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Facing The Impossible
/Text: Judges 6:1-18/
Place Preached - (Mississauga International Baptist Church)
Date Preached - (01~/06~/02) PM (06~/04~/06) AM
Introduction: The Time of the Judges (1380 – 1050 BC).
The Days of no King – “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes”.
EXPLAIN – The Cycle – 1).
The people sinned 2).
God chastised people usually under a foreign oppressor 3).
The people cried out to God 4).
God raised up a judge to deliver the people.
Gideon was one of those Judges.
(Early 12th century BC)
VERY BRIEFLY tell Gideon’s story.
Israel in Gideon’s day were in an “Impossible Situation”.
Have you ever faced what seemed to you an “impossible” situation?
I mean it could be Financial, Physical, Relational – or how about Spiritual (Salvation of loved one – Victory over some sin).
Now have you ever experienced God’s deliverance in an “impossible” situation?
Did you even know that God delights in, in fact He specializes in deliverance out of impossible situations?
!!!!!
At the time Sarah Laughed, God said to Abraham…
*Genesis 18:14 * Is any thing too hard for the LORD?
As the Lord spoke with Jeremiah of His impending Judgment of Judah…
*Jeremiah 32:27* Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
/The angel who brought word of Christ’s conception to Mary…/
*Luke 1:37* For with God nothing shall be impossible.
So in truth impossibility is only something encountered by man, it is never a consideration to God.
The difficulty lies with us, not with God.
/After conversing with the rich young ruler Jesus spoke of the difficulty for a rich man to be saved./
*Matthew 19:25-26 25 *When his disciples heard /it/, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
\\ *26 *But Jesus beheld /them/, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Can we successfully deal with impossible situations?
How should we face the impossible situations of life?
Before we get to that let’s look at the life of Gideon and we will identify some elements or characteristics of *I.** S*. that will help us to learn how God works in them.
!
I.
An Unrelenting Enemy vs.1-6
Forty years (A Generation) has passed between chapter 5 & 6.
Israel is again bound up in the cycle of sin.
(Vs.1)
This time worshipping the gods of the Amorites (vs.10).
She has forgotten the True God of Israel.
God raises up a formidable foe in the Midianites, to be a thorn to Israel.
Now Midian has an interesting background.
Came from Keturah, Abraham’s second wife.
(*See Gen. 25*).
By this time Midian had joined in an informal alliance of Nomadic peoples with the Amalekites and other nations of the east, thus forming a powerful force of marauders against which Israel could do little to resist.
It is apparent that they came against Israel in annual predatory raids.
Vs.3-5
describes these raids.
The Midianites were like a swarm of locusts, sweeping in just before harvest, destroying and devouring everything in their path.
At these times the crops and livestock of God’s people were completely plundered.
This forced Israel to flee to the mountains and become cave-dwellers (vs.2).
The result throughout these seven years of Midianite oppression was extreme economic hardship.
In response the people cried unto the Lord.
Vs.6
The people were driven to their knees, but not likely due to any true consciousness of sin, only for want of relief from their oppressors.
The Impossible Situations in our lives often have this characteristic in common with Gideon’s experience.
The enemy seems to be unrelenting.
The difficult circumstance is an ongoing one.
There does not appear to be any relief in sight.
There in nowhere to run and hide.
All we want is relief!!
!
II.
An Unnamed Prophet vs.8-10
In response to the people’s cry the Lord send them a prophet.
Vs.7-8
There is significance in the fact this prophet remains unnamed.
God had sent Him – That was important.
People were to hear the message and not the man.
People are looking for the dramatic, the “big event”, the big name preacher or church.
Elijah did not find the voice of God in the Whirlwind, the Earthquake or the Fire, but God spoke to him in the still small voice.
Naaman was offended in *2 Kings 5:9-11 9 *So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.
\\ *10 *And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.
\\ *11 *But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.
God uses the simple, the obscure, the anonymous to do some of His greatest works.
Are you needing God to work in an impossible situation?
Quit looking for the fireworks, and start listening for the still small voice of God in His Word.
It’s not important by whom or how it is delivered.
What is important is that you receive it.
The power is in the WORD of the LORD!!!
!! His Message:
1.
Remind the people of the Past Works of the Lord vs.8-9
Primarily their deliverance out of Egypt and their occupation of the promised land.
2.
Reestablish the rightful place of the Lord.
“/I am/ (STILL) /the Lord your God/”.
Vs.10
“/Fear not the gods of the Amorites/”
The Amorites were once a great dynasty, as a people they predated Abraham and the Babylonian empire.
They were in the days of the Judges a mountain-dwelling people.
3.
Reprove the people for their Disobedience to God’s voice.
Vs.10
!
III.
An Unlikely Deliverer vs. 11-18
It is Gideon
God, in His mercy to Israel, raises up a judge.
Gideon is one of the most fascinating of the judges, not necessarily the most outstanding.
Gideon was from one of the smallest villages of Israel and was the youngest of, and only remaining son in his family.
Which shows that God works through ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.
He was the son of a man named Joash, whose other sons had been killed by the Midianites.
They lived at Ophrah near the plain of Esdraelon to the south.
Ophrah was apparently a center of Baal worship (vs.25).
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