Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Upon his word. Lord is I
read your word tonight. I pray,
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God, that you would speak to
our hearts. I pray, God,
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that your word would take root in
us and that, Lord, as you
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promised, that no word of yours
shall return void. And so, Lord,
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we look to your word tonight.
We look to you, Holy Spirit,
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to reveal your truth to us that
we may know it in our innermost
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beings and may walk according to your
laws. Bless your word to your people,
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for I pray in Christ name.
Amen. I have a longer text
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this evening, coming from the book
of judges, Chapter Six. I think
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this is a pretty familiar story to
us, but, as the cases with
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many familiar stories that I find is
I go back and read them and realize
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there's things about that familiar story had
forgotten, and so I will read the
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first twenty four verses of chapter six, reminding you that what I read now
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is God's holy word. The people
of Israel did what was evil in the
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sight of the Lord, and the
Lord gave them into the hand of Midian.
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Seven years in the hand of Midian
overpowered Israel and because of Midian,
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the people of Israel made for themselves
the dens that are in the mountains and
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the caves and the strongholds. For
whenever the Israelites planted crops, the MIDIANITES
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and the AMALEKITES and the people of
the East would come up against them.
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They would encamp against them and devour
the produce of the land as far as
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Gaza and leave no sustenance in Israel
and no sheep or hawks or donkey,
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for they would come up with their
livestock in their tents. They would come
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like locusts in number both they and
their camels could not be counted. So
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they laid waste to land as they
came in, and Israel was brought very
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low because of median and the people
of Israel cried out for help to the
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Lord. When the people of Israel
cried out to the Lord on account of
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the Median Nights, the Lord sent
a Prophet to the people of Israel and
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he said to them, thus says
the Lord, the God of Israel,
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I led you up from Egypt and
brought you out of the House of Bondage,
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and I delivered you from the hand
of the Egyptians and from the hand
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of all who oppressed you, and
I drove them out before you and gave
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you their land. And I said
to you, I am the Lord,
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your God, and you shall not
fear the gods of the Amorrights in whose
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lad you dwell. But you have
not obeyed my voice. Now the angel
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of the Lord came and sat under
the terrabant at Oprah, which belonged to
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josh the Abesr, while his son
Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine
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press to hide it from the median
nights. And the angel of the Lord
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appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, Al
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Mighty Man of Valor, and Gideon
said to him, please, sir,
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if the Lord is with us,
why then has all this happened to us,
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and where are all his wonderful deeds
that our fathers recounted to us,
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saying did not the Lord bring us
up from Egypt? But now the Lord
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has forsaken us and given us into
the hand of Midian? And the Lord
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turned to him and said go in
this Mite of yours and save Israel from
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the hand of Midian. Do not
I send you? And he said to
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him, please, Lord, how
can I save Israel? Behold, my
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clan is the weakest in Manessa and
I am the least in my father's house,
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and the Lord said to him,
but I will be with you and
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you shall strike the median nights as
one man. And he said to him,
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if now I have found favor in
your eyes, then show me a
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sign that it is you who speaks
with me. Please do not depart from
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here until I come to you and
bring up my present and set it before
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you. And he said, I
will stay to your return. So Gideon
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went into with house, prepared a
young goat and unleavened cakes from ANA flower.
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The meat he put in a basket
and the broth he put in a
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pot and brought them to him under
the terramans and presented them. And the
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Angel of God said him take the
meat and the unleavened cakes and put them
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on the Rock and pour the broth
over them, and he did so.
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Then the angel of the Lord reached
out the tip of the staff that was
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in his hand, touched the meat
and the unleavened cakes, and fire sprang
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up in the rock and consumed the
flesh and the unleavened cakes, and the
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angel of the Lord Vanished from his
sight. Then Gideon perceived he was the
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angel of the Lord and Gideon said, Alas, oh Lord God, for
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now I have seen the angel of
the Lord face to face. But the
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Lord said to him, peace be
to you, do not fear, you
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shall not die. Then Gideon built
and altared there to the Lord and called
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it the Lord is peace. To
this day it is still stands at Oprah,
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which belongs to the EAS. Thus
will and the reading of God's Word
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Please be seated. As I mentioned
this morning, I am picking up the
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book of judges where I left off
in my message to my previous church,
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which means we're looking at judges chapter
six, as we just read. And
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again, because this passage is fairly
long, I'm not going to be expositing
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every single verse in the text this
evening. Should check to make sure that
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I'm going to stay on time here
and uh, but, but I will
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be trying to get the gist of
the story together with you, and then
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I want to make some application to
us. So we're gonna look first at
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the background to the story in the
first ten verses, and then we will
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look at the call to Gideon,
which takes place in verses eleven to four.
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So let us begin with verse one. Here we have a very familiar
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phrase in judges says the children of
Israel did evil in the side of the
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Lord. This is followed immediately by
another familiar phrase that you may know,
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appears in judges a few times.
And the Lord delivered them into the hand
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of and you can insert whatever particular
enemy Israel would be dealing with at that
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time. Up until this time in
the book of judges, we have had
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Mesopotamia, we have had MOAB,
we have had the Philistines and the Canaanites.
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And here the enemies that the Lord
is going to deal with and that
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our pressing Israel are two old enemies
of Israel, the medianites and the Amalekites,
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and both of those have been enemies
for a while. The median nights,
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you might remember, were first mentioned
in the story of Joseph, when
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Joseph's brothers decided to sell him as
a slave to the median nights and day
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in turn, Remember Soul Joseph to
an Egyptian named Potiphar. They also APP
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here. Has the enemies of Israel
under Moses in numbers tween five versus seventeen
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and eighteen, harassed the media nights
and strike them down for they have harassed
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you, harassed you with their wiles
with which they beguiled you, in the
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matter of pure and in a matter
of Cosby this daughter of the chief of
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Midian, their sister, who was
killed on the day of the plague on
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account of PR and then in chapter
thirty one, verse three, we read
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this and Moses spoke to the people, saying arms some of yourselves onto the
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war and let them go against the
media night and avenge the Lord of Midian.
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And of course you remember Amelek,
as they figured prominently in exit the
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Seventeen and a very famous story where
Moses hands when they're lifted and Israelites are
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winning and we dropped them. They're
losing, and so Aaron and her are
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holding up his hands at that time. Do you can you remember back to
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when you were a child? Um, probably can to some point, but
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you remember, and maybe maybe not
everybody did this like I did. Do
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you remember when you touched a hot
burner on the stove? Uh, even
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though your parents might have told you
not to do it and that it wasn't
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a smart thing to do, you
might have done it and that experience tends
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to stay with you and you think
I am never going to do that again.
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Or you're outside and you take your
shirt off in this beautiful toss on
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weather and uh, you're just enjoying
yourself so much that all of a sudden
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you look and you're baked completely red
and you think, I'm never going to
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take my shirt off again, I'm
gonna wear sunscreen or something. And you
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know, maybe you do or maybe
you don't learn and you keep doing it
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and keep getting burnt. I don't
know, but Israel keeps doing the same
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thing over and over again. They
just don't learn. They keep on doing
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the same thing and they get burnt. I noticed that some of the writers
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on this passage make no to the
fact that the word again doesn't appear in
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this verse. It simply says they
did evil, but not like it those
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other places where it says they again
did evil. Now perhaps there is something
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in the omission of the word again, but I had kind of a hard
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time seen it. But some suggest
that the last phrase of Chapter Five says
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Israel, or the land, had
rest for forty years after the praise song
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of Deborah and that therefore there was
kind of a breaking for a while of
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Israel's backsliding and you probably know the
way that Israel backslides, the sin they
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keep falling into, and tell the
Babylonian captivity is idolatry, the serving and
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the worshiping of other Gods. Now
I found it interesting in comparing different commentaries
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and the different sources that I consulted
on his passage. Some made the point
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that the oppression that the Israelites faced
under the media NITES was not as bad
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as it had been among other oppressions
they had in the book of judges.
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But then I read other commentaries that
say this is the worst oppression that Israel
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has ever had under their enemies.
So I can I can see from that
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that the commentaries don't know everything.
But the one difference we can see about
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this oppression is the length of the
oppression is shorter. It's only seven years.
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Now. Verse Two seems to get
more credit to those who look at
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the oppression as a worst oppression,
because it seems Israel was forced to flee
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their homes and then make caves in
the mountains. Now you can do that
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here. We can't do that in
Minnesota because we don't have those mountains.
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We want to make a cave,
we gotta go underground. That's that's that's
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how we can make a cave when
we're there, but you could do it
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here, I suppose. And UH. In versus three through six, it
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seems like both the produce and the
economics of the nation are being laid low
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at this time. And things are
happening, name that people would plant Crofts,
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but before they could enjoy the harvest. Uh, then the marauders are
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come and take the fruit from them. Jamison, Fawcett and Brown takes the
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idea that this was the worst oppression
and says even life itself is in jeopardy
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from the attacks of these probably marauders, the vast horde of media nites that
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overran Kane and made them the greatest
gourge which had ever afflicted the Israelites.
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So you see very clearly what side
they're on. In Verses Seven and eight
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we have a different approach from the
Lord than what we've had previously in the
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book. Instead of raising up a
deliverer right away, which he's done in
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times past, instead God raises up
a prophet. We don't know the name
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of this prophet, we don't know
who he is, but the message that
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he gives in verses eight through ten
is a very familiar prophetic ministry that is
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applicable to God's people in most times. God's reminds God reminds them how he
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delivered them before from the hands of
an oppressor, and now he promised to
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be with them if only they would
serve him and not serve other gods.
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But the people had not obeyed that. In the end of the message of
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the Prophet leaves us wondering what's going
to happen? Is God indeed going to
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raise up a deliverer? Well,
stay tuned, I've got the answer for
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you, and here it comes,
verse eleven. We are introduced now,
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as we begin to call of Gideon
and these verses, to the man who
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would be the next judge of Israel. His name is Gideon, and if
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we pay attention to the timetable,
we note that, since the land had
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rest for forty years, and it
was only the last seven years that Israel
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had been oppressed by the media nights, Gideon had been brought up in mostly
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peaceful times. Thirty three years the
length of time of our Lord's life,
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and Gideon had been subject to peace
o. There have been, of course,
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many sermons preached about Gideon, and
you know how he's a coward and
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he's behind the rock and he's hiding
from the media nights and he doesn't want
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them to know. And I guess
there's something to that, of course,
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but Um, he's really not doing
anything different than anybody else is doing.
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I mean this is just common sense, right. I mean, if your
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enemy is coming and stealing your crops
whenever you harvest them, then harvest your
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crops in secret seems to be the
wise thing to do. And so he's
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doing that and he's hiding for safety, and so I don't want to be
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too hard on Gideon because of this. But we're also informed in his verse
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of another character who is now making
his third appearance in the book of judges.
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He has identified as the angel of
the Lord and he's already appeared in
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chapters two and chapter five, but
this will be the first time that the
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angel of the Lord appears in judges
to a single individual, and it's kind
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of a strange encounter. It kind
of I mean you read it again and
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it's it seems like, you know, the angels just sitting there under the
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tree and Gideon's harvesting and nothing's going
on and all of a sudden they start
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a conversation. It's just kind of
a weird thing that that's going on there.
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Now we know from Hebrews chapter one
that angels are spirits. They're not
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physical beings like we are, but
in some way it appears that they are
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able to appear in some kind of
physical form or a form that is recognized
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by human beings. But this particular
angel of the Lord seems more special than
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that. This angel who has appeared, as I mentioned already, and also
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appeared in the book of Joshua.
Of course, this angel appears to actually
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be at Theophany, which is a
pre incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. Now
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we see that and kind of there
is a interplay where sometimes he's called the
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angel of the Lord and sometimes he's
simply called the Lord. In this passage,
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remember later on when this being again
will appear, this time to the
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parents of Sampson, and they will
say what is your name? That we
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can tell you know. Good,
tell us your name, and he says,
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why do you ask after my name, since it's wonderful, and of
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course Isaiah told us that this is
one of the names of the Messiah of
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Jesus Christ, that his name shall
be called wonderful. And so in verse
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twelve he says the Lord is with
the Almighty Man of Valor. And again
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it doesn't seem to fit the circumstances, does it? There he is hiding
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behind the rock and scared of the
media nights and not wanting them to see
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him, and here comes the angel. Lord said, the Lord is with
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you, you mighty man of Valor, and that's where it seems perhaps a
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little odd in this case, and
perhaps the contrast is meant to be there,
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but also maybe giddy and just practicing
common sense. And he doesn't seem
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particularly amazed or upset the periods of
the angel, although he seems to identify
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that this is a greater being,
as he identifies the angel as my Lord.
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That would be small L Lord ad
and I, not large capital Lord
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Uh Yahweh. So he says,
Oh, my Ada and I, or
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master uh if Yahweh is with us, is how he says it. So
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we have two different names for God
there. And then getting asked the question
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that the saints that God have been
asking for years on end. If God
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is with us, then why is
this happening to us if God is with
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us, why is that happening to
us? Why all this bad stuff?
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And then the second part. Why
don't we see the miracles that our forefathers
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saw when you lead them out of
Egypt, with the plagues and the miracles
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in the Wilderness and all the mighty
things that Moses did and the great things
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we'd hold? Why don't we see
that today? People still ask that question,
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you know. And in verse fourteen
we have the kind of reply the
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Lord gives to these kind of questions, and scripture doesn't really give them much
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of an answer at all. He
simply says simply, well, that's where
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it is. Basically, it's kind
of the question or the answer to that
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Jesus gave to Peter when he said
about John and in John Twenty one he
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said, uh, what's what's gonna
Happen to this man? and Jesus said,
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you know, if he wants to, if I want him to be
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around till I come, that's gonna
be great, but it doesn't matter to
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you, it's none of your business. You just do what I've called you
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to do. And that's how the
Lord tends to answer these questions. But
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he says, Gideon, I'm gonna
send you the power of the Lord in
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Verse Fiften. He objects. Gideon
does. So I can't be the one.
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I mean we're the little travel Manissa
and our tribe are our our family
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is like the the least of the
tribes of Madisa and I am the least
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in my family. So like,
you have picked the wrong guy. I
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am not the guy that's going to
be able to do this. And again
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I kind of like and not don't
like at the same time, the response
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of Gideon. Right, it's it's
kind of Nice because it sounds humble.
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Right, you know, you say
it. Why me? I mean,
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I'm nobody, I'm just you know, I don't I don't have any credentials,
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I can't do them. kind of
like that, they go, that's
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a that's a good thing, to
be humble. But then on the other
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hand it's like, well, God
has just called you that, maybe you
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should agree with him. Maybe maybe
that'd be the right thing to do.
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But it's a very common thing with
God's people in the Bible to to not
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believe what God tells them. Even
Mary, Very Godly Mary, says,
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how is this possible? So that
they don't know a man. How can
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this be? But Verse Sixteen,
the only answer that matters is given the
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Gideon, the angel of the Lord, or should I say the Lord,
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said, is but I will be
with you, and that's really the only
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thing that matters, is God saying
I am going to be with you.
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When David faced Goliath as a young
man, he said in First Samuel Sev
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David said that the Philistine, you
come to me with a sword and a
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spear and a javelin, but I
come to you in the name of the
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Lord of hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel, whom you have
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defiled. If you go with the
Lord being with you, in the name
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of the Lord, in obedience to
the Lord, God will see that the
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battle is won. It's interesting that
earlier Joshua when the angel of the Lord
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appeared to Joshua, Chapter Five.
Might remember the story. And here appears
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as beery being before Joshua and he
says, are you for us or against
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us? It's a good question him, but what I really like is the
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answer of the angel. No.
Are you for us or against us?
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No, uh that in other words, that isn't the question. That isn't
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the issue that matters at this point. But he comes as the captain of
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the Lord's Army. The question is, is God with us or not?
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And so Gideon now desires to to
show homage to this being and he's going
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to do so by our and a
goat that he's going to bring before him
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as well. And so that's what
he wants to do. And so he
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goes gets these things, brings them
out and lays them upon a rock and
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pours the broth that he had prepared
over those things. And then the angel
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of the Lord Takes His staff and
he touches it with the tip of his
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staff and all of a sudden fire
comes from the rock. The meat is
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devoured, completely gone, the cakes
are gone, everything is gone, and
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all of a sudden the angel of
the Lord Disappears and Gideon, with the
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typical brilliance that we see so offered
in scripture, says, HMM, this
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could have been the angel of the
Lord. H Good, good one,
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Gideon, very very, very smart. Yes, this is the angel of
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the Lord, and the Angel of
the Lord has departed. Now and and
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again, Um, we see that, uh, the angel is the son
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of God, this angel is the
theophany that's come there. And and so
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God assures Israel that even though he's
seen him, that he's not going to
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die and that God says peace will
be with you. And in response to
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that, gideon builds an altar and
he calls it Yahweh Shaloge, meaning the
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Lord is peace. Now this is
what I've wanted to draw us to tonight.
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Okay, this has all been kind
of exposition leading up to this particular
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idea. Now, I'm sure many
of you know that there are several compound
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names of the Lord that are found
in the Old Testament, that different characters
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called him. By Abraham called him
Yahwah Yaira, the Lord will provide,
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or perhaps his other translations put it. The Lord will see. Ezekiel called
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him Yahweh Shama. The Lord is
there, Lord is present. Moses called
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him Yahweh Rafa, the Lord who
heals. Jeremiah called him Yahweh said Canoe.
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He is the Lord who is our
righteousness. All those names tell us
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something about God and who he is
to us and what relationship he has to
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us. To Gideon is Yahweh Shalom. He is the Lord our peace.
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So let me give you some application
tonight before I come back to this once
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again. In the story we see
a familiar theme that has been dominant in
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the book of judges, and that
theme is God doesn't use always the most
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apparent person or the person that seems
like it should be the person that God
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would choose. In fact, he
tends to use unknown, weak individuals in
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the book of judges, in fact
flawed individuals. All along in the book
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up too now, God has used
individuals that surprises that he would use them.
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He uses a man of the name
of Shamgar, and you might say,
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well, why is that unusual,
because we don't know a lot about
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Shamgar? Well, Shamgar is not
an Israelite name. It's probably a Philistine
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name. So God would use a
Philistine to deliver Israel. And what does
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he use? He uses an ox
gode. I don't know if you've ever
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seen a picture of OXICO. I
looked him up a while ago to see
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what they were because I wasn't sure
what they looked like, and I looked
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at it and I thought I'm not
going into battle of that that that's not
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a weapon I want. But that's
what Shamgar uses to destroy the enemies.
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He uses a man who is left
handed by the name of Ihad, and
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he uses a person that a lot
of people, believe it or not,
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still struggle greatly with the fact that
God used, and that is Deborah.
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But I say, if God can
use a Philistine to deliver Israel, I
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think he can use an Israelite woman
as well. Remember, the historical books
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are telling the stories. They're not
prescribing to us, they're not giving us
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what we should do, they're just
telling us this is what happened, and
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we remember that. And now we
have a man who is the weakest member
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of the clan, of his tribe, and he is the least in his
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household. And the point is that
God would tell the Corinthians God uses the
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weak to confound a strong. God
uses uh to confound the mighty. I
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could even say God uses the foolish
to confound the wise and the despised of
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the Earth to con found the noble. There are a lot of warriors mightier
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to David. Remember the story se
also trying my armor on. This stuff
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does not fit. I can't,
I can't wear this, I won't be
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able to move at all. He's
a youth, Saul himself who, the
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Bible tells us what's head and shoulders
above every other Israelite. Saul should have
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been out there fighting that battle,
but it's this youth by the name of
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David who goes out and does the
fighting. And so God picks unusual individuals.
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We might also ask, well,
why in this story does God send
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a Prophet first instead of a deliverer, as he has in the stories before
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this? And it's very similar to
the story I gave you this morning of
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John The baptist, where God send
the Prophet John the Baptist before the deliverer,
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Jesus, came. In his commentary
on judges, Tim Keller makes the
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point the Prophet was needed because the
people were regretful but repentant. As you
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read through this chapter of judges,
you'll see the people cry out to the
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Lord because of the oppression of the
enemy, but there's no real sign of
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change in them. In the Bible
there's a difference between regretting and repenting.
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Perhaps well most well known illustration of
that would be Um Peter and Judas.
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Both reacted very similarly after their sin. Peter had denied Christ, Judas had
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betrayed Christ. Both of them acted
with remorse after they had done what they
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had done. But we read of
Peter and Matthew. Peter remembered the saying
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of the Lord before the Rooster Crows, you would deny me three times.
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And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Of Judas. We read in Matthew
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Twenty seven, three and four.
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw
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Jesus was condemned, he changed his
mind and brought back to thirty pieces of
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silver to the Chief Priest and elder, saying I have sinned by betraying innocent
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blood. Judas was a regret,
peters was a repentance. Paul makes a
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distinction between these and second Corinthian seven
ten, for Godly Grief produces repentance that
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leads to salvation without regret, whereas
worldly grief produces death, as it did
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for Judas. It's easy for us
to be regretful over something that we might
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have done, but are we repentant
over what we've done? I would ask
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you not right now, and you
don't have to do this, but I
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ask you to look through the entire
chapter of judges six and see if you
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can find anywhere, one sign that
there is any repentance from Israel. In
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fact, when you get to the
end of the chapter, you read that
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the men of the area are ready
to put Gideon to day. Why?
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What terrible thing is Gideon done?
What is this horrible thing that they need
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to put them to death? For? Men of the town said to Josh,
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bring out your son that he may
die, for he has broken down
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the altar of ball and cut down
the Astra beside it. That's the terrible
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thing you did. He cut down
the idols of the false gods. That
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doesn't sound like people had repented to
me. Sometimes we need a prophetic voice
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to come to us, as this
prophet that came before Gideon and announced it.
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Sometimes, I'm not talking about someone
that comes and gives revelations and visions
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and tells us all these things that
are going to come, all of that
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stuff, which has never happens rightly
and never does anything and does anybody any
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good. I'm talking about the voice
that comes that says we need to repent,
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we need to turn to God,
we need to leave our idols aside.
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Those kind of voices encouraging us to
return to the Lord, put away
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idols, and this bring to another
point I want to emphasize that I always
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try to emphasize in my preaching,
and that is that salvation, as Jonah
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said, is of the Lord.
Salvation begins with the Lord. Doesn't begin
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with us. Didn't start with us. God makes the first step. God
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makes the first move. He didn't
wait for Israel to repent in this story,
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does he? Before he begins to
save them, he calls a deliverer.
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He didn't wait for Gideon to wake
up one morning and say, man,
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I'm a mighty man of Baylor.
No, he called Gideon and said
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you are a mighty man of valor. Paul said in Romans eight that God
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shows his love for us and while
we were sinners, Christ died for us.
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You always hear people saying things like
Oh, I found the Lord.
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No, he wasn't lost, he
really wasn't. You didn't find him,
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he found you. God didn't wait
for Adam to call upon him in the
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garden and say, Lord, I
sin. please. God went looking for
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Adam in the garden. You didn't
find God. God found you and he
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put his spirit into you and he
regenerated you. Paul says in First Corinthians,
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consider your calling, brothers not many
of you were wise according to worldly
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standards. Not many were powerful,
not many were of noble birth. But
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God chose what is foolish in the
world the shame the wise. God chose
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what is weak in the world to
shame the strong. How could the scriptures
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say it any stronger? It is
God who does the choosing. If it
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isn't, this passage and Corinthians makes
absolutely no sense. But it says God
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chose, God chose, God chose
Gideon and God chose us. has his
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own elect not because of any great
thing about us, but because of his
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love. In Verse Twelve, when
Gideon has told God is with him,
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can't really see any indication that that's
true. But God calls those things which
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are not as though they are,
and he does that again and again,
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as he says in Romans fourth seventeen, Paul says, as it's written,
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I have made the father of many
nations before him, whom he believed,
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even God, who quickens the dead
and calls those things which be not as
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though they were. In the beginning
he called called him as Abram. Abram
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means high father, so everywhere Abram
went somebody would probably say, Oh,
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high father who are you the father
of? UH, nobody, nobody.
404
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And then one day God said,
okay, that's enough, I'm gonna Change
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Your name to Abraham, a father
of a multitude. And now he's got
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to say what's Your Abra? Oh, your father of a multitude. Who
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are they? Well, I'm not
really a father of anybody yet, but
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we recognize if the first name is
embarrassing, the second is even worse.
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But God is calling those things which
are not as though they are. So
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he calls Gideon a mighty man of
valor. Who knows what God may call
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you? Who knows what God may
equip you to do? And in verse
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thirteen. We have that question.
If God is with us, if God
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is with me, why am I
depressed? Why cannot I cannot seem to
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shake this depression? If God is
with me, why am I suffering with
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this disease? Why am I suffering
with this pain? It continues to haunt
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me? If God is with me, why am I so poor? Why
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am I struggling to make ends meet? If God is with me? If
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God is with me, it's been
the voice of the saints, of God
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through the years, but those are
not signs that God is not with us.
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I noticed with you, as I
try to bring this to a close,
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the compound name of our God in
the text is Yaowish Salom, or
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the Lord is peace, and I
said that all of the compound names of
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God speak of something we need from
God, something that God can be to
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us, and we need these various
things at different times in our life.
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But one of the things we need
from God is peace. You probably know
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the common greeting of the Jews one
to another, is the word Shalom,
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which means peace. And you remember, perhaps that in every epistle that we
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know that Paul wrote, he wished
his readers grace and peace. Of course,
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when he came to the Young Man
Timothy, he knew he was a
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young pastor struggling, so he added
mercy because Timothy would also need mercy.
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But every other place he said grace
and peace. In the Old Testament you
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see a book called Song of Solomon. What does his name, Solomon mean?
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Peace, Shalom. And who is
Solomon's bride that he is courting?
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And she courting him? A shulamite, which means one of the meanings peace.
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So we see peace everywhere. To
those of you like me who are
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old enough to remember the nineteen seventies, you might remember that one of the
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greetings we used to say all the
time was peace. We even had a
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sign. You know, we can
make a sign with our hands and we
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could write signs on bulletins and things
like that, and we would say peace
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all the time. And why am
I saying that? I don't know that
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we given up Pre Eminence to peace
and our prayers, our Pre Eminence to
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peace and the things we say one
to another. And I'm preaching to myself,
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if not anybody else here tonight,
and I think a lot of times
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we don't say it and we don't
give it that Pre Eminence in our prayers.
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We don't pray for peace like we
ought to, perhaps for our brothers
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and sisters. But this is something
we need. This is something God's people
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desperately need. I spoke this morning
about forgiveness. We need the piece for
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giveness. We need to know that
all is well between God and us.
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Our confession assures us that is possible
for us to lose our assurance, that
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not necessarily but not not half full
assurance, that the saints of God are
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not necessarily characterized by full assurance and
sometimes trouble comes into our life and our
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peace is forfeited, or sin comes
into our life or sickness comes into our
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life and peace passes away. If
I can paraphrase a past Supreme Court justice,
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we can't explain what that peace is. We know it when we have
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it, don't we? We know
it. Peace Sets believers apart from the
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world. Twice in the book of
Isaiah Isaiah says there is no peace,
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says God to the wicked. When
Isaiah speaks of the coming Messiah, one
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of the names he ascribes to the
Messiah is the Prince of peace, and
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goes on to say and of the
increase of his government and of peace,
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there will be no end. And
in Chapter Verse Three, he says you
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will keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind has stayed on you because he
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trust in you. In Verse Twelve
of the same chapter he says, Oh,
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Lord, you will ordain peace for
us, for you have indeed done
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for us all our works. In
chapter seventeen, he says, and the
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effective righteousness will be peace, and
the result of righteousness, quietness and trust
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forever. And eighteen he says,
oh, that you had paid attention to
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my commandments, then your peace would
have been like a river and your righteousness
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like the waves of the sea.
WE'RE gonna sing in a little bit,
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a few seconds here. We're gonna
sing when peace, like a river attendeth
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my way, when sorrow like sea
billows roll whatever my lot. Thou hast
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taught me to say, it is
well, it is well with my soul.
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God's people need his peace. Gideon
made an altar and called it the
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Lord is my peace. God is
your peace. If your believer tonight,
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God is your peace. He wants
to comfort you, he wants to fill
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you with peace. So realize that, that, that is the desire of
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our God for you. Let's pray. Our God and father of our Lord,
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Jesus Christ, we thank you again
for the promise of peace to your
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people, that we may dwell in
peace, that we may have peace amongst
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ourselves, that we may have peace
in our hearts. And Lord, I
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pray for your people tonight, and
I pray particularly if there are those who
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perhaps are lacking peace, maybe lacking
assurance. Maybe something's happened today to shake
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it, maybe some sorrow or trouble
has come into their life. But,
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Lord, I pray we may accept
your peace and no god, that it
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is a piece, as you say
in your word, that passes all understanding.
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We can't explain it, but it's
there for us and we can dwell
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00:38:28.119 --> 00:38:32.119
in it. And Lord, we
thank you for that promise that you have
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given to us and they pray you'd
make it real to your people tonight.
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In Christ's name, Amen,
