Willing Obedience

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Judges chapter 6 tonight. Judges chapter 6. On our most recent Sunday night together, which was two weeks ago, I started sharing with you the story of Gideon from the book of Judges because as we look at the New Testament, there are several places where it describes the Christian life as a battle.

You know, where Paul talks about fighting the good fight, where he talks about enduring hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. talks about doing battle against principalities and powers. To be very clear, the Christian life is not a battle against anybody else. And a good principle to remember about this is if they can bleed, they’re not your enemy.

The Christian life is a battle, not against anybody else, not against anybody around us who’s flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places. It’s a battle that we’re all called to join. And as I’ve thought about this concept of being called to battle and needing to be ready for battle, there are very few people in the Bible that I think, let me rephrase that, there are very few stories of people in the Bible that I think better illustrate this than Gideon, at least for our purposes.

And just to review this a little bit, because it’s been two weeks, most of us in here don’t have extensive military training. Now, Greg could probably kill me with a rolled-up newspaper, But the rest of us, you know, I think about what it takes to be in the United States Armed Forces, and I don’t have what it takes. I can, I can, I’m reasonably certain about that.

It takes tremendous training and skill and expertise, and they train you for years, and you’re expected to be at top condition, right, to go into battle. You’re expected to give 200%. And most of us, with that idea in mind of what it means to be a soldier, what it means to do battle, we look at the call to be prepared for battle spiritually and think, well, I am not there.

I’m not there, surely. And with that in mind, we think, okay, God should just call somebody else. God didn’t intend me to join the spiritual battle because I am not the elite soldier of God’s kingdom that I should be.

And probably none of us are. It’s something that we should work on. It’s something that we should train to get better at to do battle for God’s kingdom, to battle against spiritual darkness around us.

But it’s not some place where we just start out that we come out of the spiritual womb where we’re born as new Christians or born again as new Christians. And we come out with a sword and a shield in our hand knowing exactly what to do with them. And that’s why I love the story of Gideon so much because God called Gideon to battle.

And yes, there was physical battle involved against the Midianites, but there was also, make no mistake, there was spiritual battle involved here. And God calls Gideon to not only join the battle, but to lead the battle. And Gideon wasn’t an elite soldier either.

I mean, in my mind, if I was going to call somebody to lead the nation of Israel to to route the Midianites to get rid of them, I would call Rambo, you know, somebody like that. And if you remember back to two weeks ago when we talked about it, Gideon was somebody that God found threshing wheat in a wine press. He’s a farmer.

Not only that, he seems to be a farmer who doesn’t really know what he’s doing because you don’t thresh wheat in a wine press. You press wine in a wine press. Now, he was down in the wine press hiding because the Midianites, If they knew you had food, they would come and steal it.

And so the Israelites were starving. So Gideon is not this big monster man who, you know, he’s not Samson, who looks at the pagan armies around him and says, bring it on. He’s down there hiding, just trying to do what he can to scrape by and support his family.

And when we talked about Gideon, he was somebody who had all of these reasons why God shouldn’t have picked him. You know, him being beaten down by his circumstances, him feeling distant from God, him being fearful, him being unprepared, him feeling like he had nothing to offer God. And I look at the story of Gideon and say, that’s us.

That’s me. God tells me to do something. I say, me?

Are you kidding? When God called me to preach. And I want to say when God called me to preach at the age of 15.

It’s at the age of 15 I finally said yes. I don’t know how long he’d actually been calling me. I don’t remember.

But I know I argued with God for a long time about it. When I finally said yes to that and went public with it, I was the only one who was shocked. Everybody else around me said, yeah, we knew that from the time you were five.

But when God was calling me to preach, I kept arguing with God saying, me? There are so many better people that you could have called. You want me?

And every time a church has ever said, we’d like you to be our pastor, me? When y’all called me, I remember thinking that, why? What’s wrong with you that you want me?

I look at myself and say, but God, there are so many other people, whether it’s serving as a pastor, whether it’s doing any other thing that he’s called me to do. Don’t think that just because God hasn’t called you to be a pastor that he hasn’t called you to the battle. He calls each of us to different roles in the battle, but all still very much present as part of his kingdom to be part of the battle.

Whatever it is, whether it’s a call in my life to be a pastor or whether it’s something as simple as what he wants me to do today. My answer usually is, but God, here are the reasons why that’s a bad idea to call me to do it. And if we look at the life of Gideon, we realize that those are exactly the people God wants to use.

The people with all the reasons why God shouldn’t use them, those are the people God wants to use, and those are the people that God chooses to use because God is glorified when he uses the unqualified. When we are not qualified, and yet there’s major victory, It’s just proof of the power of God. It’s not proof that, hey, look what Jared accomplished.

The world looks at it and says he could not possibly do that. It must have been God. And God gets the glory when he uses us.

And so we looked two weeks ago at how God called Gideon to join this fight against the Midianites, not just the Midianites who were oppressing the people of Israel, but the Midianites who were leading the people further astray from God. They were introducing their pagan worship. Although the worship of pagan idols was part of the reason God allowed them to be overrun anyway.

But there were not only military problems in Israel, there were deep spiritual problems that were at the root of it. And God called Gideon to join this fight and said, with all your problems, with all your shortcomings, you’re the one I want to use. And throughout the rest of the next few chapters, as we look at the life of Gideon over the next few weeks, we see that God took this man who was unqualified and said very clearly, you’re the one I want, you’re the one I call, and then God prepared him and equipped him to go do battle.

And the same thing is true for us. God looks at us and you’re probably saying, he’s not talking about me because I’m not qualified, I’ve got this problem, God can’t use me for this reason. That’s exactly why God wants to use you.

And if you’re just willing, God will equip you and prepare you for battle. God will make you into what you’re supposed to be. But we look tonight in chapter 6 at the next step after God was very clear, hey, I want to use you.

But God, do you know what’s wrong with me? Yes, I do, and that’s why I want to use you. At the next step, which was Gideon just being willing, that God said, yes, I’m going to use you.

I want you to join this battle. And for Gideon to make the choice to say, yeah, I’m going to do that. God calls you to do something, folks.

You have a choice. There’s something you won’t hear from the preacher very often. You have a choice whether or not to obey God.

It’s called a choice between obedience and disobedience. Now, I won’t tell you that if you choose disobedience that you get off scot-free, but you do have a choice. It’s called obedience or disobedience.

Every time God calls me to do something, I have the choice to say yes or the choice to disobey. God has a great way of incentivizing us to obey, however. What God is looking for is not the one who’s the most qualified.

What God is looking for is to use somebody who’s willing. God chooses to use those who are willing. And so we look starting in verse 25, after this call has taken place, and it says, And it came to pass the same night, the very same night that God called Gideon, he gives him his first assignment.

It came to pass the same night that 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 thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it, and build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the top of this rock. And he ordered, excuse me, 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. So God tells him first thing, tonight, go tonight, go now and make a sacrifice.

But not just make a sacrifice. You see, Gideon’s dad was still around. He’s still the patriarch of Gideon’s family.

And he had this little altar. And God said, I want you to go tear down his altar. See, daddy had gotten attached to his pagan idols, as many of the people in Israel had.

And I know it sounds strange for us to think, well, how could the Israelites go worship these idols? Well, in our society, we do the same thing. And unfortunately, too many times, we in our churches do the same thing.

We take in our idols. See, in their minds, it wasn’t this wholesale rejection of God. We’re not going to worship God anymore.

We’re going to worship them. It wasn’t switching and saying we’re going from the God of Israel to the God of the Midianites. It was compromise.

Well, we can still worship God and we’ll just worship this one over here because this God of fertility and this God of rain and this God of thunder, they’re really good for the crops. And there was always a reason. And so they’d set up these altars, and in their minds they probably thought they hadn’t rejected God.

It was normal in every other country of the world to say we’re just going to take in more and more gods and they’re all okay with it. And the God of Israel was the only one saying, now I’m the only one. I’m the only one.

Nobody else. And so it was just a slippery slope of compromise. Just one little compromise.

Say, well, we’re just going to build this little altar over here. It’s no big deal. We can still worship God until it ends up in full-blown idolatry. And so he had built this altar to Baal. And then it also talks about the groves that were nearby.

See, some of the pagan countries around them worship the goddess Asherah. Sometimes it’s written Ashtaroth in here. And what they would do is they would worship tree stumps, trees, tree trumps.

Because when the God of Israel is just not doing it for you, go pray to a tree trunk. That’ll help. I don’t understand that mentality.

And it’s okay for me to make fun because they’re not around anymore. I don’t understand that mentality. The God who created the universe isn’t quite powerful enough to cut it for my needs, So I’m going to go pray to a tree trunk.

So they had this altar, and they had these holy trees, and they belonged to Gideon’s father. And you don’t mess with somebody’s guns. Just like today, people say, oh, stay away from politics and religion.

I hate that. Those are my two favorite things to talk about. But you don’t want to attack somebody else’s religion.

That’s the way to get them mad. And we’re not talking about a verbal attack here. We’re talking about he’s going to tear down his daddy’s altars.

I have to do it in the middle of the night. Oh, and by the way, God doesn’t just tell him to tear down the altar. He says, use it, use the stone of it to offer the sacrifice.

And when you use your dad’s bulls for the sacrifice, and when you need the wood, how about you burn those tree trunks? So God in one fell swoop says, I want you to take this idolatry in your house, and I want you to tear it out by the roots. And see, here’s an important principle when we prepare to join the battle for the kingdom.

We think it means I’ve got to go out and confront all the darkness of the world now. Big job. No, we’ve got to start at home.

We start by cleaning house where we live. He says, I want you to go home, go to your father’s house. I want you to rip out these idols by the roots.

I want you to tear down his altar. I want you to sacrifice his bulls to me, and I want you to burn the tree trunks to do it. And verse 27 says, Then Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had said unto him.

And so it was, because he feared his father’s household. Again, he was going after somebody’s deeply held beliefs here, and he was scared of how his family was going to react. And so he did it during the dark of night.

He took 10 of his men with him and said, we’re going to go in the middle of the night so nobody sees us. 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 God says, go.

And Gideon was obedient. I don’t look at this as Gideon saying, well, I’ll wait until I get around to it. I think it was Gideon saying, I’ll do it as quick as I can, but I want to live to see morning, so I’m going to do it in the dark.

And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down. They get up in the morning, probably go out to do their morning worship, whatever it was, and they see 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. So instead of everything being as it was supposed to be, they see the altar of Baal has been demolished.

The animals that were supposed to be offered to Baal have been offered to the God of Israel on the heap of rubble that remains and he’s burned the holy trees. They were not happy. They were a little bit incensed.

And it says in verse 29, and they said one to another, who had done this thing? Who did this? It’s a question I hear every day in my house.

It’s a question sometimes I say every day in my house. Usually it’s charla and I’ll be sitting in my office working and I’ll hear, who did this? And I think, oh, no, not today.

Can I make it to Sonic or the church office before I get called in on this? But the question was, who did this? They wanted to know.

They were furious that somebody had torn down their altar. Said to another, who hath done this thing? And when they inquired and asked, they said Gideon, the son of Joash, had done this thing.

As they talked about it and everybody, again, I can hear just like at home a chorus of, not me, not me, not me. And they all finally figured out it must have been Gideon. Must have been Gideon who did it.

Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son that he may die. They told Joash, Get him out here so we can kill him. And this is not the teasing way we say it.

Well, if you don’t knock that off, I’m going to kill you. We never mean it and we don’t do it. No, they literally want him dead.

Bring him out here that he may die because he hath cast down the altar of Baal and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it. He tore down our holy rocks, and he burned our holy trees. Let’s kill him.

And Joash, this is Gideon’s dad, said unto all that stood against him, verse 31, Will ye plead for Baal? Will ye save him? He that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning.

If he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar. Now, I’m not a big fan of Gideon’s dad because of the idolatry that he let take root in his household and his community, but I kind of like this answer. They’re out there saying, he tore down our holy rocks and burned our holy trees.

Let’s kill him. They needed to go to their safe space, as we’d say in 2017. They couldn’t handle that somebody had put a stop to their false worship.

And Gideon’s dad puts the brakes on everything and says, wait a minute. Baal’s a big boy. If you really believe that Baal is a god, then can’t Baal take care of himself?

That’s the question. If Baal is really a god, can’t he take care of himself? Are you going to plead for Baal?

Are you going to, why do you need to defend him? He says, he that will plead for him, let him be put to death while it’s yet morning. Whoever wants to take Baal’s problems into his own hands, let’s kill him.

How about that, he says. He says, no, no, no, if Baal is a god, let him take care of himself. Because ultimately, he hurt Baal by tearing down Baal’s altar.

He didn’t hurt you by tearing down Baal’s altar. I don’t know if, I don’t know how Gideon’s dad felt about him and what he’d done, but I like his answer. Whoa, hold on.

Baal’s a big boy. Let Baal deal with him. Verse 32 says, Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbabel, or Jeroboam, saying let Baal plead against him because he had thrown down his altar.

So what that tells me is that Gideon got kind of a reputation for being somebody who didn’t get along with Baal. He says let Baal plead with him. And he was renamed here as somebody that Baal would struggle against or who would struggle against Baal. So what we see in here, just this simple story of Gideon going and tearing down the altar, chopping down the trees, sacrificing the bull because God said so. God wanted him to start, before he took on the Midianites and their idolatry, before he took on the whole nation of Israel and its idolatry, he sent him home to clean house and his family first. He sent him home to rededicate his family and his household to the God of Israel, and it’s a show of obedience to God.

God is looking for people who are willing to be obedient. He doesn’t use the best people necessarily. He doesn’t use the most qualified.

God uses those who are willing to be obedient to him. And I tell you what, it had to have been a scary thing. It had to have been a scary thing for Gideon to do what he did.

And I can’t really fault him personally for saying, I’m going to do it after dark. When we look at these people’s response, he blasphemed our religion, kill him. Well, it’s a response we see a lot of the Middle East nowadays, isn’t it?

So you think about some of the terrorists and some of the extremists that we as as a country deal with, and he was dealing with essentially the same kind of people. Different religion, but same kind of people. And we might fault Gideon and say, well, you know, what you stand for God, go out there and do it in the daylight.

I don’t see any of us volunteering to go over and bulldoze mosques in the middle of Syria right now. I fully understand. I fully understand Gideon’s willingness to say, I’m going to be obedient, but I’m going to be obedient after dark.

He’s just starting out here. And bottom line, he was willing to do what God called him to do. Because God didn’t tell him, go do it in the daylight.

God didn’t tell him, make a big spectacle out of himself. God just said, go and do it. And so he went and he tore down the altar and he sacrificed to God.

Gideon was willing to obey God despite his fears. He was afraid, the Bible tells us he was afraid to tear down the altar of Baal, but he did it anyway. It says in verse that he did it at night because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city.

He was afraid, and yet he was willing to do it anyway. As you join the battle for God, as you join the battle against spiritual darkness and principalities and powers, you join the battle for the kingdom. There are going to be things that God calls you to do that are going to be just a little bit scary.

God’s not necessarily looking to use the bravest people. God’s looking to use people who are obedient. God’s looking to use people who say, I’m scared, but I’ll go anyway.

There was a, I remember last year when we were doing the Thanksgiving baskets. I hope this story doesn’t offend anybody. When we were doing the Thanksgiving baskets, there were a couple of places that we needed to go that people who’ve been here in town longer than I have said, you want to get in and out of there after dark.

I’m sorry, before dark, yes. You don’t want to be in there after dark. And I was thinking there are parts of Oklahoma City where I could see that being the case, but this is Seminole.

It’s fine. And there was, again, I don’t want to offend anybody. There was a tribal housing area where somebody said, make sure you get in and out of there before dark.

These are my people. Brother Greg, you’re a cowboy. I can see why you don’t want to go in there, but these are my people.

I’m not worried about it. But after hearing the stories, I was a little leery of going in there. I was a little scared.

Take my tomahawk. That might have been before I had the tribal tag for camouflage. I’m not sure.

It was a little, after hearing the stories, not just about that particular street, but some other areas here in town, there were some of those deliveries that I was scared to do. You know what? God sent us there on behalf of the church.

God sent us there. And I won’t, I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t so, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t nervous once or twice, but you know, God didn’t say, I’ll use you if you’re brave. God said, I’ll use you if you’re obedient.

And God’s called me to do some things before that scared the living daylights out of me. I used to go on Thursday nights when I lived in Oklahoma City, I used to go down to Bricktown on Thursday nights with a retired Marine and retired truck driver, and we’d pass out tracks in front of the spaghetti warehouse. And he was real confrontational in a way that I can’t get away with being.

He used to scare me to death to try to go do street evangelism with him. I don’t know shared this with y’all, but I’m kind of a shy person. And so was the third guy who’d go with us.

He’s out there yelling things at people. Hey, tough guy, you need Jesus to get shot. I guess when you’re a Marine, you can do stuff like that.

I’m not. And every Thursday afternoon, I’d have to talk myself into it. God, I don’t want to go with Brother Parker again.

And I’d almost hear the voice of God audibly say, go with Brother Parker. Just suck it up and go. Now y’all may be thinking, what’s the big deal?

Passing out tracks on a busy street in broad daylight, that’s not scary. Maybe not to you, but it was to me. There may be things that God’s called you to do that I’d look at and say, that’s not scary, that’s easy.

I’d do that before breakfast, but they’re scary to you. We all have things that we’re afraid of, and God may call us to do them anyway. And we may think, well, God, wouldn’t you be better off using somebody who’s braver, somebody that isn’t bothered by this?

God isn’t looking to use people who aren’t afraid. God is looking to use people who are willing. Gideon was afraid.

Gideon was afraid, but more important than his fear was his obedience. Gideon was willing to obey God despite his fears. Gideon was willing to obey God despite his family’s objections.

God didn’t just say, go tear down the altar of Baal. He said, go tear down your daddy’s altar of Baal. I remember what it was like growing up, touching daddy’s stuff and breaking daddy’s stuff, even if it was on accident. It wasn’t pretty. It was not pretty.

And here Gideon is going to break daddy’s stuff, one of his most prized possessions on purpose. I mean, you’re inviting discord into the family at that point. This is like going to Thanksgiving and getting everybody stirred up about the election and religion or football, you know, wherever the disagreement is.

This is one of those things that’s going to cause that the next family get together. There’s going to be a big blow up. And yet Gideon did it anyway.

This altar belonged to his father. Gideon, it seems like it would have been perfectly reasonable to say, God, I can’t. That altar belongs to my father.

I don’t want to upset the family. What will my family say? Especially in that part of the world.

We here in the West, we tend to think, this is what I believe. This is what I think. Who cares what my family does?

And we have that. And sometimes we can get along. In my family, there are Republicans and Democrats and Independents and libertarians.

There are Baptists. There are Catholics. There are people who don’t go to church.

There are people who think Oswald acted alone and people who don’t. And we’re individuals. It doesn’t matter what my aunt does on Sunday morning or how my uncle voted.

We’re still a family and we’re individuals and we have our own individual beliefs. In the East, it’s not exactly that way. There’s a lot of pressure for social conformity.

People a lot of times even today that convert to Christianity have to walk away from their whole family. They are outcasts from the family. They’re outcasts from the whole community.

Some of them pay with their lives. So when I say that he was willing to obey God over his family objections, don’t think that that wasn’t an important deal. Don’t think so what his family disagreed with his life choices. That’s a very western way to think about it.

He was risking being an outcast and putting his life in danger. He was turning his back on everything he knew. And sometimes obedience to God calls us to even do things and believe things that those closest to us aren’t going to like or understand, that our obedience is more important.

Hear me on this. I’m not saying turn your back on your family, stop loving them. Y’all know that.

Family is very big, very important for me. What I am saying is don’t let the objections of those closest to you stop you from obeying God. Be obedient even if that’s the risk.

So Gideon was to obey God despite his family’s objections. Finally tonight, Gideon was willing to obey God despite public opinion. Public opinion just didn’t matter that much.

I know he thought about it because we go back to the fact that he insisted on tearing down the altar after dark. He knew that the community would be against him. He knew that the people would be furious with him for what he did, for what he believed.

He knew that they were going to be furious, but it didn’t matter. He knew they’d be prepared to kill him, but he obeyed God anyway. And sure enough, just as he feared, the people saw this and they realized it was Gideon after their whole, who did this conversation.

They realized it was Gideon and they were prepared to kill him. Because you see, they were okay with people worshiping God alongside their other things, but they couldn’t go along with somebody who said, no, this is the only way. And I tell you what, in some sense, our society is not that much different.

People are okay with you talking about God. You watch the award shows, they all thank God. I saw that video you made.

What God are you talking about? They thank God for their success. Oprah talks about God.

Everybody’s okay with God. You can pray to God in public. Our chaplains in our military can pray to God.

You start naming the name of Jesus, people get real antsy real fast. You start saying Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, and no man comes unto God but by him. People lose their ever-loving minds. See, we’re okay.

Society is okay with God because God can mean whatever you want him to mean. He can be whoever you want him to be. Everybody can make their own designer God and worship him.

You start talking about Jesus and the God of the Bible, it’s a different story. And about the worst thing you can say, or one of the worst things, the list of the worst things you can say in society keeps getting longer and longer. One of the worst things you can say nowadays is that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.

How dare you be so narrow-minded as to say there’s only one way? How dare you, Gideon, be so narrow-minded as to go against the opinion of the community and say that there is only one God here to worship? And our answer is to not be afraid of that and not be afraid to stand on God’s authority and say, I didn’t say that, he did.

Monotheism was not my idea. The idea that there’s one God, I didn’t invent that, and neither did you. The idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, that he’s the only way to God, we didn’t invent that.

Jesus said that. Jesus is the one who said he didn’t come just as some other religious teacher, but said before Abraham was, I am. He’s the one who identified himself as God.

He’s the one who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. And that’s all him.

I’m just the nobody who believes it and repeats it. Gideon was willing to obey God despite public opinion. You join the fight.

You join the battle for the kingdom. you’re going to be called upon to believe and obey some things from God that go against public opinion. Amen?

We have gone through a tectonic shift in this country in the last 10 years in terms of the culture. A little more than 10 years. But I remember back around 2004, 2005, saying a candidate was for same-sex marriage was like the kiss of death.

And now anything goes. And I’ll be honest with you. I’m not one that says, well, I want the government kicking down people’s doors and dragging them off to jail because of what they do in the privacy of their house.

I believe it’s a sin. Not sure how much I want the government fighting sin. But here’s the problem, where it’s become intolerant even to speak what God’s Word says.

The culture has changed so much. The culture has changed so much that things that Christians have believed for 2,000 years, people are now shocked that we believe. Last Sunday morning, I said something to you about the Nashville statement.

I went back and read it this week, read the whole thing. I didn’t see anything objectionable in there. It says what we as Christians have said for 2,000 years.

What the Word of God has said even longer than that. God created them male and female. It goes back to the book of Genesis.

That the goal is purity before marriage and fide

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