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So, we've been doing a Bible study through the book of Judges, and we are introduced to a new story here. We've kind of left off with Deborah and Barak, and we're starting a new story. And chapter six is kind of a set up chapter to chapter number seven, but there's a lot of content here in chapter number six. Let's dig into some of this text here. It says in verse one, and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years, and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel. And because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made them the dead, excuse me, which are in the mountains and caves and strongholds. So, we have this constant theme throughout the book of Judges where the children of Israel would do evil. They would sin against the Lord. They would sin against God, and then God would end up causing them to be oppressed by their enemies. Midian, Midian's an interesting tribe, as it were, okay? But Midian is from the relationship of Abraham and Keturah, Keturah. You didn't realize he had another wife, but he does in the Bible if you read it. Keturah and him have other children, and one of them is Midian, and he was also where Jethro, and Moses ends up getting his wife. They were from the tribe of Midian. He was the priest of Midian, and the Midianites are kind of, you know, half in, half out. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad in the story, mostly bad, but in this scenario, or in this scenario, they are the oppressors of the children of Israel, and the children of Israel have to hide. They have to hide in dens. They have to hide in caves. They have to make themselves strongholds because of all this oppression that's coming upon them, and I'm not going to focus on that too much because the whole book of Judges is just this constant rebuke about when you break God's commandments, you will be oppressed. You will have to suffer consequences for those actions. Look at verse number three. And so it was when Israel had sown that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them, and they camped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor asp, for they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude, for both they and their camels were without number, and they entered into the land to destroy it. Now we see here that the children of Israel are being oppressed, and they're being oppressed because they're rebelling against God, but what's interesting is in this passage we have kind of this basically a look into something that they're doing and how they're being oppressed, and it gives us a spiritual picture. Now specifically how they're oppressed is they would sow seed into the ground, and they would cultivate the ground, and they're going to have crops come, but then the enemy would just come and just reap that harvest. So they did all the hard work. They did all the labor in basically producing these goods, and they would just have their enemies come and just swoop in and take them. It's called taxes, okay? No, I'm just kidding. But that's basically where you do all the hard work and the labor, and someone just comes and swoops in and takes all the goods from you. But there's another spiritual outline that we can have here, and this is it. You're going to always be oppressed by enemies. There's always going to be people trying to attack you and trying to get you down, and whenever there's any kind of resistance, whenever you try to serve God, whenever you just say, you know what, even though we're being oppressed, you know what, I might as well still serve God. I'm going to go out and sow. There's going to be an enemy that comes to attack you. Keep your finger here because when you always come back, go to Mark chapter number four, Mark chapter four. Sowing is a parable that's taught in the Bible often, and specifically, that is in coordination with soul winning. That is in coordination with trying to go out and preach the gospel to the lost. We have lots of different parables like this, but the Bible even explicitly tells us, look at Mark chapter four, and let's look at verse number 14. The Bible says, the sower soweth the word. Now, I love that verse because Jesus Christ gives this parable about someone going out and sowing seeds, and obviously, that's to bring forth fruit carnally, but that carnal example spiritually means something too, and spiritually, it's someone going out and preaching the gospel. So, we see a picture of these people being oppressed, but some people are going out to sow seeds, and whenever you go out to sow seeds, the devil will come after you. The enemy will try to attack you. Let's get a proof text here. Look at the next verse. Verse 15, and these are they by the wayside where the word is sown, but when they have heard Satan cometh immediately and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. So, notice as soon as you start sowing seeds, as you go out and trying to do God's work, Satan's right behind you coming to try immediately. He wants to come and attack you. He wants to destroy the work that you've done, and obviously, in this parable, there's a lot more information, but what I want to pick out here is the fact that whenever you try to serve God, whenever you try to get something right, whenever you try to preach the gospel, beware because the devil will come after you. The devil will immediately come and try to destroy the work in which you have laid down, and even when I preach the gospel, if I sow a good seed, I try to really implore and encourage them to watch the video or if they don't want to pray right then, to really encourage them to maybe call upon the name of the Lord if they have the opportunity because I know the devil is right behind my trail and ready to try and get them to forget what they've heard, take away the seed that was sown in their heart, and so it's important that we capitalize on the opportunities that we have. We don't want to just walk around and just hand out tracts. You know how many people get saved through that? Zero. I don't want to ... I mean, obviously, we leave a verse, and we try to sow the seed, sometimes it germinates, but a lot of times it's just destroyed because the devil comes right along on our trail, so that's why it's important that we also harvest, that we also get from the fruits of our ground, we go out there, and we don't just let the enemy come and destroy everything that we did. We want to make sure that we're also harvesting at the same time. Go back and ... Well, go to Malachi chapter number three. There's another verse that I thought of that kind of relates to this, Malachi chapter number three, but we have to understand about the devil is the devil is going to identify those that are actually doing good works, and he's going to attack them. The devil's not interested in going and attacking the lazy, attacking the slothful, going out and trying to find those that are worshiping him, those that are doing his bidding. No, he's trying to find those that are serving God, and he wants to attack them. He wants to come after them. Whenever we're in rebellion to God, we have no one to defend us from his attacks. Our true defender is the word of God. It's the Bible. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the church. It's the blood of Jesus Christ. But you know what? When you're in rebellion to God, he's going to allow that oppressor to come and to reap your harvest, to come and take your goods. Let's see a proof text of that, Malachi chapter three. Look at verse number 10. The Bible says, bring ye all the ties into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. Now, that's just the perfect verse to go along with our story, isn't it? Where we see the devil wants to come, and he wants to literally devour your harvest. He wants to come and take away all the goods that you have sown. And you know, obviously this is in coordination with money. So let's just take the first example here. The first example, I don't want to go and work all day, work by the sweat of my brow. And let's say I got paid that day, like I get paid every single day. I make a hundred bucks that day. And then as soon as I'm on my way home, someone just holds me up and robs me of the hundred bucks. It's like, well, what was the point of, you know, the work? Or it just falls through my pocket, or I lose it, right? Can you imagine you go to work all day in the hot sun, you take off, you take Saturday, your day off, and you go work a whole bunch of extra, and then you get this money and you just lose it. But that's what he's warning you. He's saying, when you don't serve me, when you're in rebellion to me, I'm going to let the devil come and take that. But let's say another example, because this applies in every area of our life. That could be your time. That could be your children. Why would you want to invest so much time, effort, and energy to your children? But then later in your life, you go ahead and just allow your rebellion to God to get in the way. And then the devil comes and devours all the work that you put in your child. You could do a lot of good things with your child, invest a lot of time, effort, and energy, and then just kind of give up and allow the devil to come and swoop in and just destroy all the work that you've done. And here's the thing. The devil wants to come in at the end. He's like, I'm not going to come and just rip up all the seeds. You know, I'm not going to just, I'm going to wait until there's a harvest and I'll just harvest it for myself. I'll just let my enemies come and take that harvest. So that's why you have to be vigilant and you have to always continue and be steadfast because you could work really hard for not. I don't want to labor in vain. I want to make sure that I collect the harvest of my goods. That's why it's important to continually serve God. I don't want to serve God for part of my life. I want to serve him for all of my life. Now go back to Judges chapter number six, Judges chapter number six. What can we learn from this story? We can learn that when you sow, the devil's going to attack, but we need to make sure that we can resist that attack. Otherwise he's going to steal all the fruits of our labor. If you're not willing to defend the goods that you work for, there's no point in working for them. You better be ready for attacks. You better be ready to defend yourself and you know what? You can defend yourself by resting in the Lord, by allowing the Lord to fight your battles. Now it says in verse number six, and Israel is greatly impoverished because of the Midianites and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord. It came to pass when the children of Israel cried on the Lord because of the Midianites that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said to them, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you forth out of the house of bondage. And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all that oppressed you and dragged them out from before you and gave you their land. And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God, fear not the gods of the Amorites and whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. So notice they cry unto the Lord out of their poverty. The enemies come and it's taken all their money, taken all their goods, keeps destroying all their harvest, all the things they've worked hard for, their time, their money, their effort, their energy, their children, their lands, all of it's just constantly taken and oppressed. And they say, God help us, Lord, please save us. And what does he do? He sends them a preacher. That's what he does. He sends them a preacher because here's the thing that you have to understand. The only cure is for them to get right with God. They have to get right with God in order for him to end up blessing them. So in order for them to get right with God, what does he send? He sends a wake up call. He sends a preacher, he sends a prophet to go and to tell them, hey, you need to hearken to God. God already told you, don't be afraid of these people. But your problem is you. Your problem is your sin. The problem is your heart's not right. If you get your heart right, God would fight for you and he'd deliver you from these wicked people. And you wouldn't be oppressed any more. Now let's think about this verse for a moment, okay, because you would think, well, God, please help me. And it's like, do you think they're expecting someone to come and rebuke them? You're like, man, I was just hoping I'd win the lottery. You know, I was just hoping you just destroy all these people with lightning. He might, but here's the thing, they have to do something first, don't they? They have to get their life right. And you know what gets people right with God? Hard preaching. A prophet coming and telling you, hey, you're doing this wrong. Hey, you're in sin. You're in rebellion to God. You're not listening to God's words. You're not hearkening unto his voice. And that hard preaching can actually motivate people to make changes in their life and get things right with God. That's why we believe in hard preaching in this church and you say, what's hard preaching? Well, I always categorize it as three things, okay? Hard preaching is biblical. It has to be biblical. It has to be from the word of God. It has to be the Bible, okay? Number two, it has to be corrective. If it's encouraging, it's not hard preaching, okay? That's just the icing on the cake. If I'm just like, hey, the Bible, God wants to bless you. That's not hard preaching, okay? So it has to be biblical. It has to be corrective. And then most important, it has to be specific. It has to be specific. If I get up and just say sin's bad, stop sinning, stop rebelling, don't do things that are wrong. Everyone agrees with that. Joe Biden agrees with that. Joe Biden gets up and he says, you know what, I'm going to be the light and we need to fight the darkness and we need to love God. His speech, he gets up, he says, hey, we need to love God. We need to resist the darkness. We need to have light. We need to be positive. We need to fight the evil. They can all say that rhetoric, okay? It's not the rhetoric that matters, it's specific. Hard preaching is specific. Naming sin, naming names, making it manifest what the problem is. Not sugarcoating, not skating around the truth. You know what? Hard preaching is not vague. Well, there's these some people out there that do these things. There's these preachers out there and they preach lies. Don't listen to those preachers. You're like, uh, which one? You know, you actually have to name the name. You actually have to point out the doctrine and look, some people, it's like really hard preaching and they're just vague booking the whole time. That's not hard preaching. Hard preaching is biblical, number one, it's corrective, number two, and it's specific. That's what real hard preaching is, okay? Like Jesus Christ pointing to the Pharisee in the audience and being like, beware of this guy in the long robe. That's what? Biblical, it's corrective and it's specific, okay? That's true hard preaching. But he comes here, he rebukes them specifically, right? It's from the word of God and it's corrective and so he's trying to help them. Now go if you would to Acts chapter number three, Acts chapter number three. Let me tell you the job of a prophet. The job of the prophet is doing exactly what I just said. Preach the word of God, but not just preaching the word of God. Make sure it's corrective and make sure it's specific so that people can make a positive difference in their life. You know, when you get specific on sin, it has one of two outcomes. The person leaves the church because they're offended or number two, they realize the person's trying to help them and they fix it. You know what? You can't endure hard preaching over and over and over again and not make one of those decisions. You're either going to quit or you're going to get it right and you're not going to sit there and just endure someone telling you you're doing something wrong over and over and over again. You know, that person's going to end up having one of two outcomes and ultimately that's what you want. You want the people to either fix it or move on. And so as a prophet, as a preacher, you need to preach the word of God with boldness and motivate people to make changes in their life. That's your job. That's your goal. It's the help others serve Christ better. You need to be pointed out what you do that's not right. That's actually encourages me when I can get something right with God, not just being told how wonderful I am. Like Donald Trump wants to hear. Acts chapter three. You thought I only hated Biden. Okay. Acts chapter three. Look at verse twenty two. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, a prophet shall the Lord God, Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me, him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. So notice how God feels about the prophets. Now obviously that's specifically about the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don't hear his voice, you're not saved. He says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. They're not going to follow a stranger. Okay. If you can't hear God's voice, it's because you're not saved. That's what the Bible, listen to spirit of error sermon. Okay. Reference that. But another thing that we can discern from this passage is how God feels about his prophets. You need to listen to the prophet or you're going to be destroyed in every case, whether that be Jonah, whether that be Jeremiah, whether it doesn't matter what the prophet was. You needed to hearken to the prophet's voice. And so here's my question. Are you listening to the preachers in your life? Are you listening to God's instructors? Are you saying, well, I know this prophet saying I need to make this change, but I'm not that interested. It doesn't sound cool. It's not that much fun. He's telling me that I'm not that great. You know, Donald Trump, wouldn't like that sermon. All of them. Okay. Cause he thinks he's great. And at the end of the day, what we need to do is not worry about what's being said. Just listen and obey, just say, Hey, of course. Now when we talk about the prophets, okay, we know that they, everything they said was right because it's the mouth of God today. There's preachers that lie all the time. Even say preachers, I hear garbage sermon that all the time from say people, people I even like, and I'm just thinking, wow. So what you have to do is you have to actually go and study your Bible yourself and make sure that that's what the Bible is teaching. And I can't overemphasize that, especially this church. You need to search the scriptures and know what it says. You say, why do you say that to me, pastor Shelley? Well, maybe because you had a guy lying to you for a really long time and you're still here. So if you got tricked once, is it possible to get tricked twice? Yeah, it is. And I'm not any different than you. I can be bamboozled. I can be hoodwinked. I can be tricked. We all need to search the scriptures daily and make sure all preaching we hear lines up with the Bible. But when you see it confirmed in the scriptures, you obey. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to listen to God's voice because God is going to speak to you audibly today through preaching. Through the foolishness of preaching that you hear God's voice audibly. Otherwise it's going to be when you sit down in your quiet time and reading the Bible. You say, well, no one's preaching me. Well, read it out loud in your in your closet, you'll hear God's voice audibly. All right. But it's not this mysterious voice in your head telling you, pick the red one. You know, you know, steal, steal the car. It's never saying that, you know, pick the red Corvette, you know? No, it doesn't. That's not how God works. God speaks to us through his word and he speaks to us through preaching through men of God getting up and preaching the word of God. Go to Ezekiel, chapter two, Ezekiel, chapter number two. So for these people, they got exactly what they needed, a preacher. And that's how God saves his people is through the preaching of God's word, whether that be for salvation, specifically of going to heaven or just salvation in your daily life, saved from the destructions of sin, saved from the filthiness of this world. God uses preachers and preaching to save people's lives. That's why it's such an important job. We can't overemphasize the preaching of God's word. It's it's the main course that we have church. Why don't we just sing for 30 minutes? Some churches do. Some churches, they just have a concert and then they just have a little sermonette. He gets up there and he tells you how wonderful you are and how Godly you already are and how God's not mad at you. God doesn't want you to change. God just loves you as you are. What verse is that? I don't see that verse in the Bible. God loves you despite how you are. He's not loving you because of who you are. He's loving you despite who you are. And in fact, his pleasure towards you is dependent on your actions. So if you want to be pleased with you, it's depending on how much sin you got in your life and how much how humble you are as a person. So be not deceived today. God is upset with the wicked every day is what the Bible says. Look at Ezekiel chapter two. Here's another prophet. Verse one. And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon my feet and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me. Now tidbit, you want to get filled with the spirit of God? Hear God's words. Notice when he gets to hear God's words, the spirit comes inside him. Now this is, you know, this is a, in my mind, a double word. Okay. So here's what I'm talking about. He just, you know, came back to having strength or whatever, but just a tidbit. The Holy Ghost will fill you when you hear the word of God, it'll bring you to life. It'll rejuvenate you. It'll revive you is God's word. You know, I feel revived after church. Sometimes I show up at church and I'm just kind of like, eh, but then after church you can get revived because you heard the word of God being preached with power, with authority. And that's what good preaching will do. It'll revive your spirit. He says here, and he set me upon my feet that I heard him that spake unto me and he said unto me, son of man, I send me to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me. They and their fathers have changed guests against me, even under this very day for they are impudent children and stiff hearted. I do send thee unto them and thou shalt say unto them, thus say it, the Lord God, and they, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear for they are rebellious house yet shall know that there has been a prophet among them and thou son of man be not afraid of them. Neither be afraid of their words, though briars and thorns be with thee and thou does dwell among scorpions. Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they hear or whether they forbear for they are most rebellious. So what is he warning Ezekiel here? What is he instructing Ezekiel? He's saying, you tell them, thus say it, the Lord. And it doesn't matter what they look like. If they're all angry, they're like, can't believe he's preaching against, I don't like that. He didn't just preach louder. He didn't just stick on that point. And as a preacher of God, if you know what you're saying is biblical, never compromise, never back down, never skirt around the truth. People need to hear God's word. And you know what? God is not going to be mad at you for preaching the word of God ever. Don't be afraid to preach the Bible today. I feel like there's so many preachers. They're afraid to preach the Bible. They're afraid of the persecution. They're afraid of the faces in their church. And you know what? I want to preach the Bible as hard as possible every sermon, because I don't want to feel like I need to trim the message. I don't want to just fill up the church with a bunch of people that are going to have all these scowls and cause me to feel like, oh, I can't preach on that, they'll leave. I'm thinking like, leave. Hey, if you don't want to hear the truth, hey, I don't want to preach to a group of people that can't handle the Bible, that can't handle the truth today. I want to build a church that loves the truth. They would be mad at me if I didn't preach the Bible. They would say, hey, why did you soften the message on Fanon? Why did you trim the message on Judas? Why didn't you preach harder, Pastor Shelley? Don't call them gay. Call them fags, okay? Don't weaken down. Don't soften the message. Don't trim the message for whoever shows up. No, preach the word of God with power today. Call a spade a spade. And look, if I can tell anything to young preachers, preach the word of God. Now I'm not saying get up here and scream your personal opinion, but if it's the Bible, you should thunder forth the word of God. That's his instructions. That's how he saves his people. That's how he delivers his people. Notice they cried for a savior. What did he give them? A preacher. And a preacher can make a world of difference today. A preacher can turn the world upside down with the gospel. Never underestimate a preacher's the most important job. President's nowhere close. Who cares about the president? Go back to Judges chapter number six. The most important job is the preacher of God's word. And I don't care if you're a pastor or not. Every time you get an opportunity to preach behind God's pulpit, you take that job seriously. You study the word of God. You preach the word of God with power because it makes it different in people's lives. We can't underestimate preachers. It's the most important thing that we can do. Look at verse number 11. And there came an angel of the Lord and sat under an oak, which was an ophrah that pertained unto Joash the Abir-Ezrite and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. Now, what I like about Midianites, what I like about this is we just got done talking about that preacher, that hard preacher, right? Well, in the Bible, you have the wheat and the tares, okay? The tares are the children of the devil. The wheat are the children of God. Now, what's threshing? It's a beating. It's a shellacking of that wheat. And you know what that does is it causes it to produce fruit whenever you thresh it. So you know what you do? You preach the word of God hard on God's people, and you know what it's going to do? It's going to produce fruit. But there's all this fruit potential in all the wheat, and if you don't thresh that wheat by preaching the word of God with power, there's going to be no fruit. You show me the church that has fruit, and I'll show you hard preaching. You show me the church that has all this fruit without hard preaching doesn't exist. It's through the threshing of God's word. It's through going out and preaching the hard truths and beating the wheat and saying, hey, let's produce more fruit. God wants to purge you so you can bring forth more fruit. You can't soften the message. People get all upset. They're like, ah, after this and your preaching, I feel like I was yelled at for an hour. Yeah, I threshed it for an hour. I'm trying to get some fruit out of here. That's the point. You only just talk sweet. This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I don't care for hurricanes coming to get me. You know, I'm just going to hide my mansion. Look, Joel Osteen. I don't want to listen to that. He doesn't thresh anything. He's never threshed. He couldn't hurt a fly. He couldn't even. He can't even separate wheat from the chaff like the wind does nothing. Look at verse number 12. The Bible says, and the angel of the Lord appeared on him and said, and the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Now the angel of the Lord is an interesting phrase. It could mean different things. Angels simply means messenger is another way to phrase that. And but the other thing that's interesting, though, is while the angel of the Lord could be an actual angel, we think of as an angelic being, it could be a person. But in this context, what's really interesting is it's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And you know, we're going to get an example here in a moment. But he's telling Gideon, he's saying, hey, the Lord is with you. And he tells him that he's a mighty man of valor. Valor would be strength, courage, boldness. Says in verse 13, Gideon responds and Gideon said to him, oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. So you see, Gideon's attitude, what is Gideon's attitude? It seems like he's a little frustrated. He's saying, well, if Lord's with me, where is he? Where be all his miracles? You know, whenever the Lord was with them in Egypt, they passed through the Red Sea and they destroyed Egypt. And we saw all these great wonders. I thought, I mean, if God's with us, where are all these miracles that we'd be seeing? You know, where's all these, we're being forsaken. We can see he has a little bit of an attitude and he has a little bit of an attitude because he was already secretly threshing wheat against the Midianites, right? He's kind of that, he got that rebellious spirit over there, right? But you can see he has a little bit of boldness. He has a little bit of courage and he's definitely a little bit frustrated. Look at verse 14. It says, and the Lord looked upon him. Now if you have a King James Bible in your hand, which you should, the word Lord is different there than it was in verse 13 the first time, right? And the first time it says Lord L-O-R-D, but it's lowercase for the O-R-D, right? And verse 14, it says in the Lord and it's all uppercase. That's because it's a slightly different word. If it's lowercase, it just means like, sir, and just be a respectful title, like Lord, like boss, sir. But when it's all caps, it's actually the name of God. It's actually referring to God himself. And notice at first it's the angel, the Lord talking to Gideon. Now who's talking to him? The Lord's talking to him. So it actually tells us that it was God talking with Gideon. He says the Lord looked upon him and said, go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have not I sent thee? Now it's funny because he's calling him a mighty man of valor and you can see he's kind of frustrated. He's like, where's God or whatever. And then the Lord looks at him, he says, well, go in your strength. I mean, you got some strength here. You're really strong. Why don't you go out and you'll kill the Midianites. You'll take on the Midianites. Well, what happens? He says in verse 15, he said to them, oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? The old my family is poor and menassy and I am the least of my father's house. He's like, there's a lot of big talk and he's like, okay, go kill all the Midianites. He's like, oh, wait a minute. He humbles him, doesn't he? The Lord humbles him. He says, okay, go in this might and you'll save Israel. And he's like, oh, wait a minute. You know, I'm, I'm this, this poor guy, nobody likes me. And you know, the Lord will humble you. He says in verse 16 and the Lord said him, surely I will be with thee and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. So the Lord humbles him, but he encourages him at the same time by saying, I'll be with you. Hey, go in your might. Oh, wait a minute. I'm not that strong. I'm not that great a guy. I know you said I was a mighty man of valor, but I'm not ready to take on the enemy. But then the Lord tries to encourage him and says, well, I'm going to be with you. Says in verse 17, he said to him, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a sign that thou talkest with me. So it's interesting that God calls him a mighty man of valor because he's pretty weak when it comes to put, when push comes to shove. And we see that even in chapter number seven, he's, he's a pretty timid character in the Bible, but he ends up having great courage. Now what I like about Gideon is this is in this story, we can see somebody in God's eyes has a lot of valor. And I think it's more of the fact that he's looking in the future. He knows that Gideon's going to be a great leader and have a lot of great strength and everything like that. So he looks at him as having great strength, but Gideon feels like God is not with him in difficult situations. And here's the thing. God is with us in difficult situations. You might be in oppressed. You might have hard times, but God is always going to be with you. Keep your finger and go to Psalms chapter 23 for a moment, Psalms chapter number 23. And God wants to encourage us. Notice when he's feeling weak, when he's feeling timid, when he doesn't feel capable of attacking the enemy, God's trying to encourage him by saying, I'll be with you. I'm going to go with you. And the Lord wants us to have that peace of mind. Look at Psalms 23 verse one. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. So he says, even if I go into the most dangerous situation, even if I'm in the valley of death, he says, I don't fear. Why? He says, for thou art with me. For thy rod and thy staff come from me. So notice what gives the psalmist comfort is the fact that God is with him. And so we can learn from this is even when you're going through a hard time, even when it feels like you're alone, God is with you. If you're saved, God promised I'll never leave thee nor for safety. And he truly will never do that. Go to Psalms 91. The encouraging thing here is I don't care what difficulty you're going through. I don't care what problems you have. I don't care who has abandoned you. God hasn't. Jesus Christ is with you, and Jesus Christ wants to strengthen you, and he strengthens you through his word, through his promises, through finding comfort in the scriptures. Psalms 91, look at verse one. He that dwelt in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty. I will say to the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God. In him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the thaller and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. So notice God wants to cover you. God wants to protect you from the evils, and you say, well, what does that look like? He says very clearly in verse four, his truth shall be thy shield and thy buckler. So what is going to actually protect you? God's word. His truth. The word of God, Jesus Christ. Look at verse five. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only thine eyes shall thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Now we could read this whole chapter. I think it's a great chapter to read, but this is what I want to point out. Because a lot of people are fearful at this time. I mean, there's a lot of things to be afraid of. Our economy dropping. President Biden, President Kamala. I don't know which one's scary. I mean, it's like, roll the dice. To some, President Trump. To some, any leadership, any government, you know, COVID or all these things are out there. You know what? No matter what is in our future as far as the difficulties, struggles, and persecutions, if God's with you, who cares? Hey, if the Lord's with you, Gideon, just go out and fight the battle. Just go out and you're going to conquer and you're going to do great works for God, knowing that God is with you. We need to stop worrying about what's out there and worry if God's walking by your side. And start reading the scriptures and strengthening yourself in God's Word and God's promises and His truth, because I don't care how many people hate me, dislike me, what the economy I live in, as long as God's with me, that's great. As long as the Lord is with me, He can strengthen me, He can protect me, He can allow me to do great works for Him and to serve Him as long as He's by my side. And you know what? The Lord won't leave thee or forsake thee, but you can jump off a cliff sometimes. And that's what we see the children of Israel constantly doing, trying to just dive in the other direction and God oftentimes will allow them to leave His wings of protection and to be hurt, harmed, oppressed, destroyed. Sin will deceive you, my friend. Go back to Judges chapter number six, go back to Judges chapter number six. But what I want to remind you of this is that God wants to encourage you. God wants you to realize He's there with you. You say, well, I've lost a family member, I've lost a friend, I've lost a job, I'm struggling financially, I'm struggling with this sin, I'm struggling with whatever it is. You know what? God's still there with you. God wants to encourage you. God wants you to continue forward with Him by your side. He wants to be your shield, trust in His words. Now we saw in verse number 17, He was asking for a sign. Look at verse 18. Depart not hence I pray thee until I come unto thee and bring forth my present and set it before thee. And He said, I will tarry until thou come. So Gideon wants to offer a present unto the Lord, okay? Keep that in mind. We're going to come back and think about that for a moment, okay? Gideon wants to offer God a present. Now it says in verse number 19, and Gideon went in and made ready a kid and 11 cakes of an ephah of flour, the flesh he put in the basket and he put the broth in a pot and brought it out unto him under the yoke and presented it. So we see in verse number 19, he's offering a gift, a present, it's kind of multi-layered so there's a lot of things to it. Now when we read stories in the Bible like this, you would say, this is weird, this kid, which a kid is a baby goat, okay? Or a baby, it could be another of a similar flock, but it's basically just a young goat or something that he's offering. And everything in the Bible though is not just a random story, it actually has a spiritual significance. All of these are pictures that God has given us and they're really cool when you kind of slow down and you think about them. But if we think about the unleavened cakes, okay, we take the flesh and we take the unleavened cakes, let's read verse 20 and let's dig into this. It says, an angel of God said unto him, take the flesh and the unleavened cakes and lay them upon this rock and pour out the broth and did so. So the first part of this present is flesh and unleavened cakes. The flesh would be the meat of that kid and the unleavened cakes would be basically the bread offering. So it's basically like steak and pancakes, okay, is what he's offering in a sense or bread innocence, you know, some kind of a hot cake and the flesh is some kind of a meat offering that he's offering unto him. But all of these picture the Lord Jesus Christ and it's a picture of him being sacrificed. Now what's interesting about this is that it's put on a rock, it's laid on a rock. Now keep your finger, go to Exodus chapter 20, go to Exodus chapter 20. So all the meat offerings in the Bible are a picture of the lamb that was gonna be slain, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, and his flesh had to truly die and be sacrificed for us. And that's a picture. Also, he compared his body to bread, which is there with the unleavened cakes. So we have the cake, we have the flesh, these are pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ body being broken and crucified on the cross for us, but it was also on a rock. And I find this as a cool little nugget here. But in Exodus chapter 20, look at verse 25. The Bible says, And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shall not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Now that's kind of an interesting commandment or instruction. When God is giving instruction to Moses, he says, hey, when you do offerings, don't do it on a nicely graven stone. And why is he saying that? Well he's saying that for this reason. Because a graven stone would have been man's work. It would have been man's tooling that had basically crafted this particular piece of rock. Okay. But salvation is holy of God. And so God wants to use his rock. Also notice this, Jesus Christ was not killed in the temple. He was not killed on hewn stone. He was killed on Mount Calvary. He was killed on the skull, you know, basically. He was killed on Calvary where he went out on Golgotha, okay, the place of the skull, which is what? One of God's stones. That's where he was killed. So all the pictures are pictures of exactly what Jesus Christ would do and fulfill would be to kill on a rock that God had made. So when God wants him to offer an offering, he wants it to be on a rock, just a random rock that God had made, not hewn stone of man's device. It's not faith plus works, no, it's holy of God. Salvation was all bought and paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ. Go back to Judges chapter number six. So as we think about these spiritual pictures, and I'm sure there's even more layers here that I can't uncover just in this few minutes, but there's so many different layers. We also see another thing that's interesting. It says in verse number 20, they used to pour out the broth. That's a picture of the water and the blood being spilt on the cross. So he has the drink offering. The drink offerings were always poor offerings. Why? It's the picture of the blood and the water being spilt out of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice. These things are not accidental. It's incredible. It's the finger of God. How could you write a book like this? Never man spake like this man spake. Now also in verse 21, it just keeps getting better. It says, then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes. And there rose up fire out of the rock and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the Lord departed out of sight. So then it's a burnt offering, which pictures what? That Jesus Christ had to actually go down and descend into hell and to suffer in hell for a short space. He tasted death forever man is what the Bible says. So we have the burnt offering as well. And it's interesting because this is Jesus. This is the Lord himself taking this offering in is what he is going to fulfill. So he was full aware of what was going to happen. Now think about this, all of that symbol, right? What did Gideon say he wanted to do? He wanted to offer a present because the gospel is the gift of God, isn't it? Notice it's a present. It's a gift to picture what God's gift to man is the gospel. Isn't that amazing? I mean, the Bible is just incredible. Look at verse 22. And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the Lord, Gideon said, alas, Oh Lord God, for because I've seen an angel of the Lord face the face and the Lord said him, peace be under the fear. Not how shall not die. The Bible tells us that no man shall see his face and live talking about God. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him. So nobody has seen God and no one can see God because if he did instant death, but you just can't. The Bible makes it manifest. One day we shall see the face of the father. Even Moses, just seeing the back parts, his face shown for a long period of time. And so them dealing with God here was not the father. It was the son. It was the Lord Jesus Christ, the messenger of the Lord. But he also is the Lord and the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. That's what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches the Trinity from Genesis all the way to Revelation. Let us make man in our image after our likeness. You know we look like Jesus Christ and you know what Jesus looks like? God the father. All right. Look at verse 24. The Bible says, then Gideon built an altar there under the Lord and called it Jehovah Shalom. And that basically means Jesus saves peace. Okay. Under this day it is yet an Ofra of the Abieresrites and it came to pass the same night. The Lord said unto him, Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that is thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it. And build an altar in the Lord thy God upon the top of this rock in the ordered place, and take the second bullock and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down. Now we have here he offers a sacrifice, but the most important thing is that he's instructed to throw down the altar of Baal. And it says in verse number 27, then Gideon took 10 men of his servants and did as the Lord had said on them. And so it was because he feared his father's household and the men of the city that he could not do it by day, that he did it by night. So again, see how he's a little bit timid of a person. He's kind of a little bit weak at this point in time, but he's going to become a great man of valor through the Lord. The Lord is going to give him strength. The Lord is going to encourage him and do great works through a man who's a little bit fearful, a little bit timid throughout this entire story. It says in verse 28, when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down and the grove was cut down that was by it. And the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built. Now one thing you have to understand, keep saying the second bullock. That was confusing. I'm like, where's the first? But what you have to understand about the peace offerings or the offerings of God is the first is always killed. The first is an automatic offering unto God. So that's why he's talking about the second bullock. So he can offer the second bullock, but the first bullock was already an offering was the tithe to God of his sacrifice. But he throws down the altar of Baal, which was his father's. So his father actually stopped serving God and started serving Baal. And what we have to understand is that in our lives, there's going to be things that have been passed down from our parents that are not right. Now the Bible instructs children, it says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. So children are supposed to obey their parents. And our default should be to obey every single instruction of our parents, period, till the day that we die. It's not like till you're 18, till you emancipate yourself. Okay. No, it's till you die. Yet there is a possibility that an instruction or something passed down from your parents is in violation of the scriptures where now you have God, the father, and you have your earthly father. Well, if there's a conflict, which one would I obey? The Bible says to obey the higher power. Therefore we ought to obey God rather than man. Therefore we should tell our parents, you know, politely, Hey, this is, you know, I understand this is your instruction. I want to follow your instruction like the Recubites, but God is telling me something different. I got to obey God's commandments. I got to obey God's instruction. And there's going to be things that are passed down that you say, you know what? That doesn't line up with the scriptures. That doesn't line up with God's word. I'm not going to do that then. I've met a lot of people when I go out and try to preach the gospel, they say, Hey, my, my dad's Catholic and his dad was Catholic and they were Catholic and I'm going to stay Catholic. Well, you know what? Catholicism will send you to hell. Catholicism is a false gospel. They don't believe in faith alone for salvation. They believe you have to work your way to heaven. In fact, virtually every Catholic priest is a predator physically and spiritually. It's all of it. He's like, how could you say that? There's a literal website said like catholicpredators.org or something. And it just like dozens and dozens of Catholic predators caught and prosecuted and found guilty mind you, okay. And every city in America. And they're still pastoring. They're still, cause look, probably the most lenient of offenses is now like child predators. You know, they get one year, two year or they get all, they get off so easy. And then the Catholic church sweeps it into the closet, sweeps it, you know, wherever they can. They just swap parishes, you know, Oh, you've been abusing these kids, go to this parish now. And it's just this big swap. It's disgusting. It's filthy. And you know what? You should say, I only care what the Bible says. I don't even care. Hey, even if you were raised an independent fundamental Baptist, you might've been taught something that was wrong. And I could even teach something that's wrong. The only thing that matters is God's word, is the Bible. That's what we need to submit to. Hey, we need to be respectful of our parents, but if they try to pass me something that's Catholic, no. Hey, if they try to pass me the idol, hey, I'm going to throw it in the fire. All idols. You say, what's an idol? Any graven image. The Bible says any likeness of anything that flies in the air or the beast of the field or the likeness of man, Hey, you're precious moments. Throw it in the fire. Oh, but it's so precious. There's nothing precious about that. Throw all your stupid dog figurines in the trash. Throw all of your graven images in the trash because you know what? God, it's a second commandment, okay? It feels kind of important. And I don't like it when I just had to see idol after idol after idol, you know, and there's all these Republican Baptist, Fox News Baptist. They see statues of Robert E. Lee being torn down and they're sad. Oh, he's our, he's our Confederate hero. It's like, what, how can you not want that torn down? Tear down the Statue of Liberty. You're not American. Look, if you study it, it's a dude in a dress. How could you want the statue for our country as a dude in a dress? And then you wonder why we have so much faggotry in this country. Why do we have so much transgender nonsense? Hey, I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's BLM or Antifa, knock it down. I don't, I don't want that trash. Now, hey, they're not supposed to knock down, you know, the grocery store and whatever. Hey, I'm not for anarchy. Hey, I'm not for doing things, you know, against the law, but at the end of the day, I'm not going to weep over the Statue of Liberty crumbling. Hey, God sent a hurricane. I don't care. Let's pray for that. Let's pray to destroy all the wicked idolatry in this country. And I don't care if my dad hands me an idol, I'm going to throw it in the trash. And all the false Bibles too. That's another idol. But it's the family, it's the family NIV. It's the family new living. It's still Lucifer's translation. His non-inspired Lucifer translation. I don't want it. I don't care if it's a family heirloom. I don't care what Bible dad used. I care what God's Bible is. I care the right Bible and I'm going to use God's word. And you know what, there's so many people, they're so timid and so cowardly, hey, throw it in the trash. Hey, you know what we burn at Pure Earth Baptist Church? Every false Bible. All of them. And you know what? I was given Bibles by my parents and you know where they went? In the fire. Oh, look, I'm going to obey my parents and I'm going to love my parents, but if they give me an idol, I'm going to burn it. If they give me something that's wicked, I'm not going to. If my dad tries to hand me a beer, which he would never do. Praise God. My father hates alcohol. He at least, you know, understands what the Bible says on that. Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging. But you know, if dad tries to hand you a beer, you say, no, thank you, sir. No thank you. And can I please take yours and throw it away for you? Can I please dispose? He's like, I haven't drunk it. Great. Well, I'll, I'll throw all of it out for you. Can I please get rid of the idol? And then when he goes to sleep at night, throw all of the alcohol in the trash. If you can't do it in front of him, just do it at night. I'd rather please God than me. Hey, throw the birth control away too that the baby boomer generation gave you. Throw it all away. Get rid of it. Oh, that's going to cause me to have lots of kids. Great. Ask the people in this room that have lots of kids if they're upset about it. Ask them. There's plenty of people in this room that have five plus kids. Ask them. I got four and I think it's wonderful. I'm ready for some more. Bring it on. James is like 14 months. I mean, we're ready. I need to get on my knees and pray that God gives me another child and I need to do my part. Okay. Look at verse 31. All right. I think that's where we left off. Let's make sure we're in the right verse. Says verse 31 and Joe has said, and all that stood against him, we plead for bail. We save him. He that will plead for him, let him be put to death. No one else that is yet mourning. If he be a God, let him plead for himself because one of the people that are just like in their heart thinking like gross fag, but they won't say it. But then you say that guy's a faggot and they're like, yeah, faggot. They're like, yeah. Whoa. You know, they're just waiting for someone to take a godly stand. They're just waiting for someone to do that, which is right. And then your righteousness can embolden others to be righteous. Hey, when you're not a hypocrite. Hey, when you start serving God, you know what? You can embolden other people to serve God with you. What a great story. I mean, I love this story that Joe asked. He throws down his father's altar and his dad's like, you know what? That was a good move. Yeah. Why don't we let bail fight his own battles? Why don't you let, you know, the flying spaghetti monster come after me instead of your stupid rainbow signs or whatever you have to come and protest at the church. Says in verse 32, therefore, on that day, he called him Jerubabel saying, let bail plead against him because he had thrown down his altar. So Gideon gets this cool name of like the destroyer of bail. You know, he throws down bail, you know, like you could get the Jerubah fan in, you know, if you could get that name, that would be like the coolest name. But it says in verse 33, then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together and went over and pitched in the valley of Jezreel. That's an interesting verse. What did Gideon just do? Didn't you just try to serve God? What happens immediately after he tries to serve God? Oh yeah, all the enemies come out of the woodwork to try and fight against me, doesn't it? Hey, when you get something right with God, when you get sin out of your life, when you decide to start serving the Lord, you know what? An enemy is going to come and try to attack you. He's going to try and get you off of the fight because he knows you're in the right battle now. Says in verse 34, but the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and he blew a trumpet and Abiezer was gathered after him. Now, I don't know, sake of time, I really want to finish this sermon. The trumpet is usually, uh, is a, is an instrument used for gathering people and war is in all kinds of cool different ways. It needs to be a whole different sermon in and of itself, but the trumpet is used for to prepare people to go into battle. They're about to go into battle and that's what we're going to get into judges chapter number seven. But look at verse number 35 and he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh who also was gathered after him. He sent messages under Asher and under Zebulun and the Naphtali and they came up to meet them and Gideon said unto God, if thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou has said, behold, I'll put a fleece of wool in the floor. And if the dew be on the fleece only and it'd be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou will save Israel by mine hand, as thou said, and it was so for he rose up early on tomorrow and thrust the fleece together and ring the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water and Gideon said unto God, let not thine anger be hot against me and I will speak, but this once let me prove I pray thee, but this once with the fleece let it now be dry only upon the fleece and upon all the ground, let there be dew. And God did so that night for it was dry upon the fleece only and there was dew on all the ground. Now again, so Gideon, he wants a sign. He gets it with the first offering that he made. Then later, uh, he's going to be timid about throwing down Bill's altar, but it works out great. Then he wants another sign. So you can kind of see where I'm saying and getting is a little bit timid here. He's a little bit weak. But all these signs, like I said, have a very important significance and I, this one's really interesting to me because I've really not understood it, but I feel like we can actually dig in and get something from this. Now let's slow down and think about this sign that he gives me. He wants to give him a fleece, okay? And put it on the ground, put on the floor and he wants the fleece to be completely dry, but he wants, I'm sorry, he wants the fleece to be completely full of water of dew, but he wants the ground to be completely dry. Now let's think about a fleece. What is a fleece represent in the Bible? In fact, it's most referenced in this story. It's only referenced a couple other times, but what is a fleece? A fleece is the outer covering of a sheep, okay? Or of a similar animal. It's their outer coat. What does that picture? Well, the lamb is always picturing the Lord Jesus Christ, okay? His coat, his covering is picturing his righteousness, his godliness, okay? And that's how we get covered. We get covered by his righteousness and that's what ends up saving us. That's a picture of him putting his righteousness upon us by shearing his coat off and giving it unto us and he takes our beatings, he takes our sacrifice, okay? So we have this fleece. It's going to be covered with water, but the ground is going to be completely dry. This is a picture of the state of the world. The world is devoid of righteousness. What is dew, okay? Dew in the Bible, and I'll just quote this for you for sake of time, but he says, my doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew. So the Bible describes the waters being like God's word, okay? The world is without God's word. The world is dry. The world has nothing. It's devoid. It's without hope, but all of God's word, all of that dew, you know where it's in? It's in Jesus Christ. It's in that fleece. So our first picture, our first example is a picture of where all the water of life comes from, the source of life. What's the source of life? It's water. And if the ground does not get that, it's going to be destroyed. So we have this fleece. That's where all the water is. That's where the source of life is. Now that's the first miracle. What's the second miracle? The second miracle is the exact opposite, but what does the world need? The world needs that water, doesn't it? The world needs God's righteousness. It needs the word of God, but you know how you get that? You have to wring it out of the fleece for it to be spread on all of the earth. So it's a picture of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice, his offering. And then where does all the source of water come from? Where is the living waters flowing out of? Of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has to empty himself for us to be able to receive his word, to receive his righteousness, to receive his goodness. And notice we see through the sacrifice of one, it can make all the difference. God's going to use one person, Gideon, to make all the difference. He could use one preacher, and he used one man, Jesus Christ, to save the entire world. What if we could just get one guy to get on fire for God? Just one. The difference that one could make, and then two, and then let that multiply. And Gideon, what is the main message that he has? The Lord is with you. Hey, if the Lord be for us, who can be against us? Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Father, so much for this great chapter. Thank you for these stories and these symbols that you've given to Gideon, and you gave to us through your scriptures. I pray that we could use the scriptures to water this whole earth. This earth is just having a famine for God's word today. And we need to use the Bible to go out and to preach the word of God, to water this earth, to put water on the seeds that have been sown today, so that we can bring forth a harvest. And you can rebuke the devourer for our sakes. And not only can we get a great harvest, we can bring them into God's house and get them to serve God. I pray that you would just stir the hearts of men this evening with this story, that you would remind people that you are with us. And no matter what adversity, no matter what difficulty may come our way, you will guide us, you will protect us. We thank you for what you do, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.