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Thank you guys for being here with us.
For all of you who are here with us, you probably had to get in your boat to get here.
This morning, but glad that you made it, and are grateful for everybody who joined us online
as well.
If you've got your Bibles, going up to Judges chapter 6 is where we're going to be this morning.
As you turn there, I want to go ahead and tell you this week will look a little different
actually over the next three weeks.
As we've been going through Judges, we've either looked at like one judge, or one week
even looked at three judges in the course of one message.
But for Gideon, we are going to examine his life and what God does through his time as
a judge over the next three weeks.
Now, again, in Judges chapter 6, we find Israel where we have found Israel from the beginning,
right?
So we start off, and Scripture tells us that, again, Israel was doing what was evil in the
eyes of the Lord.
And so just to kind of a recap, that reminder for all of us is that what they've done is
they've not forgotten God, but they've forgotten about the application of understanding the character
and the nature and the faithfulness of God.
And so once again, they turn to idolatry.
And so what God does is God once again turns them over to a group of people that God, telling
you the story, that God will redeem them from.
And so that's where we find God's people as we're working through the book of Judges.
Now, with the Midianites, this oppression is going to be not only different, but this oppression
is going to be more severe than anything that God's people have seen in the generations that
come before this time.
The Midianites don't necessarily care about occupying them and taking them politically, right?
And instead, what they really want to do is they want to control the Israelites through
the economy.
So here's what would happen.
They would come in, in their oppression, and they would take their crops after the growing
season.
When the livestock, when it would be time to slaughter them so that they could have the
meat, they would come in and they would take the livestock.
When they would have their goods that they would produce, they would come in and they would
take all of those as well.
And in fact, in verse four of chapter six, it said that after the Midianites would come
in and kind of raid God's people, it says that there was nothing living left for them.
So you're feeling this oppression.
It affects your economy.
And then when it's all said and done, you have absolutely nothing.
So here's what I want you to imagine, right?
So imagine you're living in the midst of the Great Depression, but in the Great Depression,
you're being occupied.
And so you manage through your hard work to save up and to gather some scraps of food.
It may be old, but at least it's something.
And so you're sitting there with this little bit that you have, that you've worked hard for.
And then all of a sudden, if that isn't bad enough, the people who oppress you, they come
into your home and they take it all.
You see, it's not that they were taking some.
It's not that they were enslaving them.
They were taking every bit of sustenance, of hope, of life that they have.
And so where we find in Judges six is it says that God's people, and this is important,
in their poverty, cry out to God.
So that feeling in their stomach as they begin to go through malnutrition, as they literally
begin to starve, the reality of the situation where they find themselves, they begin now to
cry out to God.
It's not because of the people who were enslaved.
It's not because of what we fear might happen, but it's where they physically find themselves.
They begin to cry out to God.
And so what is God going to do?
Let's look starting at verse seven.
This is when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on the account of the Midianites.
And 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.
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.
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.
So God's doing something a little different.
Before God sends a judge, before God is going to send Gideon, God sends a prophet and he sends
a prophet with a message, a message of reminding them not only of what God did for their ancestors
of long ago in Egypt, but what God has done in generation after generation after generation.
And then he calls the people, the reason why you are where you are is because you haven't
obeyed.
And the reason why you haven't obeyed is because you've never truly repented.
That God's people have always got themselves into these situations, into the reality of why
they are where they are.
And in that they begin to regret where they find themselves.
And so they cry out to the Lord.
And what I want us to think about, what I want us to look within this is understand the
difference when we talk about regretting or repenting.
Regretting or repenting.
You see, God's people, they know where they are.
They're reminded every single day that because of their consequences, because of what's happened,
now they find themselves in a condition.
And their condition is physical poverty.
Their condition is hungry.
And so now they look at that and the assessment of it calls them to cry out to God to do something
different because of what we've done.
But it's out of regret, not out of repent.
You see, when you and I, when we do something wrong, we feel sorry.
Right?
If you're just thinking about being a normal functioning human being on this planet, there's a common
trait that jumps from culture to culture, generation to generation, where when people do things
wrong, generally speaking, they feel sorry.
But not only that, when you do things wrong and then you've got to live in the negative consequences
of it, right?
That creates, sorry.
I'm sorry that I did that because of now of where I find myself.
This is streaming online and my parents and family watched this.
One of the most common conversations that I had growing up with my parents was this.
They would ask me a question.
And the question was, are you sorry you did it or are you sorry you got caught?
Now, mom, I was sorry that I got caught.
Like that's, as a depravity-filled 13-year-old, that's where I was, right?
I was sorry I got caught because I did it three weeks ago.
And from three weeks ago to the moment that I got caught, I had gotten away with it.
But now I'm sorry, not because I did it, because I got caught.
And now that I'm caught, there's going to be consequences for my actions.
And this is where God's people find themselves.
They're not sorry that they turn to idolatry because of what it takes them away from the
Lord, but they're sorry that they did idolatry, which has led to them now in poverty.
We begin to see the difference.
The Bible tells us that there are two kinds of sorrow.
There's worldly sorrow or regretting, and there's godly sorrow or repentance.
When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, he says this about the difference of the two.
He said, godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.
But worldly sorrow brings death, right?
So Paul describes these two.
He says, what worldly sorrow brings you and I, it's that I've done this and I've got caught,
and I don't want to live in the consequences of it.
I don't want to learn from it.
I don't want to grow from it.
I just want it taken away.
So God, I'm not sorry that I did this because it affects your heart.
God, I'm sorry that I did this because now I live in the reality of the decisions that I make.
And Paul tells us that that leads to death.
Why?
Because if there's not growth, there's death.
But he talks, he said, but there's a godly sorrow.
And when godly sorrow happens, you and I begin to walk through a process of transformation that happens,
and it only happens in the life of a believer.
Because when we begin to go through godly sorrow, what we go through is repentance.
Right now, repentance is a word talked about often in the church.
Repentance is a word that I use, that we use, that we challenge each other with.
But very few of us often commit ourselves of walking through and truly being repentant for what we've done.
So here's what it means to repent.
Number one, to repent means that you see what you've done.
Right?
You see, you and I, we recognize what we've done.
Now for believers, there's a beautiful thing that God gives us.
He gives us his Holy Spirit.
And his Holy Spirit lives in us to bring to our mind what we've done.
So in that moment where it's the action that you did that you got away with,
or the words that you said are even more dangerous for us, right?
Because this is what's hidden in secret, the thoughts that we have.
And we begin to wrestle with that.
Man, why did I do that?
Man, why did I say those words?
God, why did I think that?
That's the process of repentance.
Of God and his grace and his kindness bringing to our mind what we've done.
But repentance continues on with that.
Right?
That not only do we know what we've done, but we acknowledge who we've done it against.
Scripture in the Psalms, David tells us that in his sin with Bathsheba, right?
That caused her husband to lose his life.
That caused him to attack her.
That he had sinned against God and God alone.
True repentance causes us to realize, and we're going to talk about how our sin affects others in just a second,
but to understand that the person who we've offended the most is the holy God who has never sinned.
So I begin to understand and see what I've done.
I begin to understand and acknowledge that it is against God and God alone, but that also in repentance, in every part that I begin to acknowledge that it negatively affects those around me.
That my sin is never isolated, whether it's the words that I say, the things that I do, or the thoughts that I think, whether it is actions, right?
Because we do this for each other.
Like we condone each other's sinful actions from time to time.
We agree with each other's sinful words, or we justify our own sinful thoughts, that it still negatively affects each other, primarily in the body of Christ.
So my sin is never isolated from you, that my sin affects others, so that I see my sin within me, that I know what this is, that repentance causes me to acknowledge that it's from God,
that my sin affects other people, but that in that as well, repentance requires that I begin to move into a different path.
Then repentance requires for me to understand that I need to turn, which is actually what repentance means.
The word literally means to turn around.
Yesterday we were driving to North Augusta to see my grandmother and to see my dad who had had surgery,
and as we were riding there, we got in the truck and we're headed there, we've been on the road about 35 minutes.
It takes about 45 minutes to get to my grandmother's house, and my son Grayson is sitting in the back seat,
and he asked the question, right, that every kid asks, anytime you're going to be in the car for longer than three minutes, right?
How much farther?
And I told him, I was like, oh, we got another hour and a half, right?
Well, he knows, right, it's 45 minutes.
And he says, no, dad, we don't have an hour and a half, because I know it doesn't take that long.
And so just messing with him, right, because I'm a dad and we want to torture our kids a little bit,
I said to him, oh, but when we got on the interstate, I went the wrong way.
And in order to go the right way, once I realized it, I had to turn around.
And he looked at me, didn't find my dad joke funny.
And he said, no, dad, seriously, like, stop joking.
When are we going to be there?
I was like, we'll be there in 10 minutes, right?
But think about it.
If we had gone the wrong direction,
if I had gotten on I-20 and started heading toward Florence instead of heading toward Augusta, right?
What would have happened?
What would I have had to do in order to correct the situation?
Not keep going to Florence, but to turn around and go the other direction.
So many of us, when we repent, we begin to head into a different path.
We begin to go that way.
We acknowledge, we recognize that it's God that we've sinned against.
We know that sin is there.
We know that it affects other people, but we want to keep doing that and heading down the same path.
So you and I find ourselves so many times in Judges 6-1 that we continue to do evil in the eyes of the Lord
because we say we're sorry, but we never really repented.
And we haven't turned from that.
The Bible tells us what Paul's talking through, that salvation, the message, and what's being given to them
is that not only does godly sorrow bring repentance, but it brings salvation, and this is key.
If you're wanting to understand what a relationship with Jesus Christ, where that begins,
it begins with repentance.
It begins in acknowledging that you're a sinner who desperately needs a Savior
and that we can get into the details that it's Jesus who died on the cross to save you
and what a life surrendered to him looks like.
But the very beginning of salvation, you and I have to have come to an agreement that you need to be saved
and you need to be saved because you're a sinner, right?
And so Paul says that when there's repentance that happens, there's salvation that comes from that.
But what about all of us who are already saved?
What does that mean for us?
Well, not only does it mean that we continue to have our relationship with Christ,
but right, things that aren't growing or dying, right?
And so when we repent, what we're actually doing is not omitting where we're going to die because of this,
but we experience growth as a result of it.
And so we have repentance.
We have godly sorrow that leads to repentance, that leads to salvation.
And then the beautiful part that oftentimes gets jumped over in this,
that it's salvation that leads to no regret, that I am no longer guilty of this.
So in all of those things that we're revealed to in the Holy Spirit that we've done,
as we see that it's against God, as we know how it affects other people,
that we are given salvation, that we can walk with our head held high,
not because we're proud of the things that we've done,
but because we understand that Jesus fully paid for all of them.
And that's the hope that we begin to have.
And that's the message.
That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so God begins to put a plan in place.
God sends a prophet to call the people to repentance.
But the people still haven't repented.
They're still living in their reality.
We'll see in just a moment where they're still angry when their idols are taken away.
And so God's going to call Gideon.
And so let's look at verse 11 of chapter 6.
And so what God is going to do in this is he's going to call his judge Gideon to appoint him to redeem,
to set the people free, even though they haven't repented yet.
And what you and I begin to understand in this,
what we're going to see throughout this chapter is understanding the nature of God's grace.
This is the perfect picture of what God is doing and what God did in our lives.
This is how God works, even in sending Jesus to die for our sins before we've even committed the sins.
You know, it's amazing.
God didn't wait for Israel to repent before he sent Gideon,
just as God didn't wait for you and I to repent before he sent us Jesus.
God doesn't wait for repentance before he begins to save us.
Romans 5, 8 says this,
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Think about that.
While our condition is still broken,
while our condition is still as an enemy of God,
what God does is he sends Christ to die for us.
And so as we read this,
God's not waiting for Israel to get it all figured out.
God isn't waiting for you and I to figure it out before he stops moving.
And church, this is how we begin to understand God's grace
and how it helps us understand the love that God has for us.
God's pursuit of you and of me did not begin when we got it all right.
But as we rebelled, as they rebelled,
God displays his love time and time again.
And so God's going to call this man named Gideon.
Verse 12, it says,
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him,
The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.
And Gideon said to him,
Please, my Lord, if the Lord is with us,
then why then has all this happened to us?
And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us,
saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?
But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hands of Midian.
And the Lord turned to him and said,
Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian.
Do not I send you.
And he said to him,
Please, Lord, how can I save Israel?
Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh,
and I am the least in my father's house.
And the Lord said to him,
But I will be with you,
and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.
So when we met Gideon in verse 11,
it says that he was putting wheat into the winepress.
Here's what Gideon is doing.
He's hiding food.
He knows that the Midianites are on the way.
He knows if word gets out that they have something,
that they're going to come to him,
and they're going to take what's there,
and they're going to rob it from him.
So as a person who is living in their oppression,
he's getting together what he can get,
and he's hiding the base level of food of what he needs to survive.
And he has hit rock bottom.
This week, as I was sending my notes to get them put on the screen,
I was kind of kicking around this point in an eloquent way of trying to say
what I feel like is going on in this.
But I just had to kind of go back to the words that are common to me,
the words that we use.
And so hopefully you'll extend me some grace that I'm not more eloquent than this.
But what we're going to find right here is God moving in the mess.
All right?
God moving in the mess.
And I want you to think about your life in the rock bottom,
in where you find yourself.
I know for us, when we're going through the battles,
when we're going through the consequences,
when we're going through the difficulties of life,
we find ourselves figuratively speaking like Gideon, right?
Taking the wheat and trying to hide it.
And in that, we find ourselves in the mess.
And if we're not careful,
we can completely miss how God is moving in those situations.
So the Bible tells us that the angel of the Lord,
which by the way, we don't have time this morning, okay?
But this is Jesus.
This is Jesus.
Later on, Gideon's going to say that this is the sovereign God who's before him.
And in every single time in Scripture that we see,
when God manifests himself in physical form to reveal to people,
it's done through the Son.
So don't miss this.
We see Jesus standing here.
And he comes to him, and he says this.
Hey, buddy, I know it's difficult, right?
Now, these are Bo's words, right?
This is South Carolina translation, all right?
I know it's difficult.
I know what you're going through, but God's with you.
And Gideon says, no, he's not.
No, he's not.
And I don't know about you, but in the times of life where I find myself grabbing handfuls of wheat
and trying to hide them in the wine press, where my heart begins to feel for God is God.
You're not here.
And Gideon says, no, no, no, no.
If he was with us, I've heard about all the things that he's done.
If he was with me, then I wouldn't find myself where I am.
You see, for Gideon, he sees that his life is a wreck.
Gideon doesn't see hope.
Gideon doesn't see any way out.
But God doesn't say, I will be with you.
God says, I am with you.
And I think for so many of us, when we find ourselves in the mess,
when we find ourselves in our pattern of brokenness,
when we find ourselves in sin,
when we find ourselves, through the figuratively speaking,
wandering through the season of life, of the mess of life, of where we find ourselves,
it's easy for us to think that God's not with us, but God is with us.
And not only does God say, I'm with you, but God does this.
God says, I'm sending you.
I'm sending you.
Now, Gideon struggles with this as well.
Because Gideon is not the savior.
Gideon is not the warrior.
Gideon is not what anyone would look at, right?
And we've seen this happen through judges already.
And people go, oh yeah, let's get Gideon and send him.
All right, let's talk about Gideon, where he's come from.
Gideon's the least powerful person in his family.
His family is a part of a clan.
His family is considered the weakest family in the clan.
His clan is the weakest in their tribe.
And if that's not the worst of all the tribes of Israel, his tribe is considered the weakest, right?
So the weakest member of a family, of the weakest member of the clan, of the weakest member of the tribe, of the weakest member of the nation is going to be the person that God is going to send.
But that's what God does.
And this is crazy, right?
And so Gideon says, I need to know that this is from God.
And this is when Gideon begins to find out what's going on.
So he goes home and he gets a young goat.
He goes home and he gets some unleavened cakes.
Now remember, it's a man down to nothing.
And he brings it before the angel of the Lord.
And immediately, it's burnt up.
And in that moment, Gideon knows that he's been in the presence of God.
And so since he's been in the presence of God, he knows, he feels like, oh, I'm going to die because you don't live through this.
But God says, no, I'm going to spare you.
And so Gideon, this is important, church.
Gideon builds an altar, an altar of dedication to what has happened.
And he names the altar there, the Lord is peace.
So Gideon, in his steps of faith, of acknowledging that it's the sovereign God right before him, that burnt up the offering of which he gives.
He builds an altar, and now God, as he builds one, God's going to call him to tear some altars down.
Let's look at verse 25 through 28.
It says,
So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had told him.
But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.
And when the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asherah beside it was cut down.
And the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built.
And so Gideon goes, he hears what God has called him to do.
He goes to his dad's house, he gets a bull to tear it down.
He then takes what's been torn down, and he builds up a pile of firewood.
He then takes the young bull, and he sacrifices it and does a burnt offering for the Lord right then and there as he's tearing down the idols that are there.
And what God is doing in the life of Gideon, which God is going to do through the nations through this, is crushing idols and changing hearts.
Before God will defeat what is around them, God needs to defeat what is in them, right?
Before God is going to set his people free from what is surrounded them, God is going to defeat what is in them.
He sent Gideon not to go to the Midianites and tear down their altars.
He sent Gideon to his dad's house to tear down his very own dad's idol.
And it's where it begins.
You know, I think about so many of us, and we want God to defeat the result of our idolatry.
But we're unwilling to defeat our own idols, ourself.
We're unwilling.
We want God to defeat the visible problems of our sin, but we don't want to do anything with our own heart.
It brings us right back to this.
So our issue with idolatry is we find ourselves in a financial burden time and time again.
And we say, God, we want to experience financial freedom.
While we continue to use our money in foolish ways, we say to God, God, I need freedom from the consequences of the relationships of where I find myself.
But yet we within our own hearts aren't willing to look at, to treat, and to love people differently than we have before.
And so God says, no, no, no, no, if I'm going to set you free from what's affecting you, if I'm going to set you free from the poverty that has hit you and that has crippled you,
you have to begin to acknowledge where this comes from.
And so just like Gideon, you and I must be willing to identify and remove our idols so we can walk in the freedom of God.
And so Gideon does it.
He tears it all down.
He tears down the altars.
And his people hear about it.
And they find out that it was him.
They go to his dad, Joash.
And they say, send out your son so that we can kill him.
Right?
And through the work of God, Joash refuses.
So Gideon's still struggling, though.
Right?
Even though he's seeing God's faithfulness, he's struggling with what this looks like.
And God's going to have another call for him.
Look at verse 36.
And then God said to Gideon,
If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.
Behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor.
If there is dew on the fleece alone and it is dry on all the ground,
then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.
In verse 38,
And it was so.
When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece,
he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl of water.
Then Gideon said to God,
Let not your anger burn against me.
Let me speak just once more.
Please let me test just once more with the fleece.
Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.
And God did so that night, and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.
So here's what's happening.
Gideon's struggling.
Gideon's wrestling with,
God, is this you, and is this you calling me to do what you've called me to do?
Am I understanding you clearly?
And so Gideon comes before the Lord, and he says,
God, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to take this material, and I'm going to lay it in the threshing room floor,
and in the morning, let there only be dew.
Let the fleece, let the wool only be wet, and then let everything around it be dry.
And God, in his faithfulness, he does that.
So it says that Gideon was able to pick up the fleece that morning,
and wring it out, and fill up a bowl of water with all the water that was in it.
But Gideon, that wasn't enough for him.
So he comes and says, God, I'm sorry, but I need one more thing from you.
And so in order to see this, let me see the opposite happen.
So that night, he lays another piece of wool down, and he says,
God, let the floor around it be soaked, but let the fleece be dry.
And the next morning, that's what happens.
But here's a hard part for us.
Does that mean that you and I should do the same thing?
Does that mean that you and I should test God?
Is that what Gideon is doing?
And Jesus says that we're not going to put the Lord God to test.
So what is happening here?
What's happening is Gideon is seeking God.
Gideon isn't testing God.
He's seeking God.
He's trying to understand and know God.
Let's look at the context of where he's at.
Gideon doesn't have a church to go to.
He doesn't have a worship service to be a part of.
He doesn't have a Bible that he could pick up and read.
He doesn't have a small group where he can come together and talk about these things.
So in all of this, of what's happening with Gideon, he's not testing God.
He's saying to God, Lord, help me understand who you are.
Because what we understand and what we begin to know is that for you and for I,
the depth of the obedience is going to be so tied into our depth of faith.
The faith of seeking and understanding and knowing God at a different level.
You see, Gideon knows that God is going to call him to do difficult things.
That God is going to call him to live in boldness.
And if he's going to do that, it's going to come from a faith in God that seeks the Lord in all things.
And so Gideon is just saying, Lord, in this grow my faith so that I know you more.
I want to close with a story that's found in Scripture that I hope helps us see what it means
to desire a depth of relationship and to see our faith grow.
The story is found in Mark chapter 9.
And there's passages of Scripture, you know, that sometimes jump out to you where you identify things.
And this passage of Scripture is very clear at the very beginning.
And it's talking about a dad.
And every time I read anything in Scripture about parents, but primarily about dads,
like my heart is drawn to those stories.
And in Mark chapter 9 tells the story of a dad who is desperately seeking out Jesus.
And he's heard about all of the healings that Jesus is doing.
And it's not that this man himself needs to be healed, but he's got a son.
And the son needs to be healed.
And he's heard what Jesus has done.
And he's heard what Jesus is capable of doing.
And so the Bible tells us that he gets his son and he carries his son and he brings him to Jesus for Jesus to healing.
And this level of healing of what's taking place is a depth of tragedy that you and I don't know that we can fully understand.
It says that this child of his, his son, was possessed by a demon.
And what had manifest as a part of this demon possession was that he was mute.
So he couldn't speak to tell him what's going on.
He couldn't communicate his troubles and the battles and the difficulties that he was facing.
Scripture begins to describe that he, that he looked like he was having a seizure-like tendencies, right?
He would throw himself down.
He wasn't able to be controlled.
And this is where he would find himself.
So those two alone, I mean, imagine being a parent.
Your, your, your child doesn't speak to tell you what they're going through.
You begin to see all the destruction that is in their life.
But then also, as a result of this demon possession, the boy continually tries to kill himself.
He tries to kill himself through throwing himself in fires.
He tries to kill himself by drowning himself.
And the dad says, we don't know how old his son is now, but this has been taking place since he was a small boy.
And like, just imagine the weight of the moment.
And the dad has heard of what Jesus has been doing, about how he can heal, about by, simply by his touch, right?
Leprosy clears, simply by taking some dirt and rubbing into the eyes of individuals, people, the blind have been able to see.
He's heard that by his words that people can spring up and begin to walk who have never walked before.
And so this dad, at all points of desperation, believes that Jesus can do something powerful.
But this is what Jesus needs to do.
And so he scoops up his boy and he goes running to Jesus.
He says, Jesus, this is where we are.
Please heal him.
And Jesus says, all things are possible for those who believe.
Now, who's it back on?
The dad.
It's back on the dad.
Now, maybe this is me in the situation.
I'm thinking, man, Jesus, just touch him.
Right?
Jesus, just get some dirt.
Like, I heard about that.
Jesus, get some water.
Jesus, just say it.
You do this, Jesus.
But Jesus says, all things are possible for those who believe.
And then the father makes a statement.
And it's a statement that I believe.
It's the statement that Gideon's making.
And the statement that I believe that so many of us have to position within our lives if we are willing to grow in faith.
Did that man have faith?
Yes.
He brought him to Jesus.
And his statement in that was this.
Jesus, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
You see, the confession of what happens in the moment of growth of where we are is for those who believe and for us to understand.
God, it's not simply that I just believe in you, but I want to grow in a depth of you.
So even where my belief is failing, even where my belief is weak, God, grow me in that.
Whether it's a fleece or my boy, God, grow me.
And I'm grown by knowing more of who you are.
And so Jesus comes up and he says that he's healed and the boy goes completely limp.
And it says that everyone who was around thought that he was dead.
And Jesus reached his hand down and he grabbed him.
And immediately the boy rose to life.
You see, the belief of the father was manifest in the statement of God, I need more of you.
That's it.
That's Gideon.
Church, as we're here, as we come before the Lord, may we come so, not that, God, that I've got enough of you.
Not that, God, I'm okay with how things are right now.
But Jesus, I desperately, desperately need more of you.
You see, for Gideon to be obedient, he's got to know God at a depth that he had never seen before.
And I pray for you, whether that's your child, whether that's your fleece, whether that's whatever part of your life that you're going in right now,
is a desperate cry to know him more.
Would you pray with me?
God, we come to you, praising you and thanking you for who you are, for what you've done, for what you're doing, and for what you will do.
God, I pray right now that where this story began for us is hearing from a prophet who called a group of people to move past their regret and to move into repentance.
And, Lord, I feel for us, for each one of us in here, where that's where we have to begin to assess ourselves, that verse one rings true in our life, where we've done evil in the eyes of the Lord.
And so, God, bring us to acknowledging a godly sorrow within us, or that brings us to salvation, some of us for the first time, or that brings us to salvation in the growing of the depth of a relationship with you.
Lord, so that we can live our life free from the burden of sin, of shame, of guilt, of regret.
God, because of your goodness of what you've done and who you are.
Lord, so many of us, maybe literally, Lord, we find ourselves in a very similar situation of Gideon, where we find ourselves at the pit of struggling, of not being as sure of what we're to do.
Maybe so many of us find ourselves like the dad, who are just broken because of what's going on around us.
And, Lord, what we need right now, what we need above all things, is a willingness, is a desire, is a depth of knowing you, of a growth in faith that happens through you and in you alone.
Lord, work and move in how only you can.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
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