Hello and welcome to our broadcast. We're looking at Judges chapter 6. We're continuing with the battles in the Bible. Stay tuned. Well, in our last broadcast, we saw that Israel was in trouble again. And it says in chapter 6, the judges, verse number 1, and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. Well, we get down to verse number 6. And as a result of it, it says Israel was greatly impoverished. because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord." And so we have their circumstances here. Their circumstances are not good, and the reason that they're not good is because of their own stupidity. They did evil in the sight of the Lord, and God put up with it, and His patience ran out again and again. They kept doing this, and finally God said, all right, if you can't learn from the direction of the Holy Spirit, Maybe I could teach you something with these Midianites and he did and so would they had their choices and they chose to disobey God and from the choices comes Consequences and the consequences are or were that Israel was greatly impoverished And so a result of that we read they cried unto the Lord now when they did that it says in verse 7 it came to pass and when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites, that the Lord sent a prophet. Now, the Lord sent a prophet, and you'll see here that this prophet comes, and like all true prophets of God, there's straightforward, no-nonsense preaching. It says here that He came and He said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. He's not here to give you His opinion. He is there to give them what the Lord has to say. Thus saith the Lord God. And here's what he said. He said in verse eight, I brought you up from Egypt and I brought you forth out of the house of bondage. In verse nine, I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all that oppressed you. And he said, I drove them out from before you and I gave you their land. God had done a lot of things for these people as he has for us and it says in verse 10 and I say unto you I am the Lord your God fear not the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell That's what he had told them, but he said ye have not obeyed my voice now there you have it straightforward No-nonsense preaching from the prophet of God. That's exactly the way it's supposed to be well in verse number seven concerning this prophet it says and there came an angel of the Lord and and sat under an oak, which is in Orpah, that pertained unto Joash the Abesarite, and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites." And so we see the circumstances are not very good here for Israel, but then we see that God commissions a prophet. Now, commissioning is an official authorization for a specific undertaking. God, of course, is authorized to do this, and he gives Gideon a specific undertaking. Now, this undertaking, he sees Gideon here as he is threshing by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. That's not how they threshed. Usually they did that on the top of a hill, but not in this case because of the Midianites. Well, it says in verse 12 that the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Mighty man of valor? Here he is hiding from the Midianites, trying to make some, you know, enough food for his family. Mighty man of valor? What do we mean mighty man of valor? Well, it's interesting that that word valor has been translated substance six times, and it has been translated strength 12 times. And so as God looked at this young man as he's busy trying to make a living here to keep some food on the table for his family. He sees a man who has some spiritual substance, and he sees a man who has some spiritual strength. And so we read, and Gideon said unto him, O my Lord, If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all these miracles which our fathers told us of? 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. Now what is the Lord's response in verse number 14? It simply says the Lord looked upon him. Now he's frustrated. Gideon is. He's probably discouraged. Things are not going well, things are going very bad. And the Lord, it simply says, looked upon him. The Lord understands our weaknesses, and it's a good thing that he does. The same thing happened, you know, when Peter cursed and denied Jesus Christ, and the third time he did it, we read in Luke chapter 22 and verse number 61, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. Well, with Peter, gideon we see here in verse 14 he doesn't rebuke him for his attitude he says go in this thy might and thou shalt save israel from the hand of the midianites and here's the key have not i sent thee well in verse 15 he said unto him oh my lord Wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor, Manassas, and I am the least of my father's house." This man was a humble young man. His attitude was not that of, well, I know God's going to call me pretty good pretty soon because I'm a pretty good guy. That was his attitude at all. He said, how can I save Israel? And so we see here that one with God is majority. He says here in verse 16, God said, and the Lord said unto him, surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. Well, the next thing he's told to do is he is told to go and destroy his father's grove, this altar that he has to bail, and he was obedient to do that. And then we see in the next part of this story, the fleece. Now there's a lot of discussion about the fleece, but I think it's important to understand. that Gideon did not want God to do this miracle with the fleece to show him whether it was God's will for him to go and fight the Midianites or not. He'd already determined that. The fleece was to show God's power, to show God's power. And he needed to have some confidence in the fact that God was in this. He did not at this point Really understand that he was talking to the Lord. He thought he was just talking to an angel He's a I gotta know. This is the real thing I need God to show his power and God did with that fleece well in verse 27 we see that Gideon did as the Lord had said unto him and in verse 34 as a result of that we see the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and Well, we've looked at Gideon's circumstances, and we've seen Gideon's commissioning here. Now we get to chapter 7, we see Gideon's challenge, and it certainly was a challenge. It says, Then Jeroboam, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early and pitched beside the well Herod, so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them by the hill of Morech in the valley. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me, to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand has saved me. Now therefore go to proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilad. And there are returned of the people twenty and two thousand, and there remain ten thousand. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many. Bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there. And it shall be that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee. And of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought the people down under the water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself. Likewise, every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink, And the number of them that lapped, putting their hands to their mouth, were three hundred men, but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped, will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thy hand, and let all the other people go every man unto his place. So the people took vituals in their hand and their trumpets, and he sent all the rest of Israel, every man under his tent, and retained only those 300 men, and the host of Midian was beneath him. the valley. Well, we see here that the things are getting underway, but the plan is not nearly as simple, straightforward military battle as Gideon might have thought it would have been. And so we'll look at that in our next broadcast. We'll see that it says in verse number one, then Jeroboam, who is Gideon and all the people that were with him, Rose up early and pitched beside the well and so then it says Gideon and all the people were with him. They're going to do something special here But they're going to do something totally different because God is going to get the glory for this battle He wants to get the glory as we win the battle in our lives today as well. He might do it differently than you expect