deborah was raised up of the Lord and Barak was raising an army, Gilead would not come at the call of God. It was a tribe that was marked by failure, marked by compromise. And yet, not really all that long afterwards, we have this man raised up of God from that very tribe to be a judge. You see, past failure can be dealt with. It's one of the great messages of Christianity. Not just the message to the sinner that your past can be put under the blood. That's a great message. That's the message of hope that the Church of Christ has for a world otherwise hopeless. You can go to the deepest died sinner. You can go to any man, any woman, any color, any creed, and you can look straight in his eye and you can tell them that there's power in Jesus' blood to make you white as snow, to make you a new creature, to save you for time and for eternity. That's the confidence that we have in the gospel. A wonderful message to you is preached, the forgiveness of sins. If you're in this meeting tonight and you're not saved, that's the message for you. Forgiveness of sins. Saving grace. Your past dealt with, your present dealt with, your future assured by the grace of God. But that's not the only message. It's a message for sinners, but Christianity is also a message for saints. One of the great things the devil likes to make believers believe, one of the lies he wants them to believe, is that if you have failed the Lord, you're finished. You're finished. There are many Christians, sometimes behind a smile, they're hiding a heart that's crushed and a life that they believe is useless. You feel the Lord. There was a time of crisis and you failed. The call went out and you didn't answer. You've wandered, you've tripped up, You've done this, you've done the other thing and how the devil will pile on the agony and pile on the guilt and he'll tell you you're through now and God is through with you. The great message of God's love and grace for his people is altogether different. And out of the Gileadites, with all their failure, God could raise a chair to stand resolutely for him. Out of your misery and your failure and your backsliding and your sin, God can lift you up. He can give you cleansing. He can give you purity. He can give you new power. He can give you new purpose. He can set your feet in the right direction. He can again fill your life with the joy of the Lord, and He can use you. The last thing in the world the devil wants a believer who has failed to grasp is that failure is not final, that there's restoration and there's usefulness in the service of the Lord. Their smallness, they were insignificant, but their significance and finally and very, very quickly their service for God. Let me just outline that service for you. First of all, their promotion. They were indeed promoted by the Lord to be judges. We see a great token of God's grace here. I don't want to get off on another tangent, but if you look at the book of Judges rather differently than we have been looking at it, and if you try to get the whole book in a historical framework, It appears that around this time of the judges, God was raising up quite a number of judges. He was raising up men in greater numbers, with greater frequency. That was a mark of grace. When the Lord starts calling preachers, that's a good sign for America. Not just when there are more preachers, mind you. The Lord knows there are thousands of preachers in this country, and there's a lot of them, if you were to put them all together, there wouldn't have enough power in them to blow the head off a dandelion. But when God calls preachers, ah, that's a different thing. For he has a purpose in so doing. These men were promoted. Chapter 2 and verse 16 shows you that it is the Lord who was putting the judges in their place. They were called of God, and they were given a place of service. Now, I say they were promoted. That sounds strange, having said that they were small, virtually unknown, and all the rest of it. But they were promoted. Let me tell you, if God gives you any work to do, that's a promotion. and you'd be well off doing it. When I was a young fellow in the free church in Belfast, you've often heard me say this, and I know that some of you just shake your head and say, well, that's prejudiced. But I happen to be able to judge in this matter fairly objectively. We had, in those days, what I considered to be the finest gospel preaching. I have ever heard in all my life. In those days, Bert Cook was at the top of his powers. He had many, many health problems. He's still a fantastic preacher. But in those days, the preaching was such as I have never heard from any other mortal being. When I think of powerful evangelistic preaching, if I could preach like that. I say, Lord, let me preach like that. He never did give me his talent, but at least I could admire it from a distance. But here's the thing to humble the preacher. Do you know that probably more people remembered another man out of that church rather than the preacher? Standing at the door, In that little church, and I can well see it to this day, the dull, dark, dank winter of a Belfast night, people trudging their way up the church path. They were wet, they were cold, they were uncomfortable. And there standing in the door was a man who's now with Christ by the name of Jimmy Edgerton. Jimmy would hold out his hand, his face would break into a smile that you couldn't imagine, and you had just walked into heaven, and you walked into a handshake with Jimmy Edgerton. The word sweet is used of people, and it doesn't come natural to us in Northern Ireland. I don't mean sweetness doesn't come natural, but we don't normally use that word to describe it. That is rather a A word that would connote insincerity. I know it doesn't here, but in its best sense, Jimmy Edgerton had the sweetness of Christ. Jimmy couldn't preach. He didn't even make a good job of giving his testimony in an open air meeting. He certainly couldn't sing. He gave very liberally to the work of God, but he was just a very ordinary working man, and he couldn't give all that much. He gave all that he could, and sacrificially. But it wouldn't count for much for the world. But God gave Jimmy a ministry. And I would to God that he would raise up people in every free church, and in this one with the same ministry. whose very smile would make a stranger feel at home, and a visitor say, I'm going to come back. We're not all preachers. In the church today, we have people who want all to be chiefs, but nobody wants to be an Indian. You know, we, Lord, if I can't be this, I'm not gonna be anything. But the church of Christ, it's not a business. We're not here in competition. The church of Christ is a living body. He is the head, we are the members. Have a look at your own body. For every movement that is perceptible, discernible by the eyes, there is a multitude of activity that is unseen. For every member that is seen, there are members that are even more important, and they're unseen. You powder your nose, you ladies. You're very fond of its shape and all the rest of it. Well, it sounds gross, but you can live without your nose. I had the horrible experience of having to visit a man whose entire nose had been eaten away by cancer. It wasn't the lack of a nose that killed him, ultimately, it was cancer. You could live without your nose. You can live without your teeth. You can live without your complexion. Look, you can live without your arms. You can live without your legs. Those are the things that people see, those are the things in which we take pride. But inside, what nobody sees, there are things without which you'll not live for a minute. And it's true in every church. Preachers are seen, elders are seen, deacons are seen, musicians are seen, people to the fore are seen. And people think this is the church. No, that is pure potpourri. It is potpourri that makes the church a hierarchy of visible people, and the ordinary faithful are nobodies. But the Bible makes every member a powerful, important part of the body of Christ. And I tell you today, however insignificant and small you may be, God has a work for you to do. And when God gives you a work to do, that is promotion. Accept it. and go and do it. And do what he sets to your hand, and do it with all your might. If you're waiting for God to call you to the mission field, why do you sit back here tonight and do nothing? The strongest possibility is he'll never call you to the mission field. But if you're on your knees praying for the work of the mission field, praying for missionaries, praying for souls, when you're pleading with God to send forth laborers into the harvest field, yes, then he'll put his hand on you, and very possibly he'll send you here or he'll send you there. And whatever he gives you to do, remember what God gives you. No matter what men think about it, it's always promotion. A preacher needs to keep that in mind. In business, you only, unless you're forced, you only change upwards. In the work of the ministry, I don't know what the Lord has for me. I could just as easily be called of God to go to a handful of people who have nothing but a need that God ordains that I should help to meet. And if that's the will of God, I'll go. And that, for me, would be promotion. Then notice the protection they afforded to Israel. They defended Israel. The word defend is used. Chapter 216, again, that was the specific work of the judge to defend Israel. Now time will not allow me to do more than say that the defense was against further Abimelechs within and against enemies without. Protection. The service of the house of God, the people of God, is a service that defends against internal corruption. Now, you start there with yourself. It's very easy for you to judge my sin. See, that doesn't hurt you. The easiest thing in the world is for you to tell me how to get right and what to do and how to live and how not to live, and that's dead easy. The Westminster Confession of Faith rightly talks about Christians and the prevalence of corruption within them. The old man. The service of God always has as an important part a curtailing of the enemy within, dealing with sin. and then victory over the enemy on the outside. That protection depends on purification. They judged, verse 2 and 3, they judged Israel. You know, if you read the book of Judges carefully, you'll have to mark this, that when Israel judged sin and lived right, she had power over every foe. See that again and again? While she judged sin, the devil could not overcome her. It's the same in the church of Christ. You know, there is a power in holiness that the world knows nothing about. If this church is a holy church, it has the enjoyment of an access to God. that no trouble or tribulation or opposition can stop up. If you are a holy man or a holy woman, it'll not save you necessarily from persecution or trouble or pain and suffering, but it will save you from the prevailing power of the enemy. You'll live in victory. Judging sin. Purification. Purity. I don't mean just being a step ahead of the world. You know, that's what purity is to Christians. If it weren't so serious, you'd have to laugh at it. We're the greatest bunch of two-timers that ever you met. is nobody in this world can talk out of both sides of his mouth better than a Christian. We don't believe in relativism. No, no, no, no. We believe in the absolutes, right? Sure, we're fundamentalists. We believe in the absolutes. But when it comes to what sin is, what is sin? Well, sin happens to be worldliness a year or two to lead, or holiness, rather, happens to be worldliness a year or two to lead. We can do what was sinful five years ago, but it's not sinful anymore. Now, if that's not relativism, I don't know what is. They judge sin. In other words, they have the standard of the Word of God. Now, our forefathers did not always simply go by the Word of God. They thought they did. But there are many things that they thought were necessary to holiness that were purely and simply their excited zeal and imagination. I know people, and I'm glad I'm wearing a dark suit when I say this, but if you wear anything darker than a dark shade of navy, you're worldly. In Northern Ireland, all you ladies with lipstick and earrings and bright gems and hair, you'd be in trouble. We have many a time had a laugh in Northern Ireland when the visiting evangelist would come from America and his wife would walk in and make a box this long. The people would be praying for the salvation of that big sinner. Not knowing it was the preacher's wife. But we're gonna judge sin. It's not just going back to what our forefathers did, or it's not just denying what the world does now, but accepting what it did a few years ago. It is judging it by the word of God. That's the standard, purification. And then there was prosperity. Their service yielded much fruit. The two things that you'll notice about these two judges, one was settlement, And in the case of Jer with his 30 sons and their 30-ass colts and their 30 cities, there was enlargement. Settlement and enlargement. There is the prosperity, the product of service for which we ought constantly to be in prayer. What do I want for this church? I want for every Christian in it, for every family in it, for the church as a united body, for these churches that our young men are planting throughout the nation, I pray for these two things. Settlement. Rest. A unity in Christ. An enjoyment of what God has given us in the fruits of the promised land. And then enlargement. breaking new boundaries for God, planting new works for God, winning souls for Christ, seeing the whole work of God go forward, living in the personal enjoyment of what the psalmist said, the Lord has brought me into a large place. Settlement and enlargement. So we're only just ordinary people. We don't have much going for us, as the world says. We excuse ourselves. I'm not this. I'm not that. I'm not the other thing. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. So be it. Remember Tola and Jer, the most ordinary of ordinary people. But ordinariness does not equate with unimportance. Your smallness is no barrier to a significant service for Christ. I pray God that he will give us a knowledge of his will and the grace to do it, and indeed, to know the settlement and the enlargement that the Holy Ghost alone can give in the work of the ministry. Let us ask the Lord tonight that you and I, all of us together in the work of the Lord, will know by experience the great ministry of little people. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's all pray. Our heads are bowed in prayer. Do remember what I've said tonight. If you're in this meeting and you're not saved, to you is preached the forgiveness of sins. There's a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. There's a door that is opened where you may go in, that Calvary's cross is where you begin when you come as a sinner to Jesus. Man, woman, or young person, come tonight and be saved. Those of you who are here, like the Gileadites, you have failed your God. You brought dishonor in his name, and you're walking in the shadow of that defeat, and the devil tells you there's no way back. Backslider. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. If I can help you, whether you're unsaved or backslidden in the things of God, I invite you to remain as the others leave. Let me open the scriptures with you and point you the way of life, forgiveness, restoration, and peace. Don't leave without getting these things right with God. Father in heaven, bless thy word, write it indelibly upon the fleshy tables of our heart. Lord, save the lost tonight. Lord, restore the backslidden. And Lord, encourage All us ordinary people who are so often discouraged by our ordinariness, discouraged by our lack of this talent or gift or the other, O God, thou art not limited by our limitations. Thou art eternal, Thou art infinite. O God, give us but the fullness of the Holy Ghost, and thank God there's nothing can stop us in the work of God. Oh, we pray that Thou wilt Speak to every Christian here. Appoint to every man or woman his or her portion and position in the work of God. And Lord, grant us that grace of purification and then of settlement and of enlargement. Hear our prayer. Visit us, Lord, and give lasting fruit for the simple preaching of thy holy word. Compart us with Thy blessing, keep us in Thy fear, the beginning of all knowledge and wisdom. Be the abiding portion of all His blood-bought Church, both tonight and until our Savior either calls us home or comes again in all His glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.