crowns the Lamb upon His throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem
crowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of him
who died for thee, and hail him as thy matchless king through
all eternity. Lord of love. Behold his hands and side. Rich wounds yet visible above. In beauty glorified. No angel in the sky. Can fully bear that sight, But
downward bends his wandering eye, That mystery so bright. ? Crown Him the Lord of life ?
? Who triumphed o'er the grave ? ? Who rose victorious to the
strife ? ? For those He came to save ? ? His glories now we
sing ? who died and rose on high, who died eternal life to bring,
and lives that death may die. Crown him the Lord of heaven,
one with the Father known, one with the Spirit through him given. ? From yonder glorious throne
? To thee be endless praise ? For thou for us hast died ? Be thou,
O Lord, through endless days ? Adored and magnified Please be seated. That hymn always reminds me of
the passage in Revelation where the believers gathered together
in glory and they cast their crowns at his feet. He is the
one that gets all the glory and all the praise. And he is Lord
of Lords. We're not making him Lord, we're
acknowledging him and crowning him as Lord. We're going to be looking at
the rest of or some more of this chapter in Judges chapter 8 this
morning. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to Judges chapter 8. And by way of introduction, I'd
like for you to also open your Bibles to Romans chapter 9, Romans
chapter 9. Let's join our hearts together
in prayer. Our heavenly father, we come into thy holy presence,
thanking you that we have thy dear son as our sin bearer, our
substitute, our surety. Lord, our advocate, pleading
our cause in thy holy presence. knowing Lord that we have our
acceptance in him. And Lord, we pray that you'd
be pleased this morning to bless us with your presence, that you
would manifest your glory and your grace in our hearts. We
pray for your Holy Spirit to make your word alive and effectual. that it would be as a two-edged
sword, that it would slay us, Lord, for our sin and make us
alive again in Christ, that we would find all our hope and all
our satisfaction, all our desire to be found in him. Thank you
for your word. Bless it now to your glory, we
ask it in Christ's name, amen. We believe here that the Bible
is the Word of God. That's a pretty simple statement.
We believe that its penmen were holy men of old who were moved
by the Holy Spirit and they wrote as the Spirit of God enabled
them. And that the only way to understand
what the Holy Spirit wrote is by the Holy Spirit. And so just
as dependent as those penmen were to write God's Word, you
and I are dependent on the Spirit of God to understand God's Word. And God's Word is not written
to anyone but His people. Uh, they're the only ones that
can understand it. Uh, the Bible is not a book of, of, of principles
and threats and admonitions for the unbeliever. It is written
for the people of God. They are the only ones who are
going to understand it. Now the Bible is full of warnings
and yet those warnings not God threatening us to submit to his
authority. They are telling us what the
end will be for the unbeliever. In Romans chapter 9, I've asked
you to open your Bibles there. We'll begin reading at At verse 17, for the scripture
saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose, have I raised
thee up that I might show my power in thee and that my name
might be declared throughout all the earth. So here, the Lord
is telling us that he raised up this pagan king in order to
demonstrate his power and his grace toward his people. Therefore,
hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will,
he hardeneth." God, our God, is sovereign in salvation. He will either use his word to
harden some and he will use it to soften others. The Bible is
like the sun when it shines in its noonday heat and on wax it
melts and on clay it hardens. And our hope this morning is
that the light that shines from heaven will soften and melt our
hearts in faith and in love for Christ. It will have one effect
or the other. Verse 19, thou wilt say then
unto me, why doth he yet find fault for who hath resisted the
will of God? If God is sovereign in salvation,
then how can he accuse me of not being a believer? He's the
one that has to make me willing. Nay, but O man, who art thou
that replies against God? Shall the thing form, saying
to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the
potter power over the clay, and of the same lump to make one
vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? He has that sovereign right.
He takes the same lump of clay, speaking of humanity. And he
fashions some into beautiful vases of grace that he puts the
flowers of his mercy in and others he makes into dishonorable vessels
that are to be broken and cast away. And here's what I want
you to see. Look at verse 22. What if God,
willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured
with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted or made
by God to be destroyed? Now, that's what the Lord's saying. I've made these vessels to destroy
them. Why would he do such a thing?
Why would God do such a thing? that he might make known the
riches of his grace on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared
unto glory even us whom he hath called not of the Jews only but
also of the Gentiles." That's why. That's why. So the passage I want us to look
at in Judges chapter 8 It is the goodness of God that
leadeth to repentance. God doesn't threaten his children
in order to get them to submit to his authority. He tells us
in his word what's gonna happen in judgment against the unbeliever
in order to make his people say in their hearts, but for the
grace of God, there go I. Who made me to differ? What do
I have that I have not received? Why, Lord, would you have mercy
upon me? Why wouldn't you leave me to
myself? So there we have the reason why the Lord gives these
revelations of judgment in his word. to make those who are not
vessels fitted for destruction to rejoice and glory in the grace
that he has shown toward them, knowing that had he not intervened,
they would be just like everyone else. So the judgments declared
in God's word, here's what I'm trying to say, are not Hellfire
and brimstone kind of preaching in order to scare people into
heaven. And they're not threats, they're promises. They are the
true judgments of God that will come against all unbelievers. And the Lord's given us these
warnings in order to show us the grace that he has had toward
us and to make us more thankful And, uh, and more mercy beggars. Lord, I, you know, God's people
just believe what God has said. They believe every word of it.
And they're the only ones that do. And so if we believe God's
word, then we bow before him and, uh, and we thank him. for his mercy and for his grace. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered
the full wrath of God's justice. He suffered hell. He suffered
separation from his father. He suffered the full fire of
God's fury for the sins of his people so that they need not
live in the fear of judgment. They live in faith. looking to
Christ, knowing the judgments coming, and but for the grace
of God, they would be objects of the wrath of God. Judges chapter 8, Gideon and
his 300 men are pursuing the army of the Midianites. Remember
the They've already broken the clay vessels, and they've shined
forth the light, and they've shouted the sword of the Lord, and the army
has turned against itself, and the unbelievers have spoken their
own judgment against themselves. Here's a picture of what the
world does when they hear the gospel. they will speak blasphemy
against God. They will declare their own judgment
by their own words. It's what scripture says, by
your words, you shall be condemned and by your words, you shall
be justified. What you say about Christ, whose son is he? Scott, you read that this morning,
when the Lord put the gainsayers to silence, they ask him no more
questions. When he asked him, The Christ, whom do you say that
he is? Whose son is he? Well, he's the
son of David. Well, if he's the son of David,
then why did David call him Lord? When David said, the Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou here at my right hand until I make thine
enemies thy footstool. No, he's David's Lord. He's David's
Lord, he reigns. That's our confession, that the
Lord Jesus Christ is God. He's the Christ, he's the son
of the living God. And all the hope of our salvation
is in his perfect righteousness and in the satisfaction that
he made for justice by laying down his life for his sheep. There's the believer's hope. So now we have a picture of Gideon
or a picture of Christ and his church. This 300 men, you remember
these are the ones who lapped up the water like a dog, and
the Lord said, those are the ones that I'm going to use. And
so we have this picture of Gideon being the commander of the army
as the Lord Jesus Christ is, and the 300 men being a picture
of this small, insignificant band of believers that represent
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse four of
Judges chapter eight, and Gideon came to Jordan and passed over,
and he and the 300 men that were with him, faint yet pursuing
them. Here's the believer's life. Oh,
we get faint in this walk of faith, don't we? It's a daily battle between the
flesh and the spirit. We're in a daily conflict with
spiritual principalities and powers in high places. This is
a spiritual warfare. And the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal. We don't fight the devil with
carnal means. We don't use our flesh to fight
flesh. We turn in faith to the Lord
Jesus Christ and the weapons of our warfare are the obedience
of Christ. We look to his obedience to put
down these imaginations and these thoughts and these things that
war against our soul. You have a war against your soul
for faith? That's a daily battle. And so
the armies, they're pursuing, and we continue to pursue. You're
here this morning because you're pursuing. I'm here this morning
because we're pursuing. We're in hopes that the Lord
will enable us to take hold of that which has taken hold of
us. Paul said, I've not yet apprehended, but this one thing I do, I press
towards the mark for the prize of the high calling. I'm pressing
toward knowing Christ. It is a lifelong pursuit of faith,
and it's a spiritual battle. And that's what we have a picture
of here. This is the believer's life. And they're hungry. They need
bread. And the Lord makes us physically
hungry two or three times a day. Might He be pleased to make us
spiritually hungry? and cause us to cry out daily
for that daily bread. We don't live off of yesterday's
manna. Remember the children of Israel,
they tried to gather enough manna. They didn't know if it was going
to get them, you know, if it was going to be there again tomorrow.
So they gathered up enough, you know, to get them by an extra
day. And when they went to the old manna that they had collected
the day before, it was full of worms. You know, as merciful
as the Lord is in showing us his grace, if we try to live
off of yesterday's manna, it'll rot on us. We've got to have
our daily bread. This is the pursuit. It's a daily
pursuit. We don't just, you know, people
talk about coming to church on Sunday to fill up their tank.
You know, well, that tank's going to be empty in the morning. If
you're a believer, you're going to have to have some more in
the morning. And then some more the next morning. And day by
day and hour by hour, you're going to have to be in this pursuit
of knowing him. The one who has apprehended you. If he's apprehended you, then
your soul's desire is to apprehend him. And so you keep knocking
and you keep looking and you keep asking and you keep seeking.
And he says, you're fine. You're fine. I will in no wise cast out anyone
that comes to me. So here we are. And he said unto the man of Succoth.
Now this was a Jewish community. Succoth was the first Jewish
community on the east side of the Jordan, where the children
of Israel landed before Joshua brought them across the Jordan.
and it was part of the tribe of Dan. And so Gideon goes to
this town and he's pursuing the Midianites. And he says to these
men of Succoth, my men are faint and they're hungry. Would you,
would you give them bread? Give, I pray thee, loaves of
bread unto the people that follow me, for they be faint, and I
am pursuing after Ziba and Zalmanah, kings of Midian. Now, both of
these men's names mean the same thing. Translated, they mean
deprived of protection by sacrifice. Deprived of protection by sacrifice. Now there's a name that never
fits the people of God. We have a sacrifice, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who put his blood on the mercy seat, and we're
not deprived of protection. We have our sins covered. We have the Son of God who said,
I'll never leave you nor forsake you by the sacrifice that he
made, not by our sacrifice, by his sacrifice. And so here's
the kings of the Midianites. The princes, you remember, Oreb
and Zeb have already been killed by the people of Ephraim. Remember, they took Oreb, whose
name means Raven and Zeb, whose name means
wolf. These were the princes of the
Midianites. Now Gideon is after the kings of Midian. These are the men who hold the
crown and the control over the unbelievers. It's a picture of
Satan. This is the spiritual battle.
This is Christ and his church. And so these men are deprived
of protection because they have no sacrifice. We have a sacrifice. And by that sacrifice, we have
the promise and the protection of God against all the wrath
of God and against all the trials of this life. I should say, and for all the
trials of this life, not against them. The Lord never promised
to deliver us from trials, but he promised to walk with us through
those trials. The princess of Succoth said,
are the hands of Ziba, we're looking at verse six now, and
Zelmonah now in thine hand that we should give bread unto thine
army. And Gideon said, therefore, when
the Lord hath delivered Ziba and Zelmonah into mine hand,
then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness
and with briars. Then he went up thence to Penuel.
also a Jewish community in the land of Gad. And he goes to the
men of Penuel and he says to them, he spoke unto them likewise.
And the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Sokoth had
answered him. And he spoke also unto the men
of Penuel saying, when I come again in peace, I will break
down this tower. Now Gideon was pursuing These
men in faith, God had already promised to deliver them into
his hand. There's 15,000 of them against
300. And the men of Succoth and Penuel,
they think, you know, the odds are against you, Gideon. The
chance of you getting victory over these Midianites is pretty
slim, and we want to make sure that we've got our bases covered
and that we're not siding with the losing team here, lest the
Midianites come back and they destroy us. These men want to see evidence
before they will offer help. We need proof that God is with
you. Well, the only proof I have are
the promises that God's made to me, but we want more evidence. Isn't that what unbelief does? Because when men don't have faith,
to believe God, then they have to have other evidences that
they can see with their eyes. You know, you got backup Gideon?
Have you got another army that's coming in behind you that can,
you know, we're looking at 300 men here. We know what the Midianite
army looks like. We need some, we need some proof.
That's what unbelief is always looking for. And let me say this,
child of God, you look for evidence in your life for God's mercy
and God's blessing and for your sure hope in Christ. We all do
it. This is part of the pursuit.
It's part of the battle. We battle against the accuser
of the brethren, who is none other than Satan himself, who
is going to point out your inconsistencies every day and say to you, look
at you. What is he doing? He's bringing
you back to the law. And he's causing even the child
of God to say, I need proof, I need evidence. The proof and
the evidence that we have is the promise of God. Gideon was
marching his army on faith. That's all he had. He had no
other physical evidence. And yes, the odds were against
him as far as what men could see, as are the odds against
us as far as what men can see. But the eye of faith believes
God. It believes the promises of God.
And so, no, we don't look. We don't go back to the law.
We do, but the Lord corrects us. He rebukes us for it. And he brings us again and again
and again to set our affections on things above where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God. He has ascended into glory. God has given him a place at
his right hand. He has said, you are a priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek. Sit down here at my right hand
until I make all thine enemies thy footstool. When the Lord
Jesus Christ ascended back into glory, He took with Him the names
of all of those for whom He lived and died. Scripture says that
we are in heavenly places in Christ right now. Can you see
that? No. We can't look into heaven
and see ourselves sitting there. You see, we have to believe it.
The Lord has to give us faith to just believe what He has already
said. that the work of redemption is
finished, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believeth, that our law
keeping has nothing to do with our salvation. He's the one that
got the victory over the enemy. But we do, we look for, and in
religion, isn't this what men do? Isn't that why? I don't know
how many of you all have had a similar experience that I had
in religion in the years gone by, but we used to have invitations
where a preacher would stand up and tug on the heartstrings
of everybody. And then at the end of the service,
we would sing, just as I am without one plea, or we would sing, I
have decided to follow Jesus. And the preacher would beg men
to come out of their pews and walk the aisle and come to the
front of the church and pray a prayer. What is that? I need
to see something to get hope of my salvation. Or even before
that, my experience in religion was to be, to grow up in great
cathedrals where there were stained glass windows and statues and
priest in robes and all sorts of things that appealed to the
eye of the flesh. That's what these men of Succoth
and Peniel are saying. You're going against this great
army by faith. We need to see some evidence.
We're not gonna put our investment into something that might not
work out. And that's exactly what men in
religion do. We'll trust you Gideon, but we're
gonna have some other things on the side as well. We're not
gonna be caught having supported the enemy. So you're on your
own. This is what men in religion
do. Well, yeah, I'll look to Christ,
but, you know, I've got these other things I'm looking to as
well. I remember when I prayed that prayer. I remember when
I walked that aisle. I remember, you know, when I, you know, had
this, that feeling and, you know, when men talk about when they
got saved. You won't hear us talking like
that. We don't talk about when we got saved. As if that experience
is the hope of our salvation. That's what the men of Peniel
and Sukkoth are doing. They need an experience. They
need a feeling. They need something they can
see to put their hope in. They don't believe God. And we're
not gonna give bread. They didn't give any bread to
the people of God. And we can't get bread from them,
can we? We go back or we listen to some
of that now? Last week, Trish and I went to
a Christian bookstore in order to procure a Bible with a name
stamped. It was the only place I could
go in town to get a name embossed on the front of a Bible that
we wanted to give as a gift. And I've been in that store before
and I looked around, it's blasphemy. I mean, pure blasphemy, everything
in there was just marketing Jesus. You could buy mints with Jesus
name on it. You could buy pencils with Jesus
name on it. And all the books that I, I mean,
that's not like I spent a lot of time, I had to wait for them
to emboss the Bible. So, you know, I'm just looking around
and all the books without exception, had to do with how God can help
you have a better life in this world, every single one of them. All about how to have a better
life in this world. I want to get out of this world
alive. And that's what the gospel does.
The rest of that is nothing but just pop psychology with a little
religion flavoring on it. That's all it is. It's just self-help
books with a little flavor of God put to it. This is Pinuel
and Suckoff. Gideon and his army could get
no bread there, and they refused to side with Gideon. What does the child of God say?
It says what Paul said, I know whom I have believed, and I'm
persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've entrusted
unto him. The word is committed in the
King James, but that word committed means to making a trust. In other words, what Paul's saying
in that passage is I've got all my eggs in one basket. If Christ
doesn't save me, I'm not gonna be saved. I've got no place else
to go. I've been shut up to the Lord
Jesus Christ. I have no righteousness outside
of Him. I have no law keeping outside of Him. I have no way
to keep, to satisfy the justice of God outside of Him. Christ
is all. And the only evidence that I
have for that is the Word of God. It's the only evidence I
have. I mean, that place I was talking
to you about, right now, their auditorium, that bookstore is
in a church. I call it a church. You understand
what I mean by that. The auditorium of that goat barn
holds 6,600 people. Right this very minute, there's
6,000 people meeting in that building, bowing to bail. And if any of them came here
and looked at us, they, they would snicker. They would think,
yeah, who are these 300 men with Gideon? We don't even have that
compared to our great army. You see, nothing's changed. It's
exactly the way it is. Then we're talking about what's
happening right now, right now. Lord, I have to have faith to
believe what you've given us." Gideon knew that these kings
were going to be killed. And he said, when I come back,
I'm going to drag you through the thorns of the wilderness.
And I'm going to tear down, he said to the men of Penuel, I'm
going to tear down your strong tower. The Lord Jesus Christ said in
John chapter six, he said, if the eye be single, the whole
body shall be full of light. But if the eye be evil, the whole
body shall be full of darkness. And if the light that is in you
is darkness, how great is the darkness thereof. Now the word
evil in that verse means full of labor, full of labor. So what the Lord's saying is,
if you have a single eye toward Christ, Christ is all your salvation. He's all your hope. He's all
your justification before God. He's all your righteousness.
You have no place else to go but Christ. You're not looking
with an evil eye toward your works for your salvation. And if the eye be evil, the whole
body is full of darkness. And if the light that is in you
is in fact darkness, how great is the darkness thereof? In other
words, the man who's most blind is the one who thinks he can
see when he can't. The man who's looking to all
of his diversified efforts of being saved as the hope of his
salvation. And they meet together and they
encourage one another in their false gospel and in their blasphemy. And they think that they have
light. And God says, if the light that
is in you is in fact darkness, how great is the darkness thereof. There's no greater darkness than
the darkness that comes when a man thinks he can see. And
he can't. That's what the Lord said to
the Pharisees when he talked about himself being the light
of the world. He said, they said to him, are
you saying that we're blind? We're blind? I mean, look at
us. Look at the prestige and the
power and the religiosity that we have. We're not blind. The
Lord said, if you were blind, If you were blind, then you could
see. But because you say that you can see, therefore your sins
remain. Child of God, we come before
our God. Lord, if you don't give me eyes
to see, I won't see. I'll look to everything else
in this world for the hope of my salvation. other than looking
to Christ, unless you give me eyes to see. Here's the pursuit
of faith, isn't it? This is the pursuit of faith.
We don't say, well, I can see. I got perfect vision. No, that
vision gets blurry. You know, when I first started wearing glasses,
I realized that my vision got really bad when I got dehydrated.
Have you noticed that? You get dehydrated and all of
a sudden your vision gets blurry. Well, the same thing's true spiritually,
isn't it? If you don't stay hydrated with
the water of life, drinking from that river that's clear as crystal
from the throne of God and from the Lamb, it kind of gets blurry,
doesn't it? It gets blurry. It sure does. And so you come to that river
and you say, Lord, I need to see. If you don't give me life
in Christ, I won't see. I won't see. Someone may be thinking, well, you know, I don't know
if I'm one of God's elect. How can I believe? That would be like saying, a
sick man saying, you know, I'm really sick, but God's my healer
and I'll just wait for him. I'm not gonna pursue the care
of a physician. Or a hungry man saying, you know,
God will provide me with my bread. I'm not gonna eat. Or a man to
say, well, you know, the Lord is my provider. I'm just gonna
sit home and not go to work, you know. You see what I'm saying? Preacher, what are you saying?
You saying do your part and God will do his part? No, no. I'm saying that the secret things
belong to the Lord, our God. What are the secret things? Those
names that are written in the land's book of life are the secret
things. But those things that have been revealed belong to
us and to our children, that we might obey them. What has
been revealed? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. That's what's been revealed. repent and be baptized every
one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's been
revealed. You see, A lot of things have
been revealed. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness and all these other things should
be added unto you. Forsake not the assembling of
yourselves together as the manner of some is. Resist the devil
and he will flee from you. These are the revealed truths
of scripture to say, well, you know, I'm not going to do what
God has commanded until I get evidence that I'm one of God's
elect. That's being like the men of Penuel and Sukkoth. We're not going to invest in
things that we're not sure of until we get evidence of things
that, you see what I'm saying? Gideon said, when I return, He
said to the men of Succoth, I'm going to drag you through the
thorns of this world. What are thorns a picture of
in the scripture? We find them first in Genesis
chapter three, when the Lord told Adam, due to his disobedience
and his sin, that the earth would produce thorns and thistles as
a result of his labor. Here's the the evidence of sin. We find in the parable that our
Lord gave of the four different soils that the thorns were the
things of this world that choked out the seed of the gospel and
made it unfruitful. And the Lord is saying to us
that the result of sin And these thorns are going to
be the means of his judgment in the end for the unbeliever. And then here's the good news,
brethren. Here's the good news. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. When those Roman soldiers fashioned
a crown of thorns and placed them on the head of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and they took a rod, a reed, the scripture says, a
pole, and they pounded it into his head, It is the wrath of
God that is taking the very thorns of sin that these men of Succoth
are dragged through and putting them off on our substitute, our
sin bearer. We look in faith to him or the
outcome of the men of Succoth is going to be the judgment that
will be for all those that refused to believe God. The men of Penuel had a tower. They had a tower. We know what
the picture of that tower is, don't we? It's a place of refuge. It's an attempt to to earn favor
with God by one's works. Where is the first mention of
the tower made? The tower of Babel. Let us take
bricks for stone and slime for mortar and let us build ourselves
a city and erect a tower that will go up into heaven. And so
the men are trying to build this tower to earn their way into
heaven. It's a picture. of what men do
in order to try to earn favor with God by their own works,
by their own will, rather than believing God in faith. And he tore down that tower.
You remember the parable, wait, it wasn't a parable, the Lord
said, And the Lord said to the man of his day, he said, do you
think that those 18 men that were killed by that tower that
fell were any worse than you are? But I say unto you, nay,
lest you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And so here's
a picture of a tower that fell on some workmen, I suppose, scripture
doesn't really tell us, and killed them. And the Lord said, lest
you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And I close with this, Proverbs
18, 10. The name of the Lord is a strong
tower and the righteous run to it. The name of the Lord is a
strong tower. So I open this passage by saying,
this message by saying that, yes, this is a warning of judgment
against all those who do not believe God. And judgment is coming. And the
thorns of man's sin and the towers that he erects will be the means
of their judgment under the wrath of God. The Lord's not making idle threats
here. He's telling us what's going
to happen. And the child of God says, oh Lord, spare me. Make me to differ. Lord, I don't
want to have any part in that. Hide me in Christ. Open the eyes
of my understanding. Give me the faith that Gideon
had to believe you, even when there was no other evidence than
your word. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for your word and thank you for this glorious picture of your
free grace in Christ. And Lord, we pray that you would
make it effectual to our hearts. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.