From Hole in the Ground into the Wholeness of God
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This evening we are going to look at a known story in the OT that I feel is very timely as we begin this New Year.
Last week, we joined with fellow believers from around the heartland and called on the power of God to help us, to guide us, to direct us, and to empower us as we carry out the mission God has given us.
We prayed for God to work in His Church
We prayed for God to work in His people.
And the power of God was poured out on that place.
Tonight I believe God is going to lift up some hearts. Tonight I believe God is going to call us from a place of refuge… to a place of restoration.
Here’s what I mean… We know we are living in the last days and we know that Jesus said the troubles we face are the beginning labor pains meaning… things will continue to escalate.
As we talked about last week, we can either become so aware of the trouble that it becomes a distraction that puts the church to sleep, OR we can rise, be awakened by the power of God that is bigger than all the obstacles we might face.
We are going to look at a story where the people of God were literally hiding in caves from the enemy the Midianites. To say it was a troubled time would be a massive understatement. The problems were piling up on top of each other and no one knew how to begin to bring about change.
And if I had to guess, we know what that feels like. I’ve never faced a situation like what is described in the story of Gideon, but I know what it feels like to have things begin to pile up.
It wears you down. It wipes out your resources. It takes a physical toll on your body, it makes it hard to focus, it makes finding the right direction increasingly more difficult. When things begin to pile up, sometimes all we want to do is… retreat. Try to do our thing unnoticed. Fly under the radar and hope to stay clear of anymore attacks.
That… was Gideon’s reality. His hope was crushed under the weight of a persistent and ruthless enemy.
He was successful in his evading the enemy… but God never lost sight of Him. In fact, God had not lost sight of His people either. But His people… had lost sight of the Lord. We’re going to look at that more in depth in a moment.
As the video clip plays this evening there is a question I want you to ask yourself. Do you believe… that God truly sees you - your life, your circumstance, your desires… etc.? Do you TRULY believe that God knows where you are and that He cares about your situation?
PLAY VIDEO
How would you respond if an angel showed up right now and gave you the same greeting that he gave Gideon? “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
That sounds a pretty great greeting, right? But it was spoken to someone in hiding… someone who feared the enemy and what they might do. So Gideon’s response… is not completely unexpected.
13 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Gideon does what most of our culture likes to do today. He calls out God for what appears to be absence. He asks the angel where are the miracles? Where is the power? Why has God allowed for this to happen? Gideon doesn’t feel like God is watching… or that God cares about the situation at hand.
Israel was in fact, in trouble. And it wasn’t because God was absent or because He took a vacation… the trouble the people were facing was for a different reason. In fact, the trouble didn’t even begin with the attacks from the Midianites.
A Troubled People
A Troubled People
Let’s look at Judges 6:1 for some clarity.
1 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.
The people of God… had turned their backs on God. They had allowed for ungodly ways to enter the camp… this brought both spiritual and physical destruction to the people. We see a glimpse of a couple of these things later in the chapter.
As the angel of the Lord gives Gideon instruction on what to do, we find this important command in Judges 6:25-26
25 That same night the Lord said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. 26 Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
Whoa wait a minute! Gideon’s father had an altar for Baal worship with an Asherah pole next to it?
Baal was the chief main deity of the Canaanites and Asherah was his wife. The people of God… including Gideon’s father, were engaged in the worship of false gods.
The people of God had allowed sin in their camp… and then acted surprised when hardship came their way. QUESTION Have you ever noticed how we humans often make our own wrong choices, and then blame God when harsh consequences follow? Why do you think we do that?
I think the answer is twofold.
One, we lose faith. Our pursuit of God, our passion for Him begins to fade and our faith begins to struggle. Bad, sinful choices begin to become the norm.
Two, we fail to take responsibility. It’s like blaming the officer who pulled you over for the speeding ticket you received for doing 80 in a 65. It’s the cop’s fault, right?
Gideon literally called out God to the angel while an altar for Baal worship stood in his father’s house.
Friends, before we get in the habit of blaming God for our circumstance, maybe we should be truthful regarding how we ended up in that circumstance in the first place.
Sometimes things are completely beyond our control. But other times we place ourselves in the middle of the trouble. If that is the case, we need to repent. We must tear down what ever it is that is getting in the way of our true and proper worship of the Lord.
Consider the words of the most quoted Scripture regarding prayer.
14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
The Word makes clear - HIS PEOPLE must turn from their wicked ways. If we desire healing of our land, it must begin with turning from our sin.
A Cry for Help
A Cry for Help
Secondly, I want us to see something significant. Despite the unfaithfulness of God’s people… the Lord heard their cry.
6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
7 When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
At this point in history, the altar for Baal worship still remained. The false worship still remained. Yet in their hour of desperation, the people cried out to the God who had delivered them before. And in response, God sends a prophet with a message: “You have not LISTENED to God.”
God was listening to His people, but the people were not listening to Him. God had spoken to the people but the people had failed to respond.
All of us got here in some form of mechanical vehicle. Our new modernized cars come equipped with sensors that watch the engine’s performance. If something is not working right, what happens? The check engine light comes on.
Now, we can do two things in this situation: We can ignore it and keep driving like all is fine OR we can plug into the computer to find out what is wrong and fix the problem.
If we choose to ignore the problem and the engine continues to deteriorate, the problem is not that the engine didn’t warn you, the problem was you choose not to listen!
This really is a problem within our nature that the enemy loves to exploit!
Don’t touch the hot pan or it will burn you. Don’t pick on your brother or he might hurt you. Don’t turn your paper in late or you will receive a bad grade. Don’t eat the fruit of the tree or you will surely die. And what is it that we often do?
Now, think about this. When you give your child instruction, say the hot pot instruction, and you hear them cry out in pain… do you leave them to their own or do you respond?
God loves us more than we could possibly imagine. And in His love, mercy, and grace, He hears us when we cry out and… HE RESPONDS.
Maybe we didn’t listen… but that doesn’t mean God isn’t listening. Maybe we fell short, but God will never fail.
God will respond and the great thing is...
God Meets You Where You Are
God Meets You Where You Are
Where was it that the angel found Gideon? He was found threshing wheat in a wine press. What was Gideon doing there? He was hiding from the enemy.
The enemy was mighty… and Gideon felt like his clan was the weakest in Manasseh… and that he was the weakest or the least in his family (Judges 6:15).
You see, the physical place that Gideon was in was a wine press in which he was trying to thresh wheat. Physically, he was hiding. Spiritually, he was hurting. He felt he was the least… what could he do?
So God, in His infinite wisdom, meets Gideon where he was… near the wine press in hiding, and speaks directly to his hurting - “THE LORD IS WITH YOU, MIGHTY WARRIOR.”
Gideon is instantly reminded that God sees him, that God is with him, and that God does not see Gideon as the least. God was calling Gideon out of hiding and to the front line of battle. And the first battle that was fought was the removal of the worship of false Gods.
Gideon is unsure of this calling at first, but we see God do only what He could have done through Gideon.
God will meet you where you are and He will call you and lead you accordingly - even when we may not see a path forward.
God can see what we can’t see. God doesn’t call us because we are equipped for the job, He calls us into what He is leading us to become.
And like Gideon, the first thing He calls us to is… repentance. We’ve got to clear out the sin, clear out the junk, tear down the strongholds, remove all the impurities, and be cleansed by the blood.
In Gideon’s day, the altar to Baal and the Asherah pole had to come down, and its place an altar to the Lord was constructed and a sacrifice was offered.
Today, the sacrifice has been made. Jesus laid down His life so that our lives could be cleansed and set free from all sin.
God the Son came down and met us where we were in our place of sin. He came down and did something only He could do - He called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.
God saw our hurting souls and paid the price for our sins. Jesus was broken, so we could be made whole again.
Closing Prayer
Closing Prayer
I don’t know where you might be today, but God knows. I don’t know how you might be feeling spiritually today but God knows. He sees you where you are and He is calling to you tonight. God wants you to know… HE IS WITH YOU RIGHT NOW.
Secondly, God calls us to remove anything that might be getting in the way of our relationship with Him. He calls us to repentance. He calls us to turn from wicked thoughts and ways. He calls us to build an altar of worship and sacrifice.
The false worship in Gideon’s day was the true enemy. That altar to Baal was robbing them of God’s power moving in their lives. Light and darkness cannot coexist.
Darkness will NEVER triumph over God’s light, but where there is an absence of light, so there will be an indwelling of darkness.
God is here, but we must receive Him. His light shines all around and we must choose to be in fellowship with Him through Jesus.
So our closing prayer look like this:
Give God praise for seeing us and calling to us.
Give God your heart through repentance and confession
Give God your trust as He leads you into what He is calling you to be.