Let's read this text together.
Hebrews 11, verse 32. And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to
tell of Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and of
David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets who through faith
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the
edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant
in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women
received their dead, raised to life again, and others were tortured,
not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. And the others had trial of cruel
mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain
with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins
and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. of whom
the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and
in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these
all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the
promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that
they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore, seeing
we also are accomplished about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. Now I would like for you to turn
with me to Judges chapter 6. Judges chapter 6. We've been going through this
11th chapter of Hebrews, and we have seen the exploits of
the faithful. That's the title of this message,
the exploits of the faithful. And we've seen these exploits
of the faithful, and now we come to the end of Hebrews chapter
11, and we're told about a group of men and women, some men's
names listed here, that we might not have included in this roll
call of faith. And there's probably some we
would have included that aren't included in it. There's some
who are kings. There's some who are prophets.
There's some who come from a very wealthy background and some from
a very poor background. And the Lord's teaching us here,
what He's taught us throughout this 11th chapter, that everything
that took place here by their faith, through faith, is that
Christ working in them through the Holy Spirit to cause them
to lay aside everything that might hinder them, every earthly
distinction that man makes. We look at black and white, rich
and poor, male and female, We put all kinds of distinctions
and titles on ourselves to try to distinguish ourselves from
somebody else. In Christ, those things go away.
Those distinctions are gone because we all see we are one in our
sin against God, but by His grace, the believers are one in Him.
Men made the righteousness of God in Him. So let's look here. We don't have to look further
than Gideon to understand the Hebrew writer here. We read of
them subduing kingdoms, and working righteousness, and obtaining
promises, and stopping the mouths of lions, and quenching the violence
of fire, and escaping the edge of the sword. When they did these
things, they really did these things. They really stopped the
mouths of lions. God has the power to create the
world out of nothing. He can stop them. from biting
somebody. That's no feat for him. He redeemed sinners from sin
and depravity. Now that's something. And did
his justice no harm? Stop in the mouth of a lion is
nothing. But what we see in these things is what God does spiritually
to our spiritual enemies and in the warfare that we're engaged
in in a spiritual manner. Did these things really come
to pass? Yes, they did. But God brought them to pass
and recorded them in His Word to teach us something greater
than just physical lines having His mouth stop. He shows us how
He stops the lines of all the enemies of His Son and of His
people. That's what we see here. Now
let's pick up here and look at Gideon. How the Lord dealt with
Gideon is This is all just plainly revealed. We begin in Judges
6, verse 1. 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. The children of Israel here are
a type of God's true Israel. That physical nation Israel was
made by God, just as His people were created by God. That physical
nation is the nation to whom He gave His Word, just like He
gives His Word to His people in the heart and spirit. This
physical nation, Israel, is a type of God's true Israel, those that
He chose in Christ before the world began. We did evil in God's
sight. In Adam, we died. We died and
we fell and we came forth as soon as we were born doing evil
personally, which God charges us with. And the Lord delivered
us into the hand of Midian, seven years. He delivered His people. left them to themselves. And
our strangers devoured us for seven years. That is, until the
year that God purposed before the foundation of that perfect
time that He set to reveal to us that Christ is our perfection.
That to reveal that Christ is all our standing with God and
all our righteousness before God. And until then, we were
taken captive by strangers, by millions, by the enemy that came
in and took over. And it says here, verse 2, in
the hand of Midian, Midian prevailed against Israel. And because the
Midianites, the children of Israel, made them the dens which are
in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds, we could
not and we cannot in our flesh, even as believers, prevail against
Midian, against the enemies of righteousness. We just can't
do it. These dens and these caves and these strongholds represent
the best thing we can do. The best thing we can do is flee
into some kind of earthly refuge, some kind of natural refuge,
like a den in a cave. But we can't flee to Christ the
refuge. He's the only refuge. But until
He reveals His grace in us, that's where we'll flee for safety,
some kind of natural, earthly refuge. And we have a bunch of
them. We call them works of righteousness
because it's righteousness to the God that we've imagined in
our mind, but they're not works of righteousness at all. Verse
3, 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 encamped 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 ass. 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. And Israel was greatly impoverished
because of the Midianites, and the children of Israel cried
unto the Lord." This is all showing us that our sowing, all our trying
to bring forth some kind of fruit, some kind of life, something
that we could feed upon and eat upon, every time we tried to
do it, the enemy, Satan and his army, our own sin in our own
flesh, our own depravity of heart and nature and mind, not knowing
the true and living God. Every time we would try to sow
after righteousness and do something righteous, do something that
was what we consider to be good in God's sight, it just brought
forth no fruit. And our land, Our hearts, our
bodies, our houses, our country, everything about us was just
impoverished. Just absolutely no food, no sustenance,
no life whatsoever. Verse 7, and it came to pass
when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, they cried unto
Him, and He sent them help. He sent them help, but He didn't
send them the kind of help they wanted. Look what He sent them.
It came to pass when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord
because of the Midianites that the Lord sent a prophet. He sent
a man preaching His Word. unto the children of Israel,
which said unto them," here's his message, "'Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel.'" That's where we've got to start. What
does God say? People will say, well, I don't
believe. It don't matter what you believe. That's not the point.
What does God say? Well, you might not have the
right Bible. I don't think you have the right
Bible. It don't matter what you think. What matters is what does
God say? And God's messenger is going
to declare what God says, and through that message, He's going
to make you willing to believe Him. When you sit there just
dead set against believing Him, with hatred in your heart, enmity
against God, He'll make you believe Him. And He'll make you like
it. Look here, thus said the Lord God of Israel, I brought
you up from Egypt, You was a slave. You didn't do anything. You couldn't
bring yourself out of bondage. I brought you up from Egypt.
I 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 I drove them out from before
you and gave you their land." That sounds like a particular
A God who saves in particular grace, distinguishing grace and
mercy to me. A God who drove out all of their
physical, the inhabitants of that land. He drove them out.
He showed them no grace whatsoever. Well, that wasn't fair. Well,
let me tell you something. We don't deserve grace at all. We don't deserve any grace, any
mercy to God. So if He withholds His grace
and His mercy from us, He hasn't injured His justice whatsoever.
And He hasn't given you anything but what you want. And so if
He withholds His grace and mercy, you don't want His grace and
mercy. You just don't want to be left out. But He gives His
grace and mercy to whom He will. And it says here, He said, I
drove them out from before you, and I gave you their land, and
I said unto you, I am the Lord your God. Fear not the gods of
the Amorites in whose land ye dwell, but ye have not obeyed
My voice. God's weapons are not carnal,
they're spiritual. So when you cry for help, if
you cry for help, you get afflicted like they got afflicted. You
get in a bind like they got in a bind. You get hungry like they
got hungry and they cried out and they wanted some corn and
some wheat. They wanted to have their houses
back. They wanted to have their land back. But they didn't want
to hear God's Word telling them what He was teaching them through
all of it. They didn't want to hear that. They didn't want to
hear the spiritual application of it. They wanted to hear, just
give us some corn husks. That's all we want. We don't
want to feast a fat thing. But thus saith the Lord God of
Israel. This is what He said. He said,
I brought you up. I did all these things. And he
said, and I told you, when I brought you into this land and I drove
out these people, he left some of the people there to prove
them. He left some folks who believed false gods, who worshipped
idols, he left them there to prove them if they truly trusted
him or not. But what they did, here's what
we do. This goes on in our day. This happens in our day. What
we do is this. We begin to see that, well, that church over
there has a big following. We begin to see, well, That place
over there, their people seem like they're just hollering and
laughing and clapping and having a good time. And we begin to
compare and look at things like this, and we begin to go, by
our means and our methods, we begin to shape our message into
the same message as they're preaching, because if that's having the
results as that's having, let me do it. Listen, folks, you
can get a following without preaching God. You can get a following
without even picking this book up right here. Come out with
a good product. Bill Gates got more people following
him than anybody in the world. Got a good product. You can get
a following without using this word. So if you use this word
and get a following, that don't mean anything. But what they
did is they began to see these nations as mighty. They began
to see these other nations as strong. And they would see these
other nations when they would conquer a land or whatever they
would do, and they would say, well, we ought to worship like
they worship. We are to go the way they're
going. Their God's a strong God. And that's fearing God. That's
fearing the idol's God. That's not fearing the God. He
said, I told you not to fear their God. I'm your God, He said.
Now let's see here. But the Lord's word doesn't return
to him without accomplishing the Lord's purpose. He sent his
prophet in there. Now look at this, verse 11. And there came
an angel of the Lord and sat under an oak, which was in Ophrah,
that pertained unto Joash the Abizarite, and his son Gideon
threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.
Let me just try to paint a plain picture for you. Gideon got up
Monday morning. If this was in our day, it would
be the equivalent of this. Gideon got up Monday morning.
He got dressed, he ate, and he went to work. And he got out
in the field and he's working, and he's thinking about what
that prophet preached yesterday when he said, Thus saith the
Lord. And he's sitting there thinking about it while he's
working. And the whole time he's thinking about it and working,
the angel of the Lord is sitting there out under a tree right
beside him. Right beside him. And it says here, And the angel
of the Lord appeared unto him, Said unto him the Lord is with
thee thou mighty man of valor and Gideon said unto him Now
let me let me stop here a minute An angel the Lord not gonna appear
to eat me and you The Lord's teaching us what he does in the
heart through the Holy Spirit when he pricks you in your heart
You don't know what happened. You don't know why. You didn't
know he was there all along. You didn't know why you were
working. He was right there with you the whole time. But he appears
in your heart. and speaks in your heart. Not
an audible voice, that still small voice. You can't describe
it. You can't explain it to your
loved ones. You just say, I don't know what it is. It's just, this
is how I was yesterday. This is how I am today. I don't
know what the difference is yet. I'm growing. I don't know all
the answers right now. But this I do know. Something
has happened in my heart. And that's what has happened
right here. and it's happening in his heart. And the Lord appeared
unto him and said unto him, the angel of the Lord, the Lord is
with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Now Gideon hears this
and listen to what he said. And Gideon said unto him, oh
my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen
on us? He beheld all around him the
awful shape that the people were in. That's where God is going
to begin to show us that depravity is all around us. And then he
says, 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 hath forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.
Gideon heard the Lord speak through his prophet. And then the Spirit
speaks in his heart. And Gideon says, I'm everything
but a mighty man of valor. I'm anything but a mighty man
of valor. Now listen to what the Lord says
to him. Verse 14. And 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 wait
a minute. Let's go back there to verse
13. That sounds like what Gideon
said, there sounds like absolutely no self-esteem, no self-estimation
of his grandness whatsoever. He said, I'm anything but a man
of valor. And yet the Lord says here in
verse 14, go in this thy might. This is might. The Lord calls
this attitude of no fleshly strength, might. He says, this confession
of being justly forsaken by God. He says, go in this. This is your might. This is your
strength. How is that strength? It's strength
because only when you have been brought to the point where you
see yourself like Gideon saw himself can you trust Christ
who alone is the believer's strength. Until then, you think you're
a mighty man of valor. If the Spirit of the Lord had
not pricked Gideon in his heart to where he understood what he
is, exactly what he is, he would have said, I am a mighty man
of valor. But he said, that's not me. And the Lord said, you've got
some strength now. You've got some strength now.
Listen to Gideon's description of himself. This is absolute
inability. Verse 15. He said unto him, O
my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is
poor and menacing, and I am the least in my father's house. Are
you? Are you the least in your father's
house? Now that the Lord's revealed to Gideon that he can't do what
God commands him to do, now that the Lord God declares how this
work shall surely be accomplished, he says, I've sent you. In verse
16 he says, The Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee,
and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. Man's way of power
is to exalt the flesh. We flatter ourselves into thinking
everything's all right. We see our problems, a fleeting
glance of our problems. It's like looking in the mirror,
but we leave that mirror and forget what we look like. Forget
what we are. And we flatter ourselves, and
we flatter everybody around us. We're the greatest politicians
by nature, and we flatter everybody around us. But that's not the
way God prepares a man for His use. We do it by exalting ourselves
over people. God brings His people down to
nothing. He brings them down to nothing
so they can behold that He is the only strength and the only
power and the only righteousness. And then He uses that man that
He's done that for. Now look here. That's what Paul
meant when he said, when I'm weak, I'm strong. I can do all
things through Christ which strengthens me. But if you think you have
some strength, You don't have Christ. We've got to be kept
here always, right here. Now, Gideon wanted a sign. He wanted a sign that this thing
was going to be all by God's grace. That's what he wanted.
He wanted a sign that this thing was true, that God was going
to be with him and God was truly going to do this thing. And so
Gideon, look what he said, verse 17. And he said unto him, If
now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me. He wanted
a sign, show me that thou talkest with me. 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. Again and Gideon went in and made ready a kid He went
in there and killed him killed a little lamb and unleavened
cakes and of an aphor flower Then the flesh of the lamb he
put in a basket He put the broth in a pot and he brought it out
unto him under the oak and presented it How was it that God showed
getting the sign? That Gideon was accepted with
God on the basis of grace and not anything and Gideon or his
works. How did he do that? And then
I'll tell you why this is important. Look, judges 620. And the 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 he did
so. Gideon went in there and he carefully
prepared this gift to come out and give to the Lord. And he
comes out with it. He's got this lamb in a basket
all neat there. And he's got a broth from the
gravy from cooking it in a pot there beside it. He's got these
unleavened cakes and all this. And the Lord says, Don't bring
that to me. Don't put that in my hand. You
can't come to me. There's something you got to
do before you come to me. Go to this rock right here and you
lay it down right there on this rock and pour that broth out.
I don't need the broth. I don't need your efforts and
your work to make this acceptable. Pour it out. And so he poured
it out. Verse 21. 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. And then the angel of the Lord departed out of his
sight. This was the sign. This was the sign that this thing
was by grace and not by anything that was dependent upon Gideon.
Look here. The rock typifies the Son of God, the altar, God's
altar of deity. The Son of God, a rock. And the
flesh typified Christ. It typified Christ the Son of
Man, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And the unleavened
cakes typify the perfection of Christ. There's no leaven in
Him, no rising up in defiance against God, no hypocrisy within
Him before God the Father. Notice where the fire came from.
The fire rose up out of the rock. This is the mystery that only
grace can reveal. But no man took Christ's life,
and when he made his offering for sin in his own flesh, his
very deity, his very justice rose up out of himself and consumed
the flesh and the perfect sacrifice. Nobody took his life. When he
went to the cross, he was satisfying his own justice so that he could
show his own mercy to whomsoever he would. and He sacrificed His
flesh upon His Godhead, His deity, and the justice of God came from
Himself and destroyed that flesh, that sacrifice. That's God providing
Himself an offering. That's God satisfying His own
justice. That's God being merciful and gracious by His own will.
That's the difference between my God and the and man's God. My God and the God of every religion
in this world, the God of every religion in this world has nothing
to do with justice and mercy and the faithfulness of their
God. It has to do with man doing something to please their God.
My God saves by Himself without my help. My God saves in holy
justice because He's holy. That's His very character. He's
holy. Thrice holy. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. He does it all. He is all. He is my all. That's the difference. He holds your day tomorrow, the
rest of this day, and my day for the rest of this day in His
hand. He holds the economy in His hand. He holds the people
who hold the economy in His hand. He holds the sea in His hand.
He holds the trees in His hand. He holds this whole earth in
His hand, and everything is moving right on course according to
His purpose and grace that He predestinated before the foundation
of the world, and He's not looking to me, you, these kids, For anybody
else to perform His will, He's doing it all by Himself. And when we get to glory with
Him, you know who's going to get every bit of the glory? He
is. We're not getting any. My God
is bigger than your God. If your God depends on you, my
God is bigger than your God. And my God saves in grace and
mercy and righteousness. And your God don't know nothing
about it because your God is you if you don't know this God. So look here, and then when the
angel of the Lord departed out of his sight, that's important
too because this is a great type of, our Lord didn't stay in the
grave. He rose up out of our sight.
He rose and resurrected triumph and glory. So this was the sign.
This was just like when, what was the king, Ahaz over there
and Isaiah, whenever he wanted to see a sign and Isaiah said,
okay, here it is. A virgin shall conceive, and
a son shall be born. Same sign right here that was
shown to Gideon. Now, let's listen to Gideon's
joy. Verse 22. And when Gideon perceived that
he was an angel of the Lord, Gideon said, Alas, O Lord God,
for because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face. And
the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee, fear not, thou
shalt not die. Then Gideon built an altar there
unto the Lord and called it Jehovah Shalom. Unto this day it is yet
an oak of the Abizarites. In the rock, in the flesh, the
angel of the Lord revealed in Gideon that the Lord's covenant
with him was in Christ by grace and would never be altered by
Gideon's triumphs or Gideon's failures. That's why Gideon wanted
to know, is this thing going to be by grace? I see what I
am. I see what my people are. I see
the inability in my flesh. I see I can't do anything. Lord,
will you show me a sign that indeed you're going to be with
me by grace alone, that you won't turn back from me to do me good?
Will you show me that?" And the Lord said, I'll show you. It's
in the rock, in the flesh, in my Son. Because of Him, I won't
cease to do you good. I'll make all my promises. You'll
obtain all my promises. Now, what was the first obedient
act that Gideon was commanded of the Lord? Verse 25. And 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. Once the Lord revealed
that the peace of God toward Gideon was in Christ the Rock,
the Lord's first command to Gideon is his first commandment, Thou
shalt have no other gods before me. Now Gideon understands what
that means. And he says, now get in, you
go to your father. His father worshipped Baal. Baal is quite
simply all falsehood. It's just an example of everything
that's false, every false way. That's what his father worshipped.
And here's the order of false worship. His father had bullocks
and rams for offering. He had an altar that he had made
to a God he had imagined, and he had a grove that he had planted
and grown so that folks could have shade to come into. That's
man's religion in a nutshell. All offerings, all on an altar
he's made, all to a God he's made. And all in the midst of
a congregation or a grove that he's made by his own hand. And
Gideon's told, take that all away. Go take it away. Start
with his offerings. Take those away. That's what
we do in preaching the gospel. We start out taking away a man's
offerings. They're not going to do you any
good. And then we preach to him that that altar that he's coming
to God on, down at the front of the church or wherever it's
at, that ain't God's altar. God's altar is his Son, Christ
the Lord. And then we take away his false God. That God you've
made is of your imagination, it's of your heart. And then
the Lord said in verse 26, And you build an altar unto 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. And then Gideon took men of his
servants and did as the Lord had said unto him. 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, he did it by night."
Now, I want to point out a few things to you. The place is not
the tabernacle where the Lord had originally commanded Israel
to worship. It's not that same altar. It's a different one.
Gideon wasn't a high priest, and yet the Lord commanded him
to offer a sacrifice. This was at night instead of
in the daytime, how the Lord had commanded before. There are
several other differences here. But here's the point. When the
Lord saves a man, He makes all things new in Christ. Everything
new in Christ. He approaches God in Christ and
no longer in the law, no longer at his own altar, no longer in
the imagination of his heart, but in spirit and in truth. And
that's what's typified here. God's altar, God's offering,
God's satisfaction, God's delight is held up for us here as Christ.
And by simply declaring this word, by simply declaring this
word, we do spiritually what Gideon did physically when he
went there and tore down that altar. And that's why he was
commanded to go actually literally tear down that altar and that
grove and burn it up on this other altar is because spiritually
what that's teaching. The weapons of our warfare, the
believer's warfare is not carnal. We're not going out and killing
folks. We're not going out and tearing down churches and burning
churches or anything like that. The weapons of our warfare are
we preach Christ and Him crucified and God tears down the altar
of a man. God tears down his grove. God
tears down all his offerings and his altars and everything
that he put his trust in. He does that. That's why when
you read the Hebrew writer said these kingdoms are subdued. This
is kingdoms that are against God. Kingdoms, spiritual kingdoms
and powers and principalities that are against Him. The believers
subdues kingdoms by simply trusting Christ who subdues the kingdoms.
And they work righteousness thereby. All of His works are our works.
And it says they obtain promises through faith. The promises of
God, they obtain them. The mouths of lions are stopped.
All these enemies are stopped simply by this word of Christ
and Him crucified and that He is the believer's only righteousness,
His only justification, His only redemption, His only way of approaching
the Holy God. And they quench the fire of God's
wrath through this faith of trusting Christ because God's wrath poured
out on Him. It's extinguished and it has
no more claim on the believer anymore. And they escaped the
edge of the sword. They were living by the sword.
The believer that goes through life living by the sword, getting
all he can, and trying to save all he can, and trying to guard
the can, and all these things that he's doing, trying to provide
for himself, is living by the sword. Through faith you'll escape
that sword. Without trust in Christ, you'll
die by that sword. But trust in Christ, by faith
you'll escape that sword. And it says here, out of weakness
God made sinners strong to wax valiant in fight, to turn the
flight of armies of the aliens. And women received their spiritual
dead children raised to life again. You want your dead to
be raised to life again? This is it. Trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Walking in Him. Believing on
Him. Trusting his promise saying that
this thing is by grace and not by works. It's not by something
in us now We got something else to look at here, and I'll be
done. Here's the this is the Application I want you to get
Will the race set before you be full of nothing but peace
and harmony? After this let's see what happened
verse 28 judges 628. I So he's gone in, he's preached
this, this is a type of a man preaching the gospel. He's gone
in and preached the gospel, he's tore down his offerings, he's
taken his offerings from him, he's tore down the altar, and
he's declared this thing got to be on God's altar, in God's
ordered place, in Christ the Lord. So what happened? Have
you told your brethren about this? Have you told your loved
ones about this gospel? How'd they react? I'll show you
how they reacted, if God hadn't done something in their heart.
Verse 28, And 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 bullet was offered
upon the altar that was built. And they said one to another,
Who hath done this thing? And when they inquired and asked,
they said, Gideon, the son of Joash, hath done this thing.
Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son,
that he may die. Because He has cast down our
altar. He's cast down our God. Because
He's cut down our grove that we planted, our work that we
intended to come to God by. That's how man responds to the
Gospel until Christ does something in his heart. Now look, will
there be joy as the Lord saves and adds to the churches He will?
Look at verse 31. You remember Joash. He served
Baal. He built that altar. He planted
that grove. But listen to him. And Joash
said unto all that stood against him, Will you plead for Baal? Everybody in the city that was
his friend that came there to worship now came there saying,
Send your son out of here. We're going to kill him. And
listen to Joash. Will you plead for Baal? Will
you save your God? 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. Therefore on that day he called
him Gerabbel saying, let Baal plead against him because he
hath thrown down his altar. The Lord did something in his
heart, didn't he? The Lord made this man see that his God was
no God at all. So just as much as we'll have
enemies come up against us and reject us for preaching this
gospel, the Lord might just save my father and your father through
this gospel. Now look here, verse 3, or 3rd
plank. But what do we do in the face
of all the host of enemies who hate our Lord Jesus Christ? What
do we do in the face of all of them? How do we subdue these
kingdoms? How do we quench this fire? How
do we stop the mouths of lions? Look down at 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. So Gideon went out there where they were. He tried
to reach some sort of compromise with them so that they could
all get along together. No, verse 34 says, but the spirit
of the Lord came upon Gideon and he blew a trumpet. He just
blew a trumpet. That's his weapon. He had a trumpet
and he just blew that trumpet. That's how they subdued the mouths
of lions. That's how the believer quenches
the violence of fire. That's how the children are received
from the dead, blow the trumpet. And it says here, it's a beautiful
picture, I want you to see, the Lord willed them down to 300
men. We've got to kind of move on, look over Judges 7. The Lord
willed them down to 300 men. And they're going into battle
to this whole host of this mighty army that's against them. And
this is what Gideon said, this is how he commanded the people.
When I blow with a trumpet. I and all that are with me judges
718 judges chapter 718 when I blow with a trumpet I and all that
are with me then blow ye the trumpets also and on every side
of all the camp and say the sword of the Lord and of Gideon this
is the sword this is it it's not a carnal weapon is it it's
a spiritual weapon when you blow a trumpet it makes a sound can
you see it It's spiritual. You can't see it. You can't see
the waves of it or anything as it goes forth. This gospel goes
forth like that. You can't see where it's going.
You can't see where God's going to plant it. You can't see the
ears it's going to go into, spiritual ears that God's going to give
to hear it. Just blow the trumpet. And that's what Gideon said,
but there's something I want you to see here. Something I want
you to see here. They went in there and they had
a picture in their left hand, like a picture you'd put juice
in, a Kool-Aid or something. They had a pitcher and they had
a light in that pitcher, just a fragile little pitcher in their
left hand and that trumpet in their right hand. And when they
surrounded that camp of enemies and they got in there, you know
what they did? They blew the trumpet and they took their left
hand, they took that pitcher and they broke that pitcher on
a rock so that all that was left was light. You know what happens
when you blow this trumpet? That picture, that fragile picture,
is His flesh. That's what it is. And when you
blow this trumpet, man who's trusting in that flesh and thinks
he's a mighty man of valor in that flesh, that flesh is smashed
and broken just like that picture. And you know what remains? Christ
the Light. Christ the Light. So what you
have there left over after the picture's been broken, after
the flesh has been broken, after the Spirit's been broken, and
brought to Christ, you have Christ the light and the gospel trumpet. That's all you got left. That's
all you got left. You want to hear that trumpet
blown so you can see Christ that light. That's it. That's it. And then, do you want to be counted
faithful at this roll call of faith? Do you want to take part
in the better resurrection? And let me just simply tell you
what the better resurrection is. It's the resurrection of
the believer where he's resurrected unto eternal life. as opposed
to the resurrection of the unbeliever who's resurrected, brought into
judgment, and then dies a second time. That's the better resurrection. Do you want to subdue kingdoms
to have your children raised from the dead? This is obedience
to God. Turn to Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12.
This is obedience to God. Believe on Him who makes His
people more than conquerors in Him. That's the obedience to
God. Stay on Him in faith and be not
moved away by fear of man, by the fear of man's God, by the
fear of idol God, but stay on Him. This is obedience to God. Blow the trumpet of Christ our
righteousness, of Christ our justification, of Christ our
sanctification, of Christ our wisdom, of Christ our redemption,
of Christ our all. This is the sword which breaks
the fleshly pictures to one day. All that will be left is Christ
our light. This is it. This is our weapon.
This is a weapon of our warfare. And lay aside everything about
your flesh. Everything that would hinder
you, lay it completely aside. Everything about yourself. everything
your preconceived notions of God what you might have read
about God the If this don't line up with your theology then then
throw your theology out the window But I'm telling you brethren
everything that is of this flesh. We've got to lay it aside. It's
a weight. It's a hindrance That's all it is Here's what the Lord
tells us This is the whole point that we've been seeing throughout
the whole 11th chapter of Hebrews coming to this point right here
Here's the most this is the practical instruction from which every
bit of practical instruction should come This is it. This is it brethren Hebrews 12
1 wherefore I seeing we also are compassed about with so great
a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight
and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with
patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith. who for the joy that was
set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God. Do you behold
Christ, your joy set before you? then run this race. It's going
to take you through a cross. It's going to take you through
denying this flesh. It's going to take you through
denying your own wisdom. It's going to take you through
denying your own works. It's going to take you through
denying everything about yourself to crucify that, to do away with
it, to lay it aside. But don't take your eye off of
the joy set before you. Don't take your eye off of Christ.
Keep running this race. You may not run the same speed
all the time. You may not run the You may be running the slowest
most of the time. But all God's people are running
the same direction. Looking at the same author and
finisher of their faith. And in doing so, brethren, we
do so despising the shame. Despising the shame of what we
are. Despising the shame of the hindrance that this flesh causes.
Just as Christ on the cross despised the sin and the ignominious death
that He died there on Calvary. Despised it. But He obeyed His
Father and did it and put away the sin of His people. And because
He's done that, brethren, He promises you by His Spirit in
you, that's your strength. Just like Gideon's was, that
you'll finish this race. You'll run it. You'll finish
this race. Look into Him. When He finished, sat down at
the right hand of God. And when you're finished, you'll
sit down in His kingdom at His table. served by Him, rejoicing
in Him, praising Him, singing all glory and grace to Him. That's
the believer's life. That is a believer's life. And
a believer wouldn't have it any other way because he knows he
didn't have any life before then. Those are the exploits of the
faithful. This other stuff that folks talk about as being exploits
that faithful folks do You're not going to have a house, big
house, just because you believe God. You're not going to have
a car just because you believe God. These folks, these believers,
went through their life with just the clothes on their back.
They were tortured. They went to fires and were burned
in fires and just all treated horribly. That's not what we're
talking about. How could a man do that? What
could make a man do that? When he beholds Christ Jesus
the Lord. When he beholds the joy set before him. When he beholds
the finish line. That's how he could run that
race. And not until then. Not until then.