The Evidence of Things not Seen - Joel Schrock

Good morning. Also want to welcome everyone here, visitors and

home people. Thank you for being here today. I enjoyed

that those thoughts on Sela. There's a lot in the

service this morning that I think tie together very well

with what we're talking about here this morning, and I

think at a glance I wouldn't have thought about how

they're all tied together. But this morning, the title of

the message is the evidence of things not seen, and

so I'd like to look at faith now like all subjects.

To be fair, I feel like we're going to barely

scratch the surface of just a couple aspects of faith,

and it's probably not a real rounded view, but it's

a couple of aspects that have been on my mind. Now.

Some of the songs this morning right away caught my attention.

An eternal Father beyond all worlds by faith. I saw

worship the King in heart, ten thousand harps, Jesus rules. Now.

Hopefully as we go along that connects with with faith

the CHRISTI is King. Think you'll we'll get there eventually.

But to me that fit very well. Impossible problems that

were brought up in the devotions this morning, the faith

that was required to take action, And I think as

we go through this, I think we'll see and we'll

probably bring this out a couple of times. I believe

that God allows for us to be what's the right word, scared,

maybe unsure of ourselves. He allows for some doubts, but

he require requires action, and it takes faith to take

those actions. So a couple of things want to look

at us. What is faith? How much faith do we need?

How much faith is necessary? And what does faith look like?

Now we're not going to get into you know, people

like to categorize things, and there's people that have faith

categorized into this kind of faith, in that kind of faith.

There's a journey of faith. We're all somewhere on a journey.

We're all there. There's people probably with a lot of faith,

with a little faith, maybe there's some with no faith.

So we're not going to really address those things so much.

But if you think of the word faith, you can

turn to Hebrews eleven. May not come as a surprise

by the title. If you think of faith, I'd like

if just a couple of people, are there any words

that come to mind when you think of faith? Could

be a synonym, could be an action could be a person.

What comes to your mind when you think of faith?

Anybody have anything? I don't think there's many wrong. I

suppose there are some wrong answers, you probably won't say them.

I believe, help that mind, unbelief, anything else come to mind? Hope, okay, hope, obedience, trust.

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time here.

Those are all good. So let's look at Hebrews eleven.

I'm going to read the first three verse. So I'd

like you to really we know these verses, but I'd

like us to truly think about them. Now. Faith, So

what is faith? Now? Faith is the substance of things

hoped for the evidence of things not seen for by it.

The elders obtained a good report through faith. We understand

that the worlds were framed by the word of God,

so that things which are seen were not made of

things which do appear. So Verse one. There, faith is

the substance. And you think a substance, like, what's something

made out of it? Can you quantify what is the substance?

Looking at this word, I think it also could mean

confidence or assurance. Faith is the confidence we have in

things hoped for. We'll get into that hope a little

more about another translation of that from what I understand,

could be trust, the evidence or proof of things not seen. Now,

when we say the word hope, we can think of

different things, right, Like a child might say, I hope

that I get a candy. You know, I hope I

get this from my birth. I hope this and now

hope here is not a vague rainbow chasing willy nilly

word here, all right, That's not what it is. The hope,

the hope that we have is a confidence. It's a

confident hope. Verse three. By faith, we understand, we we

can know, we perceive. We understand that the world was

created by the word of God. So what we understand,

we can understand that the things we see were made

by something seen, the evidence of things not seen? Now,

is this just a blind faith? So I'm not going

to ask for you to raise your hand, but I'd

like you to think, have you ever in your life

question whether there's a God? I think we don't. You know,

we talk and rightly so with the assumption that there's

a God. I think we believe that. But I imagine

we've all some time in our life at least rolled

that through our head, like how do I know that?

What am I sure? Or maybe a question if there

is a god, what does he look like? And how

can you know him? Or can you know him? Now

these questions can be answered through faith because we don't

see with our physical eyes the answer, and yet we

can understand to the evidence of things that we don't

see that might be kind of confusing. Let me give

a real basic illustration. So imagine that your family or

a group of friends or something. Is that a cabin

in the woods, not many people around. Maybe it's winter,

and you're drinking coffee, hot chocolate, playing games, visiting, whatever

you're doing, and it begins to snow, sitting by an

ice warm fire. It's great. The snow stops. You decide

it's time to get some fresh air. So you step

outside and you see footprints in the snow past your

cabin and you look at your friend and you say, well,

look at that. Somebody was here. Wonder who that was.

And your friend looks around, looks at you, squints into

the woods and says, person, I don't see any person.

I don't believe that anybody came by here. Now, you'd

probably wonder what was in his hot chocolate, because you

know somebody was here. It's the evidence of things not seen.

You cannot see the person, but there's footprints in the snow.

Or maybe, uh, you're in somebody's home. There's beautiful grandfather

clock in the corner, and you admire the would finish,

maybe the accuracy of the time, the beautiful chimes. You

admire the wisdom of the clockmaker and the intricate, intricate design,

and you express that to the host, and he laughs

and says, clockmaker, I don't see any clockmaker. I've never

seen a clockmaker. I don't believe that a clockmaker for

this clock exists. And you'd probably have to scrape your

jaw off the floor because of his utter disregard of

the evidence of things not seen. And we can understand

that pretty clearly. Now, let me take you one step further.

Maybe you look at at at another person, Maybe you

look at yourself in the mirror. Maybe you look at

your child, your parent, your sibling, human a human body

designed in the image of God, and you wonder at

the complexity the blood flowing through the body with nobody

thinking about it, the breathing in and out exchange of

oxygen and what all happens there reflexes everything happening seemingly

on its own, and you wonder at the ability to

hear and see and feel and smell and taste, and

you praise the designer, the creator, for his wisdom in

creating people with choice and the ability to enjoy the

beauty of the creator. And then someone maybe it's in

a museum, maybe it's in Maybe it's a friend, an acquaintance,

maybe a book, maybe a podcast. You can't believe everything

you read, and you certainly can't believe everything you hear

it's yourself. But somebody tells you looks around and says, creator.

I don't see a creator. I don't really know if

one exists. And somehow we think that that's a more

logical position people in general. I think that's a more

logical position than the person disregarding footprints in the snow.

So just to give us one little tiny glimpse into

what's made up in a human all right, there's billions

of us around. We're going to look at one tiny

little part of that, and that is ourselves, all right.

So one thing that's beautiful about the universe is the

more powerful the telescopes and the more powerful the microscopes,

the more wonder and questions there are, and answers, some answers,

a few answers along the way. But there are an

estimated thirty trillion cells in the average human body. Thirty trillion.

That's a lot of zeros. We don't understand really what

a trillion looks like. All right, So you have thirty

thirty thousand, you add three zeros, thirty million, thirty billion,

thirty trillion. It's a number that we can't really comprehend.

It just is so huge. I did just a quick

look for kind of a generic explanation of cells, and

here's what they got. Human cells are incredibly complex, considered

many cities. Each cell, that is, is considered a mini city,

a biological activity with numerized special numerous specialized organelles, or

whatever you say. The intricate molecular pathways, and a sophisticated

system for managing genetic information our makeup, what we look like,

what we do, all working together to perform specific functions

in the body. Essentially, each cell is a highly organized

system with many moving parts, making it a prime example

of biological complexity. As a professor of biology, Michael Denton

was his name, and he said, to grasp the reality

of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology,

by the microscope, by going deeper and deeper. We must

magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is

twenty kilometers in diameteral diameter. I'm in trouble with my

words today. And it resembles a giant airship large enough

to cover a city like New York or London. So

if you could blow a cell up out, it's not

two dimensional. So you're not just gonna blanket a city

right with this big air balloon that would be sitting

over an entire city like that. If you could blow

it up that big, a single cell, one cell, what

we would see then would be an object of unparalleled

complexity and adaptive design. They're made to adapt as they go.

It's a living city. On the surface of the cell,

we would see millions of openings, like portholes of a

vast spaceship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream

of materials to float in and out. If we were

to enter one of those openings, we'd find ourselves in

a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity, a complexity

beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the

very antithesis of chance. So each one of these tiny

little cells is more complex than the most complex thing

man is created. Take a space shuttle. They're no longer

running because they're very very complex, very very expensive, and

they're pretty dangerous. A couple of them blew up for

various reasons. Right, each cell is more complex than that.

And you have thirty trillion dollars, give or take. Right

when you see this, there's an undeniable evidence that, although

it's unseen to us, there's a complex power that created us.

There's footprints in the snow more than footprints in the snow,

and thinking about the origin of the world, there's a

few options, right, And people that have ignored the footprints

in the snow have come up with a couple full

of scientific words and things to throw you off. But

if you just boil them down, here's what they look like. Matter, dirt, rocks, things,

Matter created. It came from nothing, came from nowhere, created itself.

The Big Bang came from nowhere, came from nothing, created itself,

and evolved into everything. Right, That's that's a pretty popular

idea in the scientific world, right. Or another one, So

matter created itself or it's eternal, came from nowhere, but

it's been forever and evolved into everything. Okay. Are those

are sort of two atheistic humanistic versions of where we

came from. There's another option, and that is that an eternal,

all knowing, all powerful, all present, God in his wisdom

created all things. Now, these all require faith because we

cannot see any of them. None of us were there

when the world came into existence. But I believe one

of them fits the bill for evidence of things unseen.

One more thing on this and we'll move on, and

that is that scientifically, we can it can be demonstrated

that where there is information, there's a greater source of

information that has given that information. Okay. So a simple

example this would be a book and an author. If

you read a book, somebody put information on paper, But

which who has more information, the book or the author.

Clearly the book is just a small portion of the

information that the author has. Okay, And this can be

demonstrated over and over again. So if we look at that,

and we look at the coded information in the DNA

of each of our thirty trillion cities in our bodies.

You have to conclude logically that if you go back

far enough, there is some being with all information, And

that sounds a lot like God. So faith in God

is a confidence and the evidence of things unseen but

that are clearly there. Now, how much faith do we need?

How much faith is necessary? I'm going to read Matthew seventeen.

You can turn there if you want. This is after

the Transfiguration Matthew seventeen, verses fourteen to twenty. This is

Jesus and the three disciples with him, coming back off

the mountain verse fourteen. And when they were come to

the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling

down to him and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son,

for he is a lunatic and soar vexed. And for

oft times he falleth into the fire and oft into

the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and

they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, oh,

faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?

How long shall I suffer? You bring him hither to me?

And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him,

and the child was cured. From that very hour. Then

came the disciples to Jesus apart. They kind of waited

for everyone to leave, and they said, why could not

we cast him out? Jesus said, unto them, because of

your unbelief. For verily, I say to you, if ye

have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall

stand into this mountain remove hence to yonder place, and

it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to unto you.

So think about this. Jesus chides his disciples for unbelief.

I think sometimes we think, you know, if only I

could have seen Jesus with my eyes, if I could

have only witnessed the miracles that he performed, I would

have no trouble with faith. Wrong, unless you're much better

than Jesus twelve disciples. Jesus told them that if they

had faith as a mustard seed, which he used to yeah,

you know, it's very small, the smallest of things. Okay,

very very small. If you had just a little bit

of faith could move mountains. Now, some people I believe

falsely use this to say basically that you have God

on a lease. You just have to believe enough, and

God will pretty much do what you want him to do.

And if he doesn't do what you want him to do,

you just don't have enough faith. I believe that's not

the case. Think of Jesus in the garden. He asked

for God the Father to take the bitter cup of

suffering and death away from him. Did it happen? Could

say no? We could also say yes it did. It

was taken away from him after he went through it

and experienced it. Did Jesus lack faith? Clearly not Jesus

had enough faith, I believe, to put his entire trust

into the Father and to ask that his will be

done if we always knew what was best, and then

we would be some equivalent to God in our understanding.

It's simply not the case. I believe that if we

ask in faith, God will answer, but it might not

be how we, in our short sightedness, think that he should.

Now faith is required, Some faith is required in order

to please God. Back in Hebrews, Hebrews eleven and six says,

but without faith it is impossible to please God. It's

impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God

must believe that he is, and that He is the

rewarder of them that diligence we seek him. We must

have some faith in God, but God can work with

a very small faith of someone that is sincere. I believe,

and again I believe. As we continue, we will see

that God allows for questions, he allows for faltering, but

he requires action. So what does faith look like? Hebrews

eleven is a great place to look for what faith

might look like in real life, real people, in real situations,

and it can look a lot different from situation a situation.

I was impressed at the different ways that faith godly people,

how faith looked with different godly people. Not going to

go over them all all the ones in Hebrews eleven.

But what did faith look like with Abel? While he

offered his best to God? That was one thing? Noah?

What did faith look like with Noah? He believed God,

and he obeyed God and built an arc for the

salvation of man and people. Abraham is given a lot

of space in Hebrews eleven a couple different times, great

hero of faith, and he would be a great We're

not going to spend a lot of time on him,

but he'd be a really good one to look at

different parts of his life. But he left the security

of his homeland to follow God God's command. He'd left

something seen and known for something unknown, and later we

know with offering his son there Sarah believed God's promised

to Abraham. We have Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all different things Moses.

Moses gave up what he knew he had. He actually

had some things. He had an education, he had wealth,

he had power, the pleasures of sin, and he gave

that all up for an unseen promise. He had faith,

and he never even got to experience physically the earthly

land of promise. Tremendous faith. Then the writer kind of says,

you know what, I don't have enough time. There's so

many heroes of faith, and he lists off a few

judges and kings and prophets, and then he goes on

to explain what some of this looked like. I'm going

to read Hebrews eleven thirty three through forty. And this

is after you listed off a few names, kind of

gave up for the sake of time, looks like, but

who through faith subdued? Can so look this list here?

Subdued kingdoms, rot righteousness, obtained promises. Stop the mouths of

lions quenched, the violence of fire, escaped the edge of

the sword. Out of weakness, were made strong, wax valiant

in fight, turned to flight, the armies of the aliens,

women received their dead raised to life again. Now, if

you just stop there, that's a pretty neat list, all right,

Faith looks pretty attractive. Let's keep reading. And others were tortured,

not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection.

And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, the

am or over, and of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned,

they were saun asunder, were tempted or slain with a sword.

They wondered about in sheep skins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted,

tormented of whom the world was not worthy. They wondered

in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves

of the earth. And these all the stories, the good,

we would say, the good stories, and the bad stories.

These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received

not the promise in their lifetime. God having provided some

better thing for us, that they, without us should not

be made perfect. These people had faith. But did you

notice something here? God used the faith of some for powerful, victorious,

glorious victories, and he used the faith of others to

endure persecution and even to be killed for his sake.

You know, you think of some of the people we

think might be so. King David is mentioned. He was

a victorious king, built the glorious kingdom, had a lot

of respect. And it looks like we think one of

the people alluded to here might be Isaiah, who, according

to tradition, was sauna asunder the servants of King Manass.

I believe might have that right. Those men are both

heroes of faith, and God used them in dramatically different

ways with dramatically different earthly outcomes, but they had faith

in the future. Now, I'd like to look at one

man mentioned here. He's the first one listed in the

group of judges, and I was it was suggested to

me by one of my children that I talk about

this man sometime because his he knew the name, didn't

really know the story, but he didn't know there was

a sword of the Lord and a Gideon somewhere, And

it turns out it kind of fits in here. So

you can turn to Judge six if you want six,

seven and eight. Very interesting story. I'm not gonna read

it all, going to kind of go through a bunch

of six and seven, read a few verses. Yeah, we

would certainly run out of time if we followed the

whole story of Gideon here. But Judges can be a

frustrating book to read through. You know, you have victories,

great victories, then it seems like apostasy idolatry, and then

some outside force comes and conquers them and they're in slavery,

and then they remember God and cry out to God,

and God sends a judge, some struck man, and they

throw off the enemy, and maybe they live in victory

for the time until that judge dies, and then the

cycle starts over. Well, here we are. They've been in

bondage basically to the Midianites, running scared from the Midianites

for seven years. I believed they oppressed the Israelites, as

I understand that the Midianites, the Amalakites, were warring herdsmen

that moved around, and a lot of the Israelites, like

they had their cities and they were farmers, and they

had their places to be and This brought them into

a lot of conflict, as the Midianites would move in

and come through, and for seven years they ravaged Israel,

to the point that the children of Israel made dens,

caves and strongholds in the mountains, and they'd try to

plant crops, but the Midianites would come through, and it

says that they their livestock and their camels, all without number,

would enter the land to destroy I think this is

more than just grazing everything. I think the Midianites really

wanted to destroy the place. And Israel was finally so

desperate they remembered God and they cried out to him,

and God answers, and here's his answer. It's not entirely comforting.

It's Judge six eight through ten. The Lord sent a

prophet he's unnamed, 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,

unto you, I am the Lord, your god, fear not

the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell,

But ye have not obeyed my voice. And as far

as I know, that was the end of the message.

Not a real conclusion there. Now, Gideon, I don't know

that we know much about him, you know from before this,

But he's out trying to make a little bit of

a living. He's threshing some wheat, and he's trying to

hide from the Midianites. He's kind of down. I don't

know how this is set up exactly, but the wine

press youse trying to stay out of sight. And he

must have been kind of startled when an angel of

the Lord showed up and he said, the Lord is

with thee the mighty man of Valor. And Gideon's response, now,

remember seven years he's old enough to have sons that

can at least carry a sword around. It looks like

he would remember before seven years ago ago. And he said, oh,

my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then

is all this befallen us? And where be all his

miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, did not

the Lord bring us up from Egypt. But now the

Lord hath forsaken us and delivered us into the hands

of the Midianites. Now there's a bit of a back

and forth here between the Angel of the Lord and Gideon.

Going to read that verses fourteen through eighteen. And the

Lord looked upon him and said, go in this thy might,

and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Have I not sent thee? And he said, unto them, Oh,

my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family

is poor and manassa, and I'm the least of my

father's house. And I presume everybody was poor about now.

But I think he was under selling himself just a

little bit. From what we read later. The Lord didn't

even address that. He said, unto him, surely I will

be with Thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as

one man. Then Gideon seventeen, and he said, unto him,

if now I have found grace in thy sight, then

show me a sign that thou talkest with me. And

he says, don't leave. I'm gonna go in and bring

you a present. Stay here, and he says, I'll stare

so Gideon went and he prepared a kid now and

I loving cakes and broth, and I imagine this was

a real sacrifice. But he prepared it and he brings

it out, and the Angel said, go ahead and put

the food on the rock over there. Poured out the

broth on top of it, nice and wet, and the

Angel of the Lord touched it with his staff and fire,

it says, came out up from the rock and consumed it,

consumed everything, and then the angel disappeared. Look, it seems

to me like the Lord U is an angel in

a physical sense, and being to introduce himself here to Gideon.

Gideon was afraid, and rightly so. And he said, alas o,

Lord God, for because I have seen an angel of

the Lord face to face, and then the Lord speaks

to him. Don't know how this all worked, it says

the Lord comforted him and said, peace be unto thee.

Fear not thou shalt not die. So Gideon builds, and

we're gonna kind of skip a few things here, but

Gideon builds an altar to the Lord. There that night,

the Lord instructed Gideon. He said, you need to go out,

You need to take your father there's second bulllock. I

believe it says the seventh year, you need to tear

down the altar and statue of Bail, and you need

to build a new altar. To me. On top of that,

you need to cut down the grove to Bail and

use that wood to burn a sacrifice of this bulllock

to me. Now, this is kind of interesting because Gideon's father,

joe Ash had some bulllocks apparently, and the altar in

the grove was apparently his he set up. So apparently

they did have some clout at least in the area.

And Gideon took ten servants with him to do this,

got them from somewhere. So but we see, now, just

think of this. God introduced himself to Gideon through an angel.

He sees a sacrifice burnt right out from the rock.

God speaks to him like face to face. Didn't see him,

I presume, but speaks to him, and Gideon is afraid.

Gideon is afraid of his family and he's afraid of

the townspeople. So he sneaks out at night with his

ten servants and did everything the Lord said. In the morning,

the people said, who did this? Now, remember the children

of Israel cried out to the Lord. And the Lord

said to prophet and said, I am God. I told

you not to worship these people, these idols. But there

so you'd think they would think, you know, there's some

wisdom in this, But no. The people came to joe Ash,

Gideon's father, and said, bring out thy son, that he

may die because he cast down the altar to bail,

and because he cut down the grove. Now somewhere in

here joe Ash apparently caught the message, and he answered,

and this, as far as I can tell, was kind

of his deal, this altar to bail. But he said,

will you plead for bail? Will ye save him? He

that will plead for him, let him be put to death.

Yet this morning, if he be a god, let him

plead for himself. And so they called. Apparently that settled

the matter, and they called Gideon, I don't know exactly

jered bail something like that, which means let bail contend

with him. And that was the end of that. Now,

apparently about this time the Midi Nites Amalkites, all the

children of the East, it says, gathered together move their

tents in into one areas valley, and the spirit of

the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet,

sent messengers around and called in people from looks like

four tribes. I don't know why I stopped there. Later

the Ephrmites were pretty offended about this being left out.

It's a little clique he had going on here. But

Gideon then asks for a very clear sign from the Lord,

and these we know very clearly. This is kind of

what we know Gideon. A couple things know about Gideon.

One is the fleece, right, and think of all that

Gideon has seen and heard by now, the direct commands

from the Lord. But he says, he says, here he

first saw, he asked God. He has his wool fleece.

He says, Okay, let this fleece be wet and the

ground all around it dry, and then I'll know. I'll

know then. And next morning, so he has this apparently

this group there, I don't know what they were doing

for a couple of days. And in the morning he

goes out and the ground's dry, and he gets the

fleece and it's soppingly. It wrings it out, feels a

whole bowlful, and then like as if that wasn't enough.

Apparently he kind of thought maybe he was skating on

thin ice. And he says to God, he says, let

not thine anger be hot against me, and I will

speak but this once. And then he asked God to

do just the opposite. And God's response was and God

did so that night. We don't see God getting impatient

here with Gideon. He doesn't argue and say, Gideon, man

up and have a little faith. But God used Gideon

right where he was. And I believe Gideon's on a

journey of faith here. He's questioning every move, but he

fulfills the action that God asked of him. Now, about

this time, Gideon had about thirty two thousand soldiers. That's

a pretty good sized group. But the Midianites, we can

count them up, count up the ones that were slain

at least in chapter eight, and it looks like there

must have been at least one hundred and thirty five

thousand Midianites, Amalekites, whoever all was there, and Camels without number,

like they had the upper hand. Gideon was completely outmatched.

Now just for a little visual youth, boys in the wing,

why don't you all come up here? All you boys

that are in the youth, go ahead, stand up, come up.

See how many of you are there are? Come over

on this side. Stand over here till I say to stop. Okay,

George go over there. Isaac stay over here, Isaac Tyson,

Garth stay here. The rest of you can go sit down. Sorry,

we don't need you. We'll like you anyways. Okay, so

stand over here and kind of face each other a

little bit. Now I realize they got Garth over here.

But if you are really to pit these against each

other in battle, you'd probably kind of go with this screwp.

Roughly speaking, this represents this represents one hundred and thirty

five thousand, and this represents the thirty two thousand and

Gideon may have started to, you know, take some courage.

Look at these men, tough men, strong man might be

able to pull this off. And then the Lord spoke,

and the Lord said, Gideon, you have too many people

with you. I cannot let you. I cannot deliver them

into your hands because there's too many. I'm afraid that

you're gonna take the glory to yourselves. So he said,

go down, Gideon. Tell your men that if they're afraid,

they can go home. So Gideon goes down and he

tells them and we're just gonna take Isaac and Tyson

say you're afraid and you can go sit down, all right,

And this is approximately what we're left with. But now

Gideon's like, you know what, I have ten thousand. Who

knows what he was thinking, but he could have been like,

you know, I have ten thousand of the strongest, smartest,

bravest men. This might be all right. And Lord speaks

again and he says, Gideon, you have too many people.

I cannot deliver them into your hand because there's too

many of you. And I'm afraid you'll be proud, essentially,

and these men were all brave. They stayed. So he says,

go down to the river, and the people, the ones

that I say will stay, we'll stay. The ones say

I will go, We'll go watch them drink. The ones

that lap like a dog will stay. And the ones

that kneel down and drink right out of the river

are gonna go home. And Gideon must have been watching

this and thinking, I think the Lord got this mixed up,

because almost nobody lap like a dog. At the end,

it was three hundred. Now, if we're gonna look at this.

We don't have enough people here, and we don't want

to like have half people and quarter people and everything.

So we'll just kind of imagine for a little bit,

if we had three hundred people here, like let's say

Garth is three hundred people, then we'd have to have

four hundred and fifty over here right to match what

hundred and thirty five one thousand looks like a right one.

The odds were one man to four hundred and fifty.

All right, you can go, you can all go. Sit down.

We don't have fourhundred and fifty people to bring up.

So now an interesting thing happens. The Lord tells Gideon,

get up, go down to the host, and I will

deliver them into your hand. But then notice what God does.

He gives room for Gideon's doubts. He suggested it. He said, Gideon,

if you're afraid, if you're still afraid, you take your

servant and you go down and you listen to what

they're saying in the camp of Midian. And so we're

going to read that chapter seven, verses thirteen to fifteen.

And when Gideon was come behold, there was a man

that told a dream and to his fellow and said, behold,

I dreamed a dream, and lo, a cake of barley

bread tumbled into the host of Midian. Tiny little thing

rolled in and came into a tent and smote it

that it fell and overturned it, and the tent lay along.

And his fellow answered and said, this is nothing else

save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a

man of Israel. Into his hand, hath God delivered Midian

and the host. And Gideon took courage, and he went up,

and he told his three hundred men, arise, the Lord

delivered into your hand the host of Midian. And they

took with them. In their left hand they had a lantern,

some torch lamp with I guess a clay pot over

it to cover it. In the right hand they had

a trumpet, and I presume they had a sword with

them somewhere, because they did some real fighting later. And

Gideon said, do as I do as I do, And

they surrounded the camp in hundreds, and at the same time,

at his leading, they crashed all three hundred of those

pitch and three hundred flames shown, and three hundred trumpets blue,

and three hundred men yelled at the top of their lungs.

And I don't know how this valley was. I don't know,

you know, but this is surround sound, all right, so

you can appreciate that the sword of the Lord and

of Gideon and pandemonium broke out, and the people in

the valley started fighting each other and trying to flee,

and they sent and at all this commotion, and I

don't know if they sent messengers, but the other people,

maybe that had gone home, came out and started chasing

these people. And they called for the Ephramites for the

first time. And the Ephraimites went and took the waters

of beth Bara and Jordan, and I believe they were

cutting off an escape there the Ephramites, and they captured

Midi Nite princes. And now we get to chapter eight,

and we just don't have time to go through this.

But Gideon pursued the kings of Midian. He was denied

food along the way. He comes back and deals with

that later. There's a lot more. This is a really

interesting chapter. Chapter It's interesting, but I want to look here.

Verse twenty eight says thus was Midian subdued before the

children of Israel. So they lifted up their heads no more.

And the country was in quietness for forty years during

the days of Gideon. And we go back to verse

twenty two and twenty three, and here's what the children

of Israel say to Gideon. Rule thou over us, both

thou and thy Son, and thy Son's son also for

thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. Now

what does a mature or a maturing faith look like?

Verse twenty three Gideon said, unto them, I will not

rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you.

The Lord shall rule over you. And I believe, connecting

those songs of about the about God being King, Jesus reigning,

I believe him a tour of faith will humbly recognize

there's a journey right, need some faith, and God allows

us to ask questions and to do these things. But

I believe I'm a tour of faith, will then humbly

recognize that God and God only is king. Thank you.

That's how