Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Looking at the book of judges.
We are in Chapter Eight. We finished
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with verse three, so I'll be
reading beginning with verse four and going through
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Verse Twenty Eight, reminding you this
is God's word. And Gideon came to
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the Jordan and crossed over, he
and the three hundred men who were with
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him, exhausted, yet pursuing.
So he said to the men of Saca,
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please give loaves of bread to the
people who follow me, for they
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are exhausted and I'm pursuing after Zeban
Zalmona. The kings of Midian and the
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officials of Saka said, are the
hands of Zeba and Zalmana already in your
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hand, that we should get bread
to your army. So Gideon said,
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well then, when the Lord has
given Zeban Zalmana into my hand, I
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will flail your flesh with the thorns
of the Wilderness and the BRIARS. And
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from there he went up to Paneua
and spoke to them in the same way,
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and the Menipanneua answered him as the
men of Sacca answered. And he
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said to the Menapeneua, when I
come again in peace, I'll break down
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this tower. Now zeban's Almana were
in carcer with their are me about about
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fifteen thousand men, all who were
left of all the army of the people
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in the east, for there had
fallen a hundred and twenty thousand men who
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drew the sword, and Getteon went
up by the way of the tent dwellers
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east of Noba and Jog Biha and
attacked the army, for the army felt
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secure and Zeben Zelmanna fled and he
pursued them and he captured the two kings
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of met Midian, Zeba and Zelmanna, and he threw all the army into
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a panic. Then Getteon, the
son of Joe Ash, returned from the
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battle by the ascent of Harris,
and he captured a young man of Sarka
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and questioned him and he wrote down
for him the officials and elders of Sarka,
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seven men or seventy seven men,
and he came to the men of
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Sarka and said, behold Zeba and
Zimana, about whom you taunted me,
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saying are the hands of Zeben Zelmanna
already in your hand, that we should
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give bread to your men who are
exhausted, and he took the elders of
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the city, and he took thorns
of the Wilderness and Briars with them Uh
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and taught the men of Sarca the
lesson, and he broke down the hour
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a penuel and killed the men at
the city. Then he said to Zeeben
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Zelmanna, where are the men whom
you killed at Tabor? They answered,
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as you are, so were they. Every one of them resembled the son
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of a king, and he said
they were my brothers, the sons of
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my mother, as the Lord Lives. If you had saved them alive,
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I would not kill you. So
he said to Jetha is firstborn, rise
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and killed them, but the young
man did not draw his sword, for
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he was afraid because he was still
a young man. Then Zeb and Zelmanna
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said, rise yourself and fall upon
us, for as a man is,
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so is his strength, and get
in a rose and killed Zieban Zelmanna,
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and he took the crescent ornaments around
the necks of the camels. Then the
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many men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us, you and your
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son and your grandson also, for
you've saved us from the hand of Midean.
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Gideon said to them, I will
not rule over you, and my
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son will not rule over you,
the Lord will rule over you. And
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Gideon said to them, let us
make or let me make a request of
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you. Every one of you,
give me the ear rings from a spoil,
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for they had golden earrings because their
ISRAAELITES. And they answered, we
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will willingly give them, and they
spread a cloak and every man threw in
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the ear rings of a spoil.
No weight of the golden earings requested was
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seventeen shekels of gold, besides the
crescent ornaments independence and the purple garments worn
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by the Kings of medium and beside
the collars that were around the necks of
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their camels. And Gideon made an
ef out of it and put it in
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a city in Oprah, and all
Israel horde after it there and it became
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a snare to Gideon and his family. So midian was subdued before the people
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of Israel and they raised their heads
no more and the land had rest forty
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years in the days of Gideon.
As will end the reading of God's word,
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you may be seated. So we
are picking up the story of judges
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here. We already had the battle
of Gideon with his three hundred men in
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an army against the median knights and
the amalekites and after the victory of Gideon,
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we saw in the beginning of chapter
eight here the great diplomacy that Gideon
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used in regards to the Ephromute in
in Uh matter that could have become very
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serious and could have been a great
division, but Gideon handled it with great
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diplomacy. Today we're gonna see him
in a couple more sticky situations and this
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time diplomacy isn't going to be the
order of the day and we're going to
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end with a very sad episode in
the career of Gideon. So it will
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begin by looking at verses four through
twelve. Gideon is one of those Bible
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characters that it's hard for us to
get a handle on because, despite an
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amazing beginning, like many other Bible
characters, he has a terrible ending.
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And we could think of some other
biblical characters who took the same journey.
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We could think of Solomon or Saul
or from this book, we could think
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of Samson. Like Solomon, were
told in this chapter that Gideon had many
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wives and least one concubine. Like
Sampson, he was able, by God's
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grace, to perform deeds way beyond
a normal human being. And like Saul,
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he begins as a great leader of
the Army of Israel, but ends
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by going after false gods, even
as Saul did. So the question we
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have to ask, and I don't
know if I can totally answer it today,
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but the question is, I mean
I think I can. I think
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I can go by Hebrews Eleven,
but the question is, is he a
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Judas or is he a Peter?
I think of the words of the Apostle
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Paul. When I think of Gideon, I think of what he wrote to
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the Galatians in chapter five and verse
seven. He said you were running well.
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Who hindered you from obeying the truth? Gideon, you have been running
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well, you've been doing good things. Who hindered you? Why have you
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failed? Here and preparing the message
for tonight, I tried to consult several
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sources to try to find somebody that
might put a better spin on the end
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of Gideon's life. I was hoping
there'd be somebody out there, but I
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didn't find him. Doesn't mean there's
not somebody out there, just didn't mean
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this means that I didn't find him. In verse four we know a couple
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of things. We see another crossing
of the Jordan's of course there's a very
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famous crossing of Israel under Jordan with
Joshua, over the Jordan with Joshua,
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but this is going across Jordan the
other way. This is actually leaving the
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promised land and going over Jordan that
way. And the secondly we see that
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Gideon is back to his army.
Remember, he called the other troops out
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and had them go after the media
nights, but now he's back to his
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army, a three hundred. And
then there's this phrase that has been the
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title of many a sermon on judge's
aid, I would guess, exhausted or
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fainting yet pursuing. I think probably
one of the more famous ones like that
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was Charles spurgeon's sermon called fainting yet
pursuing. Uh King James, as I
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said, says faint yet pursuing.
But I'm not going to make a big
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point. I'm not going to preach
on that particular thing tonight. That's been
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done already quite enough, so I'm
going to leave it. But Gideon's army
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is tired, but yet they're ready
to pursue the rest of the median nights.
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Now, the debate among the writers
on this that has had is,
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was there really a need for Gideon
to pursue the army of the median nights
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any longer? Now? You might
think about that for a moment and decide
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where you might stand in that.
He had driven the median nights out of
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Israel, which was his commission in
the beginning, and he has performed his
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commission. As we see in verse
five, though, a couple of the
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million night kings have escaped and there's
always a possibility, of course, that
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those kings could rally the rest of
the MIDIANITE troops for another foray into Israel.
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According to verse ten, they had
a pretty good force. They had
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about fifteen thousand men, which is
a lot bigger than the three hundred that
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Gideon had. But I find the
ones, at least the commentaries that I
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consulted, were pretty much divided.
Uh some believe that Gideon was doing the
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right thing by pursuing the media nights, because of course they would have come
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back and went into Israel, and
others felt that no, he had no
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divine warrant to go any further,
and so you can choose whichever one you
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would particularly like. Um, but
before he comes to the media nights,
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he has a couple of other encounters
with people of Israel. Now, again,
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I said in the beginning of the
chapter of the affirmtes were angry because
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Gideon had a massed the army and
not invited them to join. And uh,
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but the FRA Mites were not the
only ones, the only Israelites that
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Gideon had not called. So in
verses five through nine, Gideon comes to
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his countrymen in the areas of Sakath
and Panua, which were areas that were
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inhabited by the tribe of God.
So they were Israelites were there. And
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UH, Gideon also, if you
go back to chapter six and seven,
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you see that Gideon also did not
call the tribe of God to buy to
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battle. But we have given no
information that. Uh, they are angry
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about that. They don't say anything, like the AFFIRMITES had said that they
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were angry about it. So gideons
just couldn't ask their help. In a
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very simple way. He's got three
hundred men, they're hungry. Would you
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give them some bread? But both
the man of Sathan the man of Paneuo
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are going to deny this request,
and the reason is because they know there's
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a large force of media nights out
there, still, fifteen thousands strong,
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and they know that if Gideon doesn't
uh conquer them, and he hasn't done
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it then, and they'll make that
point, that they're you know, they're
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not in your hand yet, Gideon. You can't talk about it yet,
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and so they're afraid that if they
were to help Gideon in this that they
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would suffer punishment by the media nights
when they come to get them. Now
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I want to say here that these
men were under covenant obligation to help their
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brothers. They should have been helping
Gideon and not being afraid of the media
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nights, for they were covenant brothers. They were all part of God's covenant
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with Israel. Paul says in Romans
twelve twenty. To the contrary, if
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your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something
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to drink, for in so doing
you will heat burning coals on his head.
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So, if believers are supposed to
feed their enemies, I would think
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you should be feeding your covenant brothers
right that. That only makes sense to
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me. So I told you Gideon
illustrated great diplomacy and humble diplomacy when he
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dealt with the EPHROMITES. So of
course we're going to see the same kind
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of diplomacy here right. Well,
this is a new Gideon in his response
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to the men of so conthan.
He says, therefore, when the Lord
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has delivered Zeman's Almana into my hand, I will tear your flesh with the
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thorns of the Wilderness and with Briars. Now that's a different kind of diplomacy,
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isn't it? The same basic thing
happens at Pinewo, and if that
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place sounds familiar to you, you
might remember that is where God appeared to
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Jacob and where Jacob wrestled with God, or an angel or a man,
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depending upon what scripture you want to
quote, because all three are said,
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or you might want to combine them
into one personage, the son of God.
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But instead of tearing the flesh of
the inhabitants of CANEA, he now
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um threatens to tear down their tower. Again, not really a great diplomatic
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approach. And so we learned verse
ten that those who had either been killed
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by each other or Gideon's army numbered
a hundred and twenty thousand men. That's
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an amazing number thing about that.
It was just an army of three hundred
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and they had this other army now
had lost a hundred and twenty thousand men,
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and that certainly proves that God had
won his battle. And in Verse
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Eleven and twelve it appears that God
is still with Gideon, for this Army
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of three hundred is able indeed to
conquer the army of fifteen thousand. Not
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nearly as bad at odds as the
original battle, but it's still fifty to
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one against, and that's uh,
that does are tough odds. Now there
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is one ominous note in verse twelve
that we need to take note of.
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It says in the original battle,
we read this in Chapter Seven, Verse
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Twenty Two, when they blew to
three into trumpet's a Lord set every man
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stored against his comrade and against all
the army. I want you to notice
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what it says there. The Lord
capital L O ard in your Bible's Mining
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Yah, where the Covenant God had
done that. But when we compare verse
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twelve, it says he gideon through
all the army into a panic, not
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the Lord Verry web notes here the
author himself doesn't attribute anything that happens in
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this phase of Gideon's life to God. An ominous note that something's going on
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isn't good in the life and Heart
Gideon. Well, let's move to verses
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thirteen to twenty. One in verses
thirteen through seventeen. I guess the best
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thing we can say about Getton is
he's a man of his word. There
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was an old johnny cash song I
had never heard. One of your own
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people here made me aware of this
johnny cash long I never remember hearing it
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before, but the song is about
Jesus and the songs titled. Mainline is
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there's a man going around taking names. Well, Gideon in this story is
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the man going around taking names.
Captures a man of sin, says give
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me the names, I want the
names of the and he takes that.
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I heard a man Um many years
ago speaking about when he was a kid
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and he said that he had done
something wrong and his dad came home and
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saw what he had done and his
Dad said those famous dad words that maybe
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all of us heard at one time
or another. While you asked for it
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and he responded. Well, I
changed my mind so I don't I wouldn't
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have got back by with that,
I don't think when I was a kid.
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But but Gideon basically says to the
men of Sarka, you asked for
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it, this is what you asked
for. Remember when you taunted me about
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not having Zeben Zelmana in my hands? Well, I told you what I
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was going to do. In the
old days again, we used to talk
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about when a kid got in trouble
that the dad would take him out to
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the wood shed. I don't think
that's too applicable anymore. But Gideon takes
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these men out to the Wilderness and
teaches them a lesson with thorns and briars.
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We don't know exactly. The text
isn't clear whether Gideon actually kills them
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or just severely wounds that we're not
sure because of what the text says.
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But of course he does greatly punish
them. And they should have helped Gideon.
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That's true. He was their covenant
brother. He was there. Yeah,
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and I've told you before I've never
been in combat, but I know
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from those who have. They will
say that combat can really change a person
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and as a change happened to Gideon
and it seems like it has not in
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a good way. And whether we
want to justify Gideon or not in what
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he does, we could certainly say
he doesn't seem to be doing things to
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heal Israel, does he? It
doesn't seem like what he's doing is leading
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to the unification of the people.
Many years ago I was at an amusement
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park with my children and I saw
a girl wearing a t shirt that has
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stuck with me ever since, and
it said on this t shirt I was
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born, and then there's a little
break and it said wait, it gets
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worse. Well, that's what we're
to say about the Gideon Story. Wait
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it gets worse. So in verses
eighteen or twenty one, we have the
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confrontation between Gideon and the two kings
of the Median Knights, Zeben Zelmana.
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And again, to be fair to
Gideon, these men had killed Gideon's brothers,
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his own family, and we could
certainly say that the Old Testament law,
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the lex Talian us, was in
effect lex Talian US meaning the law
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that we know as an eye for
an eye and tooth for a tooth,
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and so that was an effect.
So it's easy to justify Gideon in the
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slaying of these men. But he
does something really foolish here. For whatever
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reason, instead of rising and killing
the men himself, he looks at his
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young son and says you kill them
now. We don't know exactly how old
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jether is at this time, but
he has a sword, so presumably he's
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in battle, but he's young enough
that he doesn't want to come forward and
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just kill these two men with the
sword. And why Gideon does this,
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if he's trying to teach his child
to be a man in his estimation,
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or whether he's trying to humiliate these
two leaders by having them killed by a
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child, we're not sure. But
in a FI and zebe and Zelmanna taunt
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Gideon and say rise yourself and fall
upon us, for as the man is,
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so is his strength. Well,
whatever they thought that taunt would do,
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it did make Gideon do exactly what
they asked for. And so it
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appears to us that the Gideon of
chapter six is no more and the new
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Gideon has taken his place. Perhaps
his son, jeth is very much like
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the Gideon we saw back in chapter
six. But, as I said,
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wait it gets worse verses, because
the Gideon of this chapter is no longer
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the Gideon of chapter six, the
people of Israel wreckor a warrior who would
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be well suited to rule over them. And here again we have to recognize
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what's absent from this account. Oftentimes, what's missing from the Bible is just
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as important as what's there. And
what is absent. Back in Chapter Seven,
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Verse Fifteen, when Gideon had heard
the median nights in the camp talking
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about the dream that they had had, it says that is responsible the worshiping
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God or giving him praise for the
battle they had just won. And so
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that is also an ominous sign,
and there are to have been rejoicing.
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There's been a great battle, there's
been a great victory. That is one.
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Now the median nights are decimated,
they are no threat anymore to Israel,
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and it's just like the people of
of Israel and the Sea of the
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Red Sea after the army of Pharaoh
has been drowned. They should be singing
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like the children of Israel were singing
on that day. But there is no
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mention of any worship or any singing
or praising God. And what they say
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in verse twenty two is rule over
us, you and your son and your
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grandson, for you have saved us
in the hand of Midian. They didn't
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say God has saved us, they
said Gideon, you have saved us.
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So again things are going very wrong. They want Gideon to start a dynasty,
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they want him to rule that his
son and his grandson. But in
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Verse Twenty One. Well, so
Gideon does the right thing, he says
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he refuses the request and instead replies
to them they should just allow the lord
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to rule over them, which seems
like a really good thing to say at
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this time, and certainly the offer
of being a king would have been very
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tempting to Gideon. Uh Gay.
Gideon's on the right track again, but
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then in verses the pendulum swings back
to a very opposite end in the worst
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way possible. And I would say
for me it's really hard to understand what
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Gideon does right here. It doesn't
seem to make sense. It doesn't seem
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like there's anything in the account to
lead us to this point. It's like
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if you were reading a novel,
and maybe this has happened to you,
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and you get to a picular a
particular point in the book and you go,
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Oh, we'll wait a minute.
Now you know the author hasn't given
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any indication and something like this was
going to happen, and it's almost like
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that as we come to this place
and sink. Wait a minute, this
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makes no sense. What's going on
here? What's happened? But I've tried
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to give you some clues as to
what's been going on. And so he
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asked the men to give him the
spoil of the Golden Ear Rings from the
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battle, because the ishmaelites all,
I. Had Golden Ear Rings. And
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so they threw a cloak on the
ground and they all said, well,
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gladly give you our earrings, and
they all did. They threw him on
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the cloak and we're told that the
amount of the gold was seventeen thousand shekels.
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Now we're not exactly sure how to
put that into today's dollars, but
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very well could be over one million
dollars. And so Gideon takes it and
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he fashions it into an ipod,
which was a priestly garment, the garment
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of the high priest, and to
make things worse, he puts it up
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in his own hometown, which God
had never given any kind of command that
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God should be worshiped there. And
so he's actually starting another kind of a
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place to worship God. That is
a false place, much like we we
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find in the division under real Bo
him later on, where there is the
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two centers of worship and the one
is certainly not right. And and this
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is wrong. What what he is
doing? The but the the Tabernacle,
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should have been an erom's territory.
And again there we that Manhissa from gideons
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of the tribe of Manassa, and
then and the brother is from and Efraim
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had the superiority according to the prophecy. And so again there's idolatry. So
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Gideon, who began his career,
you remember, back in chapter six,
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he began by leading Israel out of
idolatry and he ends his life by leading
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him back into idolatry. And that's
what is very, very sad about this
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story. Another land, according to
Verse Twenty Eight, does have rest for
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forty years under Gideon. And many
people would defend Gideon here saying, well,
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you know, his heart was in
the right place, he was trying
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to do what was the right thing, he was trying to restore religion to
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Israel, and all of that just
was to show himself thankful for his victory
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by the restoring of religion which,
deed, because it was not according as
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God had commanded, turned to their
destruction. When I read this account again,
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my mind went, and maybe ears
did too, to David, who
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wanted to bring the Ark back to
Jerusalem. Very good desire, but he
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did it the wrong way. He
didn't go back and read who was supposed
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to carry the Ark, and so, as a dies in that bringing back.
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And it seems like Gideon might be
the same way. He wants to
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restore religion, but he's doing it
in a very wrong way. That can
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never lead to the true worship of
God. So how do we make application
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from this story? The first thing
I want to say is how careful we
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must be in the worship of God, or even what seems the smallest digression
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from God's commandments can lead to disastrous
results. We are living in a day
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where we are seeing this constantly.
Gideon didn't make an idol per se,
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he made an epod. He didn't
claim theod to be a false god,
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nor did he even say, has
Aaron said in the Wilderness, these are
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your Gods, o Israel, which
lead you out of Egypt. If you
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remember the brazen serpent that Moses erected
in the wilderness when everyone was being bitten
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by the snakes and they would look
on that serpent and they would be healed.
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Beautiful type of Christ by the way, but I don't have time to
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go into that tonight. But nonetheless
we might wonder. Some of you probably
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know, but you might wonder,
whatever happened to that serpent? Where is
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that serpent? where? What?
What? Where did it go? In
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second kings, eighteen four, many
years after this, we read he removed
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the high places and broke the pillars
and cut down the Astra and he broken
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pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had
made, for until those days the people
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of Israel had made offerings to it. It was called Nahashton. Now again
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God commanded the brazen serpent to be
made. That wasn't Moses idea, that
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was God's command, and one could
make a good case that this could have
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been, and maybe should have been
kept in Israel as a reminder of God's
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deliverance, like the manner in the
pot and Aaron's Rod that budded that that
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this could have been a good reminder
to Israel. But God never commanded such
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a thing that the people should bring
offerings to it, and it became an
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idol in Israel. And this is
why the reformed through the years held to
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what we call the regulative principle of
worship, which means that we are only
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to worship God in the way that
God himself has commanded that he should be
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worshiped. This is an opposition to
what people have called the normative principle of
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worship, which simply says we can
worship God in any way that God does
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not forbid. Now that's a problem
today that are forsaken the normal order of
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worship. And again, I'm not
trying to say we've got it all right
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and everything's perfect, but we are
trying to follow what the Scripture says.
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The elements in our worship service this
evening and this morning and this church are
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not just random things that somebody thought
up and said, hey, how about
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this? These are things that God
has commanded in his word to be a
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part of the service. And so
the things we do, the prayers,
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the reading of Scripture, the exposition
of scripture, the singing of Psalms,
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the singing of praises to God,
the Benedictions the salutations are all things that
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God has commanded. But other churches
on a Sunday morning service you might go
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and you might witness them. is
a called presentation by the youth group or
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maybe a drama play that somebody has
written that will be there instead of a
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worship service, or maybe there'll be
a Christian comedian who has been brought in
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for the day. Or maybe it's
one church that was very close to us
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in Burnsville, Minnesota Morning Rodeo.
That might go well intoucson. I don't
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know, but they had a Rodeo
and it's Sunday morning, but it's not
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a commanded way of worship. Now
there are debates among reformed people as to
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what is right worship and what is
the right of the principle and how do
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we obey it. And One church
might say, well, we don't think
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that's proper, another church might say
it is. So one church might have
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a choir sing, another church might
not. One Church might allow help a
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special number and a service, another
church might not. And they are all
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these kinds of things, but everyone
is trying to stay to the word of
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God and what God's Word Command ends
and again that's why this church has the
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order of worship that it has because
even the slightest deviation from God's commands can
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lead to idolatry. Peter Martyr Vermigli, one of a reformers, said hereby
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we gather, that all worshiping of
God instituted without his word is unacceptable to
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him and is most dangerous to us. John Calvin wrote this in his institutes.
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Gideon provides a notable proof of how
much God hates what mortals think up
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out of themselves to worship him.
For Gideon's IPAD brought ruin not only on
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himself and his family, but on
all the people. In short, every
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chance invention by which people seek to
worship God is nothing but a pollution of
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true holiness. Then, secondly,
let me say one of the lessons I
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think we need to take away from
the story of Gideon is it sometimes the
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worst thing that can happen to us
is success. We think failure is hard
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to deal with, the success can
be far harder. When you think of
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the biblical characters who are marked with
great success, we don't see too many
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good results. Solomon had a lot
of good success, but a lot of
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bad stuff happens after that. Hezekiah
is another Bible character who had a lot
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of good success but didn't do too
well. Samson will come up later in
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the book of judges as another one, but this just bears out what happens
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in real life. How many church
leaders to become famous and popular have ended
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up good with a good result?
Very, very few. When I came
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into the O pc in two thousand
five, I was able to bring it
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into the into the denomination that came
in with me. That was a very
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strong church and became much stronger as
the days went on. And I would
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hear about church planners in the OPC
that would struggle and weren't able to get
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a church to really take off and
work, and many church plants were being
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closed and appeared that they had failed
and all of those things, and I
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would sit there and I think,
what in the world is wrong with those
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guys? I mean anybody should be
able to plant the church. I mean,
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come on, you know this is
easy, this is worked just just
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great and and I don't understand why, why anybody would have failure with this.
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Since that time I've been involved in
three more church plants and in none
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of those places where I was involved
in planting the church. Is there an
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o PC church today? Now?
I can give you a list of reasons
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why I think that is so,
but the simple truth is it didn't.
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And I look at them, whether
I should or not, as failures.
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I know people would say you shouldn't
look at them that way and I know
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we counsel one another that way,
but it's hard not to. But I
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can tell you it's an old character
on television used to say failure has been
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very, very good for me.
It's taught me some humility. Of course,
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not enough. I need a whole
lot more. The proverb writer said,
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give me neither poverty nor riches.
Feed me with the food that is
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needful for me, lest I be
full and deny you and say who is
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the Lord, or lest I be
poor and steel and profane the name of
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my God. It's almost a prayer
to say, Lord, don't give me
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success or failure, keep me from
both. But we need to recognize that
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we have to be able to deal
with the track record of those who have
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failed seems to almost be better than
those who have succeeded, and it warns
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us against the danger of idolizing any
church leader pastors or evangelist teachers that are
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out there. We need to be
very, very careful. I'm sure we've
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all known people who have been very
hurt by some of the church leader scandals
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that have happened through the years.
In a few moments, as I close
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here, we're going to join together
on the table of the Lord. In
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Our story we had two instances of
brothers who refuse to give bread to their
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covenant brothers because they are afraid that
they might do so at the risk of
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their own lives. But in celebrating
the table of the Lord, which we're
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going to do, we remember the
one who gave bread to his brothers,
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which meant he gave his own life. In death, Jesus said this bread
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is my body, which is given
for you. Folks. We were in
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more desperate need of bread than Gideon's
army was. We needed the bread that
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could save us. We needed the
life and death of the Lord, Jesus
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Christ, and, as opposed to
the man of Sacatampanel, he gave it
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to us at the cost of his
life. And we look at him and
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see what some might say was failure
in the cross, but to us tonight
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are his we see it is the
greatest success that's ever happened in the world
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and we think in our minds what
a wonderful savior we serve. Can We
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pray, Lord, we thank you
for your word. We thank you,
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God, that even in failure we
all can learn. I'm sure there are
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many people here to night who have
failed in many different ways. But the
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Lord teach us to learn from that. Keep us from the kind of success
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that would make us haughty and proud
and instead, Lord, as you did
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to the Apostle Paul, give to
us the thorns that we need, not
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the thorns at Gideon whip those men
with, but the thorns that we need
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to keep us humble, for we're
all tempted to pride in many, many
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ways. I pray, Lord,
that it would keep and help us to
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trust only in you and the life
you gave, the bread of life,
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the bread of the world, that
you have given for us, your own
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life and your own death. And
we ask you, Lord, to help
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us to stay humble in whatever do. If we pray these things in Christ's
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name, Amen. MHM
