If you'd open your bibles, please tonight to the seventh chapter of the book of judges We will be looking at the entire chapter tonight. We'll be reading the text as we work our way through it And before we begin our journey through the passage, let's bow and look to the lord in prayer father we do wait for the moment in which we will be caught up in the air to meet you, but until then We do pray that we would be good ambassadors and warriors for thee. We would be people who implicitly trust thee. We pray that you would use tonight's text to help instill that within us, and we'll thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. Every now and then, you will hear someone say to someone else, we really need to step out by faith and do this. Two questions come to my mind when I hear that. Number one, what's your definition of faith? And number two, whose faith should we step out on? To many people, the idea of faith is some warm, fuzzy feeling about what they believe or think. They think that their warm, fuzzy feeling or idea is what we should follow. When someone says we need to step out by faith, it's perfectly legitimate to say, are you talking about your faith? Are you talking about my faith? The fact of the matter is, God does want us trusting him. He wants us trusting him by faith, but he wants us trusting individually, totally and completely individually in his grace. Real faith is not demonstrated by a bunch of warm fuzzy feelings, it's demonstrated by a belief in the Word of God and a willingness to follow the Word of God. One of the most important lessons that you and I can ever learn in life is that everything we are, everything we have, everything we accomplish is by the grace of God. And sometimes in order for God to get his people to acknowledge that reality, he must knock us down to the bare level of things so we'll actually believe it. We do not become valiant warriors by our confidence in ourselves. We become valiant warriors by our confidence in the Lord. God never wants us people depending on ourselves. He wants us to learn we can depend on Him. Now when this military story begins, Gideon has an army of 32,000 guys, and you'll see it tonight, he's up against a Midian army of 135,000. So the initial odds that Midian outnumbers Israel by is four to one. However, God will show his glory, and in order to do that, those odds are too low. So he'll have Gideon cut his army by 22,000, leaving him with just 10,000, and now Midian will outnumber Israel by odds that are 35 to one. However, for God to really show his glory, those numbers are too low. So God's going to cut those numbers again down to 300. And now Midian will outnumber Israel by odds that are 400 to 1. Frankly, those are impossible odds, which is exactly where God wants those odds to be, because God's about to show Gideon, and He's about to show Israel, and He's about to show us a critical factor for victory, and it is not in the numbers. What God wanted Gideon to understand, what God would want all of us to understand is you don't need a big, huge, massive amount of numbers to do a big job for God. God says, I'm not interested in your elite corps of troops who are fighters to win this battle. If I want to win this battle, I can do it on my own. So what we see when we come to this text is that God begins to develop his people by putting them in situations that actually teach them that they're strength wise in depending on God and obeying his word. Ellen Redpath, the Bible scholar and former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, said that he learned to truly depend on God after he had suffered a near-fatal stroke. He said in the aftermath of that stroke, he fell into deep depression. He actually became angry with God, and he asked God to take him home right then and there. He said later, God taught him what a wretched, sinful man he was, except for the grace of God, which was the lesson he said he needed to learn. Sometimes God has to put us in scary, intimidating, life-threatening situations so we will learn to totally depend on His grace. We will learn to totally trust in the Lord. That is exactly what God is doing here with Gideon. Now there are three main faith lessons I'm going to show you tonight from this text. Faith lesson number one. God shows Gideon that insurmountable odds mean nothing for him, but mean that his people need to learn to trust him. Notice verse one of chapter seven. Then Jerubabel, that is Gideon, and all the people who were with him rose early and camped beside the spring of Herod. And the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moriah and the valley. The LORD said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, My own power has delivered me. Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead. So 22,000 people returned but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, the people are still too many. Bring them down to the water and I'll test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, this one shall go with you, he shall go with you. But every one of whom I say to you, this one shall not go with you, he shall not go. So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, you shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink. Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men. But all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands. So let all the other people go, each man to his own home. So the 300 men took the people's provisions and their trumpets into their hands, and Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men, and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley." Now, verse 1 begins with the idea that Gideon and his forces were setting up camp beside the spring of Herod. Dr. Fawcett said that there is a spring that sits at a cavern right there. It forms a pool out of that spring, which is about 100 yards long, and that's a great place for setting up a military camp. This particular spring was located in the foothills of Mount Gilboa on the Jezreel Valley. This area you could look from and look around about 10 miles away. So when Gideon and his forces would take a look, they would see huge numbers of enemies, plus all of those scary camels. Gideon, at this point, has 32,000 men on his side. And we'll see in chapter 8 and verse 10 that he's up against at least 135,000 Midianite enemies. I want you to keep in mind that Gideon's soldiers have not been active in more than seven years, so they're not really highly organized, and they're not well-disciplined. You'll remember Asher joined them on this campaign. Asher had backed down in the days of Deborah and Barak, but finally they decided, we're going to go to war. And Zebulun and Naphtali, they were willing to fight, but they hadn't been around in years. They hadn't fought for years. I find an old suit that I used to wear in my first church, believe it or not. It was hanging in some weird spot down in the basement. I went to put it on and I found the fabric has shrunk. Something's either gone wrong with me or it. I could barely get a leg and one of my flabby legs in those pants. That's the way the army would have looked here with Zebulon and Naphtali. They hadn't been going to war in a long time, but that's all Gideon has. What God was about to tell Gideon is not something he would expect to hear. I mean, he's looking at 35,000 guys, but they're not well-trained, they're not highly organized, and he's looking at an impressive Midianite army of 135 warriors. And in verse 2, God tells Gideon, you've got too many for me to win this battle. Now keep in mind that Midian outnumbers Gideon at that point by four to one. And God says, ah, the numbers are way too low here for me. I want to cut those numbers. I want to get those odds. I want to raise the odds for the other side. And there are two reasons he said he wanted to do that. According to verse two, he didn't want the people to be able to boast about this victory in some gloating way. He said in verse two, the Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many for Israel would become boastful. God hates pride. God absolutely detests it when His people want to brag about something that He's done. Sometimes when you listen to people tell their testimonies, it's almost like they've saved themselves. God hates that. He's not interested in that. One commentator observed, if you can explain that everything is happening in your life, if you can explain it all by what you did, then probably God didn't do it. We must make certain that we never try to take credit or gloat about something God did. It can be a danger for the people of God. We must be certain to give God the credit and God the glory when we see God do anything. And if we don't do that, we won't see God do much of anything. People who truly live by faith really do sense more and more of their own weaknesses and more and more of their own need to depend on the strength of the Lord. And they don't try to take credit for what God's doing. Secondly, he didn't want his people or he did want his people to realize that victory was by him at the end of verse 2 He says my own power has delivered me. He wanted these people to understand I am giving you victory and it's coming from me When our numbers are great we can begin to neglect the depend on the Lord God said I'm interested in teaching my people a lesson You need to learn to trust me Now let's remember that Gideon had tested God on that fleece issue twice. We saw it last Sunday. And now God is about to put Gideon to a test by cutting his numbers twice. According to verse 3, the first way God cut the numbers was by inviting any who are afraid to go home. If anybody's afraid to go to war, let them go home. Now that's in accordance with the Deuteronomy law. I'd like you to just go back a few pages to Deuteronomy chapter 20 for just a moment. God always gave those cowards a fearful outlet. They could go home, no questions asked, they weren't belittled, but he gave them a way out. If they were afraid to go to war, he would let them have an option of going home. If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 20, you'll notice in verse 1, when you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you. Drop down to verse 8. Then the officer shall speak further to the people and say, Who is the man that is afraid and faint-hearted? Let him depart and return to his house, so that he might not make his brother's hearts melt like his heart. There's no question that if you get around some whiner and complainer and some moaner and groaner, it begins to wear you down. It can pull down the morale of the people. So God says, I want you to ask who's afraid in this army here and just send them home. You're looking at an army of 135,000 enemy soldiers, and you probably think you're going to die. And God didn't want a bunch of negative people around. So he says, just make an opportunity, an offer, to people who are afraid. Let them go home. And when God gave Gideon that assignment and Gideon presented it to Israel, 22,000 said, OK, I'm going. 22,000 said, I'm afraid I'm going home. Actually, I kind of admire their honesty. They did admit they were afraid. G. Campbell Morgan said, the problem today is that the fearful man insists on staying in the army rather than going home. Gideon must have been a little upset by what he saw, because two-thirds of his army just turn around and head for home. One commentator said, I'm shocked that when Gideon saw that, he didn't say, wait a minute, boys, I'll go with you. After 22,000 went home, Gideon's left with 10,000 people. So now the odds have just been raised to 35 to one in favor of the Midianites. But God looks at that and he said, those odds are still too low for me. So I'm gonna cut those numbers again. So in verses four to eight, God tells Gideon, you take those 10,000 down there to that spring, have them get a drink of water and watch the way they drink. I'm gonna run a little test. Now keep in mind that these 10,000 have just seen 22,000 guys go home because they're fearful. So what you are left with here are 10,000 willing men, brave men 10,000 is way more than God needs. And all 10,000 of these men were thirsty. 9,700 of these men got down, apparently put their faces right in the water, took a good drink, and rightly so. 300 of the men probably kept alert while scooping water into their hands and lapped it, drinking as they stayed on the alert, ready for battle. The enemy, as near as I can determine, is about three to four miles away from this location. And those 300 were on the alert. As they're drinking water, they're looking around, probably looking into the land to see whether or not there were any enemy in the horizon. Whenever I've taken someone on an elk hunt in the West, I tell them, if you go to get some water or you go to the restroom, always carry your rifle. Always take a gun with you, because you never know when an elk or some other predator animal can arrive, and you'll need that gun. A man who taught me that principle of hunting in the mountains said that there was a man in our church, and I talked to this man. He told me the story. He confirmed it. He was hunting elk, and it was the final day of the hunt. He decided that he was going to take a little walk away from the tent. He did not take his rifle as he walked on a trail. There was a six-point bull elk. But he missed the opportunity because he was standing there empty-handed without his gun. He was not alert. God said, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take these 300 alert men, verse seven, these 300 men, and I'll deliver you with them. Those 9,700 men all went home. And you know what that teaches us, ladies and gentlemen, and this is so critical for you and I to know, quality is more important to God than quantity. The quality of who you are is far more important than the quantity of what you do. God is looking for quality, not quantity. You know, there are some people, they run to church all the time, they're involved in action, a lot of quantitative action, but they don't develop the quality of studying the scriptures so they can understand these books of the Bible, so they can believe God, so they can actually understand what their faith is all about. They run from meeting to meeting in a quantitative way, but they don't have the quality of a heart that's after an understanding of the Word of God. When those 9,700 left, their weapons are described in verse 8. They're left with, let's see, they each have a trumpet, and they each have a provision. They have some type of food, a little bit. And now the numbers are 400 to 1 in Midian's favor. Those are impossible odds. You've got a sack lunch, you have a torch, a pitcher, you have a trumpet, you are about to go up against 135,000 fierce trained military men with those camels, and you have this, you have your sack lunch and a trumpet, and you only have 300 guys. You don't have any chance at all in and of yourself unless God is on your side. Because if God is on your side, you could have victory over everything. Because numbers, when it comes to God, mean nothing. God said in the Old Testament law that if Israel would obey him, one person could chase a thousand. Two could chase ten thousand. Based on those calculations, God could take out this entire Midianite army with twenty-seven men. In fact, God could have dropped this army dead without any man, but he gave Gideon three hundred. What God wanted all of his people to understand is that you win by depending on my grace. That's how you win. You win by depending on me. You do not win by depending on yourself. J. Vernon McGee said that when he was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, he visited a small church in Georgia. And when he got to the church, there was an older woman wearing a sun bonnet who came up to him and said, Mr. McGee, we're just a little church here, a little Gideon's group. Dr. McGee said they were anything but a Gideon's group. They were the most discouraged, lazy people he'd ever seen in his life. Gideon's group wasn't like that. They didn't have big numbers, but I tell you this, this group is willing to trust God. This group is willing to get a job done for God. This group is willing to go to war. which brings us to the second faith lesson. God shows Gideon that he's going to give him victory. Now verses 9 to 20 are absolutely amazing. Now the same night it came about that the Lord said to him, Arise, go down against the camp, for I've given it into your hands. But if you are afraid to go down, go with Perah, your servant, down to the camp. And you will hear what they say, and afterward your hands will be strengthened, that you may go down against the camp." So he went with Purah, his servant, down to the outpost of the army that was in the camp. Now the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts, and their camels were without number as numerous as the sand on the seashore. When Gideon came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend. And he said, Behold, I had a dream. A loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell, and it turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat. His friend replied, This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. God has given Midian and all the camp into his hand. When Gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. He returned to the camp of Israel and said, Arise, for the Lord has given the camp of Midian into your hands. He divided the three hundred men into three companies and he put trumpets and empty pitchers into the hands of all of them with torches inside the pitchers. He said to them, Look at me and do likewise. And behold, when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I and all who are with me blow the trumpet, then you also blow the trumpets all around the camp and say for the Lord and for Gideon. So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch when they had just posted the watch and they blew the trumpets and smashed the pitchers that were in their hands. When the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers, they held the torches in their hands In their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing and cried a sword for the Lord and for Gideon Gideon is on the right track, but God says I want to show you that victory is already mine So in verses 9 to 11 the same night that God has dropped those numbers down to 300 God asked Gideon to take his trusted servant, Purah, and sneak down by the Midianite camp and eavesdrop on a conversation. Now I want you to put this in some perspective. We talked about this a little bit Wednesday night. According to Andrew Fawcett, the England scholar of the late 1800s, the camp where the Midianites are is probably two to three miles away from this location. you're going to sneak down there in the dark. If you're going to sneak down there in the dark, you're looking at a minimum of 40 minutes to up to an hour walk. Now this is an amazing demonstration of the sovereignty of God because God is going to actually direct the conversation of the Midianites, who are the enemies. So that when Gideon gets within earshot of this camp, He can hear something that will guarantee him God has given him victory. So what you actually have here is you have God sovereignly controlling the dream and the speech of enemies to show Gideon that he's already given him victory. He is a sovereign, sovereign God. And in His sovereignty, He permits a man in his sleep to have a dream. He allows that man to tell the dream to a friend. He gives Gideon enough time to get an earshot so he can hear the story and hear them discussing it. Verse 12 tells us that the Midianite camp was huge. I mean, he's creeping through the shadows to get down there near that camp. They were as numerous as locusts and the camels were as numerous as the sands of the sea. And according to verse 13, when Gideon got within earshot of the camp, he hears a man relating a dream that's somewhat bizarre. We had a board meeting Tuesday night. I had a bizarre dream. I told to the board. I had a dream that our new church was built. And of course, I've requested that they put a half bath off my office. And so I went in. I was looking the facility over. It was absolutely beautiful. I go into my office. It was just lovely. I said, did you put that half bath in? They said, yeah. I said, where is it? Behind that door. I go in there. Here's a hole in the ground with a board. I hope my dream's not prophetic. Now this is an odd dream they have here. The dream here is that a cake or a loaf of barley bread is tumbling down a hill. It comes into the Midianite camp and topples the tents. That is a crazy dream. These tents are being wiped out not by a tornado, not by an earthquake, not by a rock slide, not by a flood. Those are the things that typically would wipe out a tent. This tent is being toppled by a barley bagel. Now barley was the grain that Israel was left to eat because the Midianites were looting all their good wheat. The tents were literally the places where those Midianites lived. They were nomadic and they would make their annual looting trips into Israel. They'd load up those camels. They would travel in from those Arab regions. They would set up their camp. They'd take all the good grain and then out they'd go. They did that every year. Gary Phillips gives a good illustration here. He said, just imagine you go to a bowling alley and when it's your turn to bowl, instead of using a bowling ball, you take a little BB out of your pocket, roll it down the alley. This little BB hits the pins and shatters them all to pieces. He said, that's about as bizarre as this dream. But in verse 14, when his Midianite friend hears this dream, He said, I'm going to tell you what this means. Now, this is just amazing. This is God working through enemies. He's working through their minds, their dreams, and their speech. This friend says to this guy who had the dream, look, this means God has given Gideon victory, and Gideon's going to wipe us out. Now who in the world could plant that kind of fear into the hearts and minds of the Midianites who have this huge number of military up against 300 guys? Who could put that kind of fear in their hearts? There's only one answer to that, only God. Just imagine, for example, someone listening to a conversation in our military and they hear our highly trained soldiers say, well I'm so afraid that the United States is going to be overthrown by Croatia. And you're listening to them say, Croatia, are you insane? We have states that have more people than Croatia. They don't have a big military. They don't have a chance of toppling us. You would never be afraid of Croatia unless God put it in the hearts and minds of the people. You better fear them. That's exactly what's happening here. He's putting in the hearts and minds of the Midianites that he had already given Israel victory. And when Gideon, who's standing in the shadows, hears this, There are five amazing responses and the first one I love. He bows and he worships God. Look at verse 15. When Gideon heard the account of this dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. Gideon realized that this battle is not about 135,000 Midianites fighting 300 Israelites. This battle is about 135,000 Midianites fighting God. And right then and there, beside a Midianite camp, Gideon bowed down and he worshiped the Lord. And you know what he's worshiping God for? He is a sovereign God. He controls dreams. He controls speech. He even controls what enemies think. I'm convinced you'll never worship God properly until you come to terms with the sovereignty of God. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God is a precious doctrine. It's a doctrine that will actually prompt you to worship the Lord. That's what it should do. You want to fool around telling God how great you are. You want to spend your life thinking man is somehow equal, can overtake God. You'll fool around in a very naive concept of God and you'll never worship him right. Because true worship starts here. God is a sovereign God. The second response is Gideon returns to Israel's camp. He announces victory. Verse 15 tells us that. He goes back to camp and he says, Arise, the Lord's given the camp of Midian into your hands. Gideon goes back to camp. He announces to the 300 men, God's given you victory. Get up. We have victory. And notice he says, it's God giving us victory. We're not going to do it. The Lord is going to give us the victory. All the credit is going to where it belongs, on God. The third response is he divides the men, the 300 men into 300 categories of 100 and gives them their war weapons. You'll notice verse 16, he divided the 300 men into three companies. Now, here's the weapons he hands out. I want each of you to take your trumpet, probably a ram's horn. I want you to get an empty pitcher. I want you to get a torch and then you've got your voice. That's it. There's your weapons. I want you to have a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch. And of course, you have your voice. You can yell something. Our military has high-tech weaponry, unbelievable weaponry. My brother was telling me that there is a bullet that our military can shoot. And when you shoot it into the air, it can actually detect body heat of enemy and actually can reverse course and go get them. I mean, that's the technology that our military has today when we're out fighting a war. These guys are being handed a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch. And they're probably looking at this and saying, don't we have swords or spears? Do we have bows and arrows? Are these our weapons? They must have been thinking, does Gideon know what he's doing? This is no West Point military textbook weaponry here. The fourth response is Gideon gives them the plan for victory, verses 17 and 18. Just imagine you're a military commander. Here's your plan. We're going to surround the camp with 300 guys. You watch what I do, then do what I do. What I'm going to do is blow the trumpet, shout for the Lord and for Gideon, smash a pitcher, and shine a light. That's what we're going to do. which brings us to the fifth response Gideon's plan is followed by the three hundred versus nineteen and twenty tell us Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch when they had just posted the watch they blew the trumpets they smashed the pitchers that were in their hands when the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers they held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing and cried a sword for the Lord and for Gideon it was in the middle watch probably somewhere around ten o'clock at night Some of the men were in bed. Some of them had just been relieved from duty. A new watch was just coming into operation. They surround the camp. They blow their trumpets, break the pitchers, hold up their torches, and cry out a sword for the Lord and for Gideon. This is so funny, because Gideon doesn't even have a sword. But the sword is the word of God. He believes in the word of God. That's the sword. That's the sword who's doing the fighting. God is the only weapon he needed. And God is the only weapon we need. Here's something, ladies and gentlemen, very critical for us to learn. Our job is simply obey God. We don't have to know all of the nuances of the battle or the warfare. We do not have to know how or why God is going to give us victory. Our job is to believe the Lord and obey the Lord and obey the word. which brings us to the final faith lesson God shows his people when you obey him he gives you victory notice verse 21 each stood his place around the camp and all the army ran crying out as they fled when they blew 300 trumpets the Lord set the sword one against another even throughout the whole army and the army fled as far as Beth Shittah toward Zerah, as far as the edge of Abel Meholah, and by Tabath. We get real confidence in God when we learn a real dependence on God. Each man stood his ground. The Midianite army started running around in total panic. They hear this trumpet blast. They hear these pitchers break. They don't know what that is. All of a sudden, they see these lights that are shining in the dark of the night. They're in total panic. The camels would have spooked and stampeded. You have total chaos on your hands. Now, I don't know if you've ever been around stampeding animals, but I have. uh... in my second year out in Idaho we were in the Teton National Forest myself and another guy from our church out there and uh... in the camp over five horses broke loose I mean it's chaos at night you have guys yelling you have horses you're hearing them clumping around you're not quite sure where they are you're out there trying to corral them and and and you have this chaos going on now you just multiply that by the numbers of the Midianite camp and keep in mind these men of Israel are basically just standing around the camp doing nothing All they're doing is they broke the picture, they're shining the light, they blew the horn, and they shouted with their voice. All the credit for this victory goes to God. And according to verse 22, God set a sword against each other so that the Midianites in panic, they start killing each other. Now remember, God's the one directing their thoughts. He's the one controlling their actions. He's the one controlling their reactions. Fact of the matter is, had God wanted to, he could have dropped this whole army without even using any man. He did it in Hezekiah's day. We saw it in the book of Isaiah when he dropped 185,000 Assyrians. But God wanted his people to learn a lesson. You need to trust me. You need to trust me because I am the God who can give you victory. As Dr. Warren Wiersbe said, a faith that cannot be tested is a faith that cannot be trusted. And then verse 23 says, the men of Israel were summoned from Naphtali and Asher and all Manasseh, and they pursued Midian. Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim saying, come down against Midian and take waters before them as far as Beth-barah and the Jordan. So all the men of Ephraim were summoned, and they took waters as far as Beth-barah and the Jordan. They captured the two leaders of Midian, Oreb and Zeab. and they killed Oreb at the Rock of Oreb, and they killed Zeab at the Winepress of Zeab, while they pursued Midian, and they brought the heads of Oreb and Zeab to Gideon from across the Jordan. The fact of the matter is these men of Israel started to get some legs to their fear. Gideon called some of the other men and they came out of their tents and they recruited some forces from Ephraim and they began chasing those fleeing Midianites that were headed straight at them. They captured two of the leaders, Oreb and Zeab, and they killed them and they brought Gideon to their heads. God had routed the Midianites. And what Gideon learned was critical. If we will obey God, we can see God do great things for victory. It was ridiculous to think that 300 men armed with jars, torches, and horns could defeat 135,000 trained military professionals, but when God is with you, victory is yours. Now the Apostle Paul 2nd Corinthians said that in this New Testament grace age you and I are in war with a non-flesh enemy We're in war with forces that are not even able to be seen What possible chance do we have to win that war? We're outnumbered We're out as it were gunned. What chance do we have to win this? If we have God on our side, that's all we need All we need is to trust in Him and be obedient to His Word and victory will be ours. You may find yourself tonight up against some incredible odds. You may be surrounded by forces you know that you cannot defeat by yourself. You may find yourself tonight in a situation and you're intimidated and you're scared. You can trust in your God. What you can do is say, I'm going to purpose to obey God. I'm going to trust in Him. I'm going to rely upon Him. I'm going to believe on Him. I'm going to purpose to obey Him. And if you'll do that, victory can be yours. I leave us with four parting thoughts from this great text. If we are to have great victory, we must learn that it comes from God, not from us. I just think that's a principle we need to learn. Huge battles can be won by just a few faithful people. We can tackle the world with a few faithful people. You don't need massive numbers. What you need is God on your side. Secondly, if we are to have great victory, we must believe completely in God's sovereignty. I'm convinced of that. Victorious people believe in the sovereignty of God. They believe it with all of their hearts. Thirdly, if we are to have great victory, we must not quit because odds are against us. We may find that the odds are stacked against us, but we don't quit. We fight a war right to the end for the glory of God. And finally, if we're to have great victory, we must be willing to give the glory to God because He's sure the one who deserves it. Now let me wrap this up by making a point about salvation. When it comes to the matter of salvation, you are up against incredible odds. You're up against incredible numbers. You've committed, so have I, more sins than we can even count. If you start tracking our life from day one, and you calculated all of the thoughts, and all of the words, and all of the actions that we've been involved with contrary to the word of God, it would be innumerable. We're up against big odds. And in and of ourselves, we have no chance. at a total righteousness that would give us a relationship with the Lord. We're up against numbers that we possibly cannot win unless we trust in God. And if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He's the one, when we totally trust Him, who gives us spiritual life and victory. May we pray. If you're here tonight and you've never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ right where you sit, you can do that. You pray something like this, God, I know I'm a sinner, I admit it. I thank you that Christ died for me and right now I place all of my faith in him. Our Father, we thank you for this great text that you've recorded in your inspired word. This world is so confused, it's backwards, and sometimes we get caught up in it. This business of having great victory, this business of doing big things is not about numbers, it's about you. And I pray every one of us as individuals and collectively as a church will accomplish big things by thy wonderful grace and power. To you be the glory, in Jesus' name, amen.