Change the World – Gideon

Judges 6:1-16, 25-26

Who wants to know how to catch a monkey?! Who thinks it would be the coolest thing in the world to walk around with a monkey chilling on your shoulder? Well, you’re in luck! You will learn how to catch your very own monkey! But you will have to wait until the end of the message to find out how!

Have you ever read or heard something that just straight up scared you? Maybe you viewed your life in one way, but then— all of a sudden—your whole perception changed. Perhaps, you read or heard about someone who upset or angered you or someone who you have looked down on, and then you realize that you are a lot more like that person than you would like to think.

Reading the book of Judges can do this to you.

I know that we are sinful and constantly turn our backs on God, for God’s Word tells us that, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 ESV) However, when I read about how the Israelites constantly turned their backs on God, I most likely and purposefully have not been relating to them personally. I would like to think that I wouldn’t have turned my back on God like they did, even though I know I am no better than they were. I pray you see the same thing that I have from Judges 6.

We are going to conclude this series by seeing ourselves in the person we are studying tonight. We are going to see that God sees something in us even when we don’t see it, and we are going to see actions we must take in order to be used by God to change the world.

Please turn with me to Judges chapter 6 as we take a look at Gideon and how God used him to lead God’s people to victory over their enemies.

[PREFACE TO SCRIPTURE READING]

Up until this point in Scripture, there had been a constant pattern with the Israelites. God would provide for them, then they would turn their backs. God would provide for them again, then they would turn their backs again. A common phrase found throughout this whole ordeal was, “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Time and time again this happened—just like it happens for us time and time again. Out of this pattern came the period of the judges.

And so begins our story…

Judges 6:1-16 – 1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. 2 And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. 3 For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. 4 They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. 5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. 6 And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.

7 When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. 9 And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”

11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him,