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Big God small me 1
In this episode of 'Big God Small Me', we explore the concept of a 'big God mentality' through biblical stories that highlight God's control and deliverance in seemingly dire ...
Big God small me 1
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Let's go ahead and open up in a word of prayer and then we'll. We'll get going this morning. Father, we love youe. We're grateful that yout have shown a love for us. And, Lord, you demonstrated that love time and time again with provision and chastening and teaching, Lord, and we're just blessed to be able to call you'd children. Thank youk for the way youy work in our lives and the things we don't understand, the things that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves. But we're again grateful to be able to call ourselves your children and to see you at work. We'll give you the glory and be with us now as we study that you would illuminate us to the truth of your word. And again, we'll give that glory where it's so richly deserved. In Jesus name. Amen. All right, we're continuing on this idea of a big God mentality. And last week we looked at. Really, God is the controller of his universe. Last week we looked at the Red Sea story, the plagues. We also looked at Jesus calming the waves in the Gospels. And so if you actually think there's. I picked out three very, very familiar stories for us to look over today, and I bullet pointed them. We're not going to spend a lot of time in going verse by verse, but I think if you just. You could probably come up with three other stories, right? With three other accounts where God allowed it to seem pretty dire. Right. Where God allowed circumstances to get right there to the edge. And then he showed up in a big way. Right. Where he allowed it to seem that God's people were surrounded or that the obstacle was insurmountable. He allowed it to get to a point, and then he showed deliverance. So of course we have David and Goliath, Gideon versus the Midianites, and Elijah versus Jezebel's prophets. Maybe. What are some other stories, some other accounts that we could have taken a look at today where that pattern. I know you guys are familiar enough with scripture that I give you a little time, you'll be able to come up with one or more. Moses and the people at the Red Sea. Okay. All right. The one we talked about last week. Yep. That's it. That's all right. Well, if you were listening like five seconds ago, I just. I did say that while you were. It was while you were talking to my wife, so you missed it. That's all right. Yes, Keith. Perfect. Perfect. Keith, you're my favorite. Good job. Good job. I'm sorry I had to give Andrew a hard time. I don't think that matches. Not a good fit. Staying with water. Crossing the Jordan. Okay. Yes. Bringing them right up to the Jordan River. And here, you know, we've got millions of people getting ready to cross over into the promised land. How are we going to get across? Imagine those front priests being waist deep in the rushing river. Well, it actually. It says as soon as the soles of their feet touched the water, everything receded. Wasn't it the priests in the back, though? No, no, it was the ones in front. The ones in front, yes. So it was the faith of. I've got to now step into a. Yes, I've got it. That's the faith. That was amazing to me. And. But yes, sticking with our water theme. That works. Well, since we're talking about water, how about in the Old Testament, he turned the water into blood, but in the New Testament, he turned the water into blood. Okay. Demonstration of God's power for sure. Yes. The first miracle that Jesus did to show his. His deity in Cana, King Hezekiah, when Sennacherib in the Assyrian army. That's a huge one. That's a huge one. I mean, and that one, I think, is one of the reasons why that's so powerful, is we get Hezekiah's prayer of deliverance, right? We get Hezekiah talking to God in a way where he says, God, I'm. I'm worshiping you. I'm confident that. So we get to see Hezekiah's faith in the middle of that time when they were under siege and things were really bad. I mean, I think if you look at the. What happens during a siege, right? Where food becomes scarce and I mean, just. It gets. It gets really bad. It gets really bad. But you see Hezekiah's faith. All right, what are some other ones? I got a couple, but I'm gonna see if you guys can say them first. A lot with Elijah, whether it's fire from heaven, whether it's Elijah in the mountain and wind and earthquake. Right. Fire. We're gonna end up there a little bit in chapter 19. But how about Elijah and getting fed by the ravens? I mean, literally every meal he was. At the end, he's like, are we eating today? Right. And birds come along with your food. It's like another day. Right? Another day. How about the three lepers? Okay. The ones who discovered that the Assyrians had retreated in the night. Oh, the ones who. And said, we do not. Well, they were the first ones to walk on the. Like, all the stuff. Right. They could have enriched themselves very well. They did. Yeah. Yeah. Good job. Like, you know what? We're not doing a good job. We need to go tell everybody in the city. Yeah. At the very last minute, they kind of discovered the victory had already happened. Yeah. Yep. That's good. I can't remember exactly who it was. It was a. I think he was a general and he had a disease, and he bathed himself in the water and he got. As Naaman. Right. And the little servant girl who was. She told her mas. Her mistress. Naaman's wife. Right. About the prophet. And he went and did what. What Elijah said. Or when Naaman showed up and his servants were freaking out, and Elijah prayed, lord, open his eyes. Let him see what I can see. And that was the angels surrounding him. All of them. Yep. So how about. How about Lazarus? That's actually four. Four days after he'd already died. Right. That's not showing up at the last minute. That's showing up after the defeat and turning defeat into victory. Right. There was another one over here. I assumed we had said Jericho. No, no. Winning a. Winning. Winning a battle. Winning. Winning a battle with just trumpets. Right. And I guess it was the stomping of their feet that shifted the tectonic plates that brought those walls down. Right. And then the sound shattered. No. God again showing up and saying, I am bigger. I am better than anything that you're going to face. You know, Jesus showing up four days after Lazarus passing away. He took the term fashionably late into the next level. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. You're on fire today, Andrew. Good job. Good job. Say the. The fiery furnace, Shadrach Meshach in a video. Oh, my goodness. So right there at the very end, they had to actually say, our God is able to deliver us, but if not, we're still not bowing. And he showed up right there as the execution was happening and kept them from being executed. So again, soldiers executing them. Die. There you go. Those guys fell down because it was so hot, and they died. So I was also thinking about what about the day the sun stood still? Was that Aaron and her. There were. There were twice, right? It was twice. But only one time the sun was held still. Okay. That was so that they could. They had to hold his arms up. Yeah. That was another incident. This was. We need more time to kill people. Yeah, yeah. Stop the clock. Because we're winning, right? We're winning, and we don't want anybody to get away. So let's okay, that's good. That's another time. It was overtime. Yes, we're going into overtime. That's right. Sudden. Sudden death, as it were. Right. There you go. That's one for Pastor. Right. I was thinking of the. How about. How about when the woman. Was it the widow who took care of Elijah? Yeah. They were down to the last bit of meal and the last bit of oil, and it lasted. So that's like getting up every day thinking, Going to bed that night and getting up thinking, this. This is probably the day we die. It's over. But no, God takes care of you another day and another day and another day and another day and another day. And so again, I think what's the common thread with all of these accounts is. Is God is still in control. God is allowing these things to happen. Right. And what I want. I want us to see in these passages today is I want you to see people's response. I tried to take note of people's emotions, right? Because we know these stories. We're familiar with these stories, but I wanted to take note of how people were responding in the middle of a situation that God was literally in control of the entire time. And how much wasted energy we often have with our anxiety, with our lack of focus. Cause we're focusing on circumstances. I mean, let's go to the stories we talked about last week, right? The Red Sea and the disciples caught in the waves, right? They're like, we're done. It's over. They didn't even have an idea. The disciples were like, master, don't you care that we perish? Right. What did the people of Israel actually say to Moses? You brought us out here to die. We could have died at home in our beds, Right. Without having to walk this distance. Right? You brought us out here, you know, to our graves. You know, was. They were using sarcasm, but they're like, couldn't we have died just as easily back in Egypt? But you brought us out here. Why? And so there was no even hope for some of these people. Lack. You know, there was no hope. That's. That's different than having a little bit of faith. They didn't even have a little bit of faith. They had absolutely no hope. They said there's. There's a. It's a guarantee we're done. Right? And yet God was literally in control the entire time. So let's take a look at some of these things. God allowed his people to become trapped and then delivered them in a mighty way. And we see this event following the form again. That you folks mentioned. You see it in multiple times, these multiple accounts, but I want us to start in First Corinthians. Let's go to First Corinthians, chapter one. The passages are right there. I actually have it in the King James in your text. But let's read through this starting in verse 26. For ye see your calling, brethren. How that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. It's italics. Yeah, it is. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and things which are just despised. Hath God chosen. Yea, and things which are not to bring to not things that are no flesh should glory in his flesh. So that verse right there, verse 29, tells us that why God does this. These are all case studies. These are all situations that God has either orchestrated or allowed to come to be. We say it that way because God's not responsible for sin. God allows wicked people to do wicked things because he wants to educate his creation on who he is. He wants to reveal himself to his creation because he wants the focus to be on him, not on the circumstances. And so we see here that God actually uses widows, orphans, the last little bit of food in your pantry the last few hours in a day, right? And he's trying to say it doesn't matter how dire the circumstances are. It doesn't matter how few you have on your side and how many they have on their side. It just matters what I do. That's all that matters. And so we should think this way. We should have a big God mentality. We should have a small me, big God mentality. And it should humble us and it should drive us to worship. It should drive us to praise, to be grateful, and to just focus on who he is. So let's take a look at some of these things. We see this form in three different stories. So let's first of all go to 1 Samuel 17, and we'll take a look at the story of David and Goliath. Let's see here. Nope, still didn't get it. So we see a few things here. You see the setup, the setting. In verse one, Saul and his people, verse two, you kind of have the Philistines on a mountain on one side, Israel on a mountain on the other side. You have this big valley down in between. And into this valley came our villain, right? Goliath of Gath. He's. If you do the math, he's nine and a half feet tall. He could actually dunk in a basketball rim without having to jump. So if you want to get the idea of, he could stand there and just dunk a basketball with a basketball at its full height. Some of our biggest guys in the NBA are seven foot two, seven foot four, and he was a good two and a half feet taller than them. So just think of this guy. And he would walk out and verse eight, cry to the armies of Israel. And he's like, let's go. Let's. You know, why do all these people have to die? Just send your best out. We'll fight. If I prevail, you're our servants. If he prevails, we'll be your servants. And. And this is what the devil and his armies will do to God. Verse 10. I defy the armies of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. And you'd think Satan would learn his lesson, but he's not going to. He's going to fight kicking and screaming until he gets thrown into the lake of fire, right? It's his pride, it's his power, it's his talent, it's his. I mean, he. Lucifer was and still is the most powerful, most talented, the most beautiful created being. And he. It's. It's made him corrupt and it's made him stubborn. And so he and God's enemies will defy the cause of right and stand against it every time. Every time. Every time. And so let's look at verse 11, God's people's response. What's a lesson we can learn from that? Giants are scary. Yes, that's it. I was just saying, if I was in their shoes, I'd probably be terrified too. Don't listen to the words of the enemy. It'll just freak you out. Don't listen to talk like that. Don't consider it. We can get ourselves worked up. We can get ourselves. You ever seen a kid, there's a situation they're not happy with and they. They start wrinkling up their face, right? Then they start sniffing, huffing, then they start crying, and then they really get into it because you're like, no, you can't have that. No. And. And then you're like, okay, now I'm gonna throw my weight into this cry. And they really. Have you ever seen a kid make themselves sick? You know, after a while they're crying, you still won't give them what they want. Now they're starting to gag and you're like, all right, you're gonna throw up. Don't do it in here. Pick the kid up, take him to the bathroom, right? We can do that. We can focus on negativity. That's just a small version of it. We do it as adults sometimes, too. We get ourselves worried to the point where we can make ourselves sick, right? We're focusing on negativity. We're focusing on the toxic things, the way people have treated us, the unrighteousness. This is not fair. I hate this. And I just get myself wound up, right? I can make myself physically sick, all right? Headache, stress, these all have markers that harm my daily functions, right? Which take me out of peace and out of joy and into a place where I don't want to be, right? And if I continue on, I can literally make myself really ill. I can do that. And so the people here, they heard the words of the Philistine. Or what do we find out later with Saul, what was he able to do? He was able to cheer himself up, right, With David and David playing his psalms, David worshiping David playing this music. And we have the right spirit coming on Saul that we can actually, this is a form of what we read in Philippians 4. 8, right? Paul says, the things that are lovely, the things that are of good report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. Literally frame your mind. We talked about that earlier in the study, about how I frame my mind, the things that I choose to think about. What are the negative possibilities? You're 15, 16 year old, 17 year old, gets in the car and drives away and. And you're like, all right, I'm starting to think of all the bad things that could happen to my kid before he comes back home, right? There's a lot of bad stuff that could go on out there, right? You know, you're away from a loved one and you're like, you start. This fear comes. It's an unreasonable fear, right? Because you know that God loves and God is in control. And God is stronger than any of the forces that are out there that could seek to harm the person that you love. Think that God loves the person that you love more than you do, and he's stronger than you, and he can. He can take care of them, he can protect them. But sometimes that doesn't stop this, right? It doesn't stop this from thinking up new, horrible ways that we can be disappointed, that we can lose, all right? All the ways possible that I can Lose. I've got them all figured out, right? And so I need to learn to filter the information that I allow myself to receive or take bad news with a grain of salt, put it through the Bible's filter, see things from God's perspective. Again, if we remind ourselves all the stories that we talked about, some more than once, right? If we remind ourselves, God allows these things to happen. God can bring, God can knock down those walls of Jericho, God can open up those waters, God can provide food. God can defeat that enemy, right? Whether it's by giving us more time to where my arm's going to be sore tomorrow, killing the enemy, or he'll just knock them over himself. He can do it himself one way or the other. God has chosen multiple ways to give his people victory down through the years. You know where he did it, right? Where he opened up the earth and swallowed them all up. Or he's like, pick up a sword, it's time to go kill God's enemies. And you know, I'm gonna stop the clock so that you can keep doing it, all right? You're going to be tired, you're going to be sore, you're going to be weary, but you got to keep doing it. So he'll put us in both situations at times. But when it's time for victory, God's going to give us victory. All right, let's keep going. If we continue on, we have David. Now, a couple of things that we can notice, right? David was the son of Jesse, right? Jesse had eight sons. And this fits along with our passage in First Corinthians chapter one. Where do we see in verse 14 what's true there in verse 14? And David was the youngest, and the three eldest followed Saul. David's the baby, right? And so how is God going to deliver Israel with the weakest, with the youngest, with this little red headed kid, right? So David, a lot has been said about David's faithfulness. He agreed to obey Jesse. He had somebody watch his sheep, right? And verse 20 left the sheep with a keeper as Jesse had commanded him. So he's being submissive, he's being obedient. And he leaves his carriage in the hand of a keeper of the carriage, ran into the army, found his brothers, and they get to hear this performance from God's enemy. They get to hear Goliath go off. And one thing, I thought it was interesting, take a look at verse 25. And all the men of Israel said, have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel. And the king will enrich the man who kills him with the great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel. So one of the reasons why I think Israelites were struggling so much is this is their motivation. They're like, I see the nine and a half footer, not worth it. Right, right. No matter how pretty the king's daughter is, you know, me missing multiple limbs, I'm not going to make a very good husband to her. Right, right. What's their focus? Their focus is on what's best for me. Yeah. Is it better for me to do this or is it better for me to do this? And it was better for them to, you know, shake and quake in their armor. Right. But David, right, he's like, look at verse 29. You know, he gets the. He gets the back and forth with his brothers. His brothers are like, you're, you know, stupid little kid. Go back. You're just here because you want to. You want some excitement, you just want some adventure. But let's read verse 29. And David said, what have I now done? Is there not a cause? Okay. And I've actually heard this preached where David's trying to rally everybody. I think David's basically saying, why are you mad at me? All I've done is be faithful. All I've done is, you know, there's no cause for you to be mad at me. I don't think David's like, do you know your history? Get the red, white and blue. Somebody grabbed the flag. Let's watch the eagle fly. He wasn't trying to get everybody patriotic with this idea of a cause. I think he's basically saying, but what was his focus, David? All he cared about was, I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to do what my father says. And now he's like, here we go. There's a problem. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to do what needs to be done. He wasn't concerned with the obstacle. He just simply was like, no, we're just going to do the next thing. We're going to do the right thing. Let's start reading verse 32. Let's hear David's words. And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fall because of him. Thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. And Saul said to David, thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for thou art but a youth and he a man of war. From his youth. But David said the song, your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, and I went out after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and smote him and slew him. Your servant has struck down both the lion and the bear. And this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he defied the battle lines of the living God, said, moreover, the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, go, and the Lord be with thee. Things were very simple for David. Right? Things were very simple. Here's the problem. God's going to provide somebody to solve the problem. If I have to be the person to solve the problem, that's fine. And he's not worried about the problem. If the problem is a lion, if the problem is a bear, if the problem is the philistine, doesn't matter. Where was David's focus? His focus was on God's power. Yes. And so it didn't matter. Plug in. Problem here doesn't matter. That's how David looked at everything at this point in his life. Because he's filled with faith right now. That's going to change later on in his life. He's going to have problems. It seems like the 20 years that God kept him out of the throne room, right? Kept him out of the palace. He was a faithful, hungry guy. Did the right thing. Right. I think too often I'm like, solemn. This situation where it's like, okay, I see problem. We need a solution. God presents a solution like, no, no, no, no, no, not that one. No, no. That's not the solution I'm looking for. Right. I need a better solution. Yes. I was looking for an army to show up, not a little redheaded kid. Very big, obvious. Makes sense to me. Solution. And God's like, no, this is the solution, Right. Do you trust me enough to move forward with this? Yeah. That's big. No, you know, that's big because that's what. That's what faith is, Right? Faith is seeing something that doesn't make sense. We want the thing that makes sense, right? God, if you would just do it this way, I then have the time, money, energy to do it. And God's like, no, I want to do it this way. I Want to bring this out of right field and just fix it this way, right? It doesn't match our. Like Andrew said, doesn't match our expectations. It doesn't match. This is what I had in my mind. This is what I figured out. God. And you're not doing it this way. All right? God, I would appreciate it if you met my expectations the way I wanted you to meet them. And that's not faith, right? So, again, I think we see here multiple things. You see, people's focus often determines their mood, their level of peace, right? Because what's the consistent? What's the constant? God is going to fix things. He's going to work things out for our good and for his glory, right? You can be like David's brother, mad at the solution. Eliab, which is like, you just came here. Sometimes we're that person. We cast scorn on the one that's being faithful. Because you're not doing it the way I want you to do it, right? We don't have all the facts. He didn't know that dad asked him to be there. He didn't know that God had ordained this victory. Eliab, if he'd have known those things, probably would have kept his mouth shut, right? But Eliab becomes part of the problem. Okay, Saul, again, like Andrew said, it's like, no, no, no. This is. This is not going to work. And then when, okay, it might work. Put my armor on the kid. Let's make it work the way I want it to work. And David's like, I got to get out of this. Just give me my five stones and my sling, and we'll take care of it. Right? I'm going to use his sword to kill, to cut his head off. I don't need a sword. There's my swords already out on the battlefield, Right? David had it all figured out. All right, let's shift gears a little bit. Let's go to first Kings. I'm sorry. Judges, chapter six. Judges, chapter six. I tried to pick passages that were pretty familiar so that we can kind of focus on some things here. Just if we get the setting. If you remember the time of the Judges, everybody was. There was a lack of vision. There was a lack of spiritual leadership. Everybody was pretty much doing what was right in their own eyes, and it got them into trouble. They had forsaken God's law. They had not listened to God's prophets. They had not listened to God's man. And so we've got issues, we've got problems, right? Joshua's not around Anymore. We've got another generation, and the people are kind of just doing their own thing, right? So let's talk about these Midianites. Well, the hand of Midian, they came down from their place, and the children of Israel had to leave their homes and start living in caves because it said the children of the east, the Amalekites and the Midianites, they came up against them. They destroyed the increase of the earth, they took all the sheep, they took all. All the crops, all the animals. They just, like locusts, they just kind of wiped through the land and took everything of value. Right, Verse five. They were like grasshoppers, and their camels were without number. And they just came, they took everything that was valuable. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites. And so here's the problem. And so now we've got God. They cried out to God, and Let's read verse 8. That the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and 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 drave them out from before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, I am the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live, but you have not. So this is one of those times we referred to last week that God was going to keep receipts on how he had taken care of Egypt, right? He was going to remind people, I did this. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And now we had a couple of other things that he added to the list. I cleared everybody out of the land. I gave you this land. Right? But you didn't listen to me. You didn't. Your eyes were taken off me. You started worshiping the gods of the people that we beat. You went to the losing side and started worshiping their power. When I demonstrated that my power was a lot bigger than their power. Just doesn't make any sense. So now we see Gideon's call, right? God's people were impoverished. They called upon God. God Again, verses 8 through 10. There. What was he trying to do? Focus on me. Focus on what I've done. Look at how I've delivered you. Look at how I gave you this land. And because of your disobedience, now you've lost the value of the land because of your every day. He just wanted his people to wake up. How can we serve God? How can we focus on God today? And they strayed. They lost that focus. They lost that value. Gideon was focused on. We have Gideon, which pretty much does the same thing. We start meeting Gideon here. He was doing his work at night. He was trying to hide. His whole life was a life of fear. And over the rest of this chapter and even on into the next chapter, Gideon struggles with confidence. You guys know the story, right? When God first talks to him, the angel calls him a mighty man of valor. Gideon is like, really? Right? I'm basically doing my farming work at night. That shows you how strong man I am. I can't even do my farming work in the daytime. I gotta come do it when the enemy is sleeping, right? And he's like, why has this all befallen us? Where are all these miracles? And so he missed an important point, that God's blessing at this time was only going to be on the people when they were obedient, when they were doing what they should do, right? And so he lacked focus on God. His focus was on his circumstances. So we had no faith. He finally did obey. Let's read down in verse 26 and 27, and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bowl and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah, which you shall cut down. Then Gideon took 10 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 do. He could not do it by day, that he did it by night. So if we'd have just had the first part of this sentence that have been great, right? Why did God refer to him as a man of valor? Because God. God wasn't impressed with his physical prowess, with his own strength. God knows God's familiar with his own attributes, and he sees potential. If you'll just let me do the work, you'll be a mighty man of valor. It's literally that simple. He wasn't. And what do we end up seeing? We see Gideon, his 300 end up beating the Midianites. We know the end of the story, right? We know what he does here. He throws down this altar. He's obedient. And when he does what God says, when God says it, things work out great. All right? And so I think we need to change our definitions to the man that's obedient and used of God is a man of valor. He may walk in the room and look like, you know, out of shape. No, no. It's a great question. It's a great question. You know, he may look out of shape, but the man that God can use is the man that God can use, that God wants our availability more than any one of our abilities, that that's really what he's looking for. God knew the way in which he was going to achieve victory. And it wasn't finding the strongest man in the room and giving him the biggest sword. It was a man who was willing to be obedient. And you had to have a certain measure of faith to go from 22,000 down to 10,000 down to 300. Right? We know that story. And not everybody in Israel was going to be able to do that. So I think God sees potential. And that's why God called him. Why God called him that. Because we were hard on Gideon, right? Because he was like, all right. It seems like the opposite. It really does. And when you look at how he goes back and forth with God with the fleece, you're reading and you're like, really? Come on, dude, get it. He's like, no, one more time. I just want you to make it wet around here and dry on here, you know? You know, forgive me. He's already seen an angel of the Lord, right? He's already seen. I think he already saw fire. Eat up some cakes, right? If we read the whole story, we would see how God showed up to this guy. This, this. This being second person in the Trinity showed this power to me. And now he's giving me orders. I'm like, okay, let's go. Let's do it. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. That would be enough for me. Wasn't enough for Gideon. Gideon needed a little more. He needed a little push. But when he got going, he did great. Sorry. God was all right with that. Well, God is gracious. God is a lot more patient than. Than I would be. You know, I think we see God's long suffering all the way through these stories. God's long suffering with Moses. We talked about it last week, right? When Moses is like, I need a mouthpiece. Can I bring my brother along? God could have said, it's not going to end well. No, I want you to do it. But no, he's like, no, bring Aaron. Go on, go on. I'll let you make bad decisions because ultimately I'm going to be more revealed. I'm going to be shown to be the deliverer all right, so Gideon, then he begins to obey. They throw down this thing. But not only was he afraid of the Midianites, he was also afraid of the good guys. He's afraid of his dad, all right? He was afraid of his father's household and the men of the city. So I'm going to do the right thing, but I don't want to offend other Christians, you know, I don't want to do it too loudly because other Christians might be offended. And they were right. They talked to Gideon's dad, Joe Ash, it's like your son threw the altar of BAAL down. We got to kill him. And you know, Joash is like, really? Read verse 31. Where did we leave off Here. But Joash said to all who stood against him, will you contend for BAAL or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a God, let him contend for himself because his altar has been broken down. Yeah. He's like, really? I think this kind of woke his dad up a little bit. Gideon's actions woke Joash up a little bit. And he's like, why are we enforcing Baal's laws if BAAL is so powerful? Let BAAL punish Gideon. All right? And so his thinking started getting correct. We're going to stop here. We'll pick it up here. We'll finish Gideon's story. Not next week, because next week I'll be giving my paper in the Bible conference. I don't know if I'll be here. I'll probably be over there at 10 o'. Clock. That's usually where we're at, so no class. Everybody's going to be together next week. All right? Don't forget we have two sessions on Friday, four sessions on Saturday. Try to plan to come an hour early on Sunday morning. I know you'll be able to be blessed. We'll have some refreshments, we'll have some breakfast on Sunday morning. We'll have lunch on Saturday afternoon. And if you want to be involved in that, I think there's probably still some sign up sheets if you want to get involved and be a blessing to others. All right, Jens, why don't you close us in prayer? Dearly, Father, thank you for this day, Lord. Thank you for an opportunity for us to sit back and just dive into your word and see how big you are, how you show up and do the impossible, Lord, and that you're still that same God today. And you want to do the impossible in each of our lives. You want to shine through us. And you want our light to be be seen by others, that we may all glorify you. I pray that you'll help us to live a life that allows you to shine through us. And we'll give you the honor, glory and praise for it all. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.