Today with Jeff Vines

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you're in the middle of a difficult situation and
you feel weak, that's when you're at your strongest. Do
you know why, Because that's when God moves in and
gives you his power. The weaker you feel, the stronger
God is. When the odds are against you, God may
require you to do something that seems unreasonable. Today, Today, Today,
Today with Jeff Finds pasta apologist and Bible teaching.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
My name's Aaron and you're listening to Today with Jeff Finds.
Today we're continuing in the Help series. In this episode,
Pastor Jeff is using Judges chapter six in the Story
of Gideon. This message has some tangible applications and advice
on what to do when the odds are stacked against you.
So keep listening. As we start this message from Pastor.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Jeff Judges chapter six. As you're turning there, just let
me ask you a question. What do you do now? Honestly,
what do you do when you're in a situation that

(01:13):
just looks so bleak that there appears to be no
way out. The odds are heavily stacked against you. It
does appear that no matter what you do, you're just
not going to get yourself out of this. It's a relationship,
a job, a financial issue. But what do you do
now when the odds are heavily stacked against you, there's
no way out. Rug has been pulled out from under you,

(01:34):
bottom has dropped out. How do you respond? Now? I
know we've been in this series called help, we learned
a valuable lesson. At least I hope we did. I
hope our eyes were open to something that maybe we'd
never seen before. That is that when you are born again,
that the new life of God goes into the soil
of your life and you are raised to a higher

(01:55):
order of living. Remember we talked about that if you
move from dirt to plant life, to animal life, to man,
and then to the born again man, with each increase
in life, there is a greater sense of awareness of
spiritual realities, a greater sense of volition, the power to
do what God calls you to do, and a greater
sense of feeling to fill the presence of God actively

(02:18):
involved in your life. All those things are good. They're
important to know that you do have the power within.
But now let's bring it right down on a practical level.
Let's be honest. All sounds good in church, But when
we get out there, the bottom drops out. The odds
are heavily stacked against you. There appears to be no
way out. What is it that you do now? In

(02:40):
the Bible, John chapter twenty one, verse twenty five, there
is a little passage of scripture that talks about that
not everything that happened in the life of Jesus and
even in the life of the Israelites is recorded in
the Bible. That it would take all the books in
all the world to say that everything God wanted to say.
So that tells me the Holy Spirit was selective in
what it included about the life and teaching of Jesus,

(03:01):
and what it included in the Old Testament and God's
relationship with the nation of Israel, which leads me further
that sometimes there has to be stories then in the
Old Testament that the Holy Spirit said, I want that
story in there to answer this question that every believer
will have. I believe that the story of Gideon found

(03:22):
in Judges six through eight was included by the Spirit
of God to answer this question. No matter what you believe,
how positive you are about the sovereignty of God, what
is it that you're to do. What are the practical doings?
How do you respond when the odds are against you? Man,
there's no way out. Things look bleak and bad. I

(03:43):
believe God that God revealed this story included it in
the text of the Bible, so that the next time
you get into a situation, whether it's a disease or
losing your job or financial disarray, that you feel the
ruod has been hold out from under you, there is
no way out that you go back to these six principles,

(04:04):
because if you will apply them to your life. Here's
the commitment I'm going to give you. If you apply
the principles that God applied into the life of Gideon,
you will be victorious. You will win. In the end,
there will be success Judges Chapter six. Then let me
set it up for you. Looked up, and then we'll
get back to the principles. Now, you remember I've told

(04:25):
you about my experiences in the prisons of Rwanda, and
I even referred to you this book called Machete Season.
In nineteen ninety four, the Hutu tribe in Rwanda told
the Tutsis to come back in from all the surrounding
borders places like Uganda told them they would give them
their land back, they'd give them their homes back. And
when all the Tutsis came in, the Hutus then had

(04:47):
just that the green light signal. In a matter of
ninety days, slaughtered almost a million Tutsis in the Tutsi tribe.
What's amazing about the story is, folks, the world didn't
see it coming. This is a man living next door
to his friend, in which he grew up with, in
which he played soccer together. They lived in life, and

(05:09):
all of a sudden, just at the word go and
a green light signal, he took a machete out of
the shed, walked over to his neighbor and sliced his neighbor,
his wife, and his children just like that. And for
those who say there's no evil in the world, I
can remind them that man is the greatest testimony to
the amount of evil in this world and what we
do to each other. The reason I bring that up

(05:32):
and preaching in those prisons was an incredible experience. I've
gotten that opportunity again. I'll tell you more about that later.
The reason I start like this, though, is I want
you to understand when we come to Judges six and
the Midianites are fighting the Israelites. It's genocide. It's not
a cute little story you find in the cute little
book called the Bible. It's reality. And here's how they're
doing it, rather than marching down and destroying all the

(05:55):
Israelites in warfare, because in reality, the Midianites are all
well trained warriors. The Israelites are farmers. They don't know
how to fight, and so the Midianites know this. They
just wait until the Israelites have worked really hard to
get the harvest, and right at harvest time, the Midianites
come riding down with their horses and chariots, and they
burn all the crops and burn all the live stock.

(06:17):
They figure, why waste any of our men, We're just
gonna burn and starve them into extinction. The Bible says
that when the Midianites came down, they were like swarms
of locusts. They were well armed, well trained. They did
not spare a living thing. They came down seven years
in a row, so much so that now the Israelites
are afraid. They're hiding in the clefts of the rocks.

(06:39):
They are hiding in the caves, in the strongholes and Finally,
in chapter six, verse six, the Bible says that Midian
so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the
Lord for help. Let me just stop there. That's always
the right response. Always, when you're in a situation you
think there's no way out, you think your life's about
to come do an in all about destruction. The best

(07:01):
thing you can do is pray. They prayed. God heard
their prayer. God responds and he calls a man by
the name of Gideon. Now, want you not to miss
the impact of the story. You put yourself in gideon shoes.
God is gonna use Gideon to defeat the Midianites. Gideon
is not a warrior. He's facing one hundred and thirty
five thousand Midianites and he only has thirty two thousand

(07:22):
on his side, and they're all farmers. He knows that
the odds are incredibly stacked against him. He has seen
the power of the Midianites for seven years. Now. It's
as we move through this story and see how God
responds and corresponds with Gideon that we learn the sixth
valuable lessons that if you will put these principles into
action when your life comes to what you think is

(07:45):
the end. When you are in a living death, when
the rud has been pulled out from under you, the
odds are against you. You employ these principles, I'm telling you,
you will receive a victory. You will be able to
have great success. So here's the first one. God will
use my difficulties to my faith. God will use my
difficulties to build my faith. Now Here, before God can

(08:06):
use Gideon to slay a giant, he's got to equip Gideon.
He's got to build Gideon's faith in his own God's faithfulness.
Now how do you do that? Now, that's why it's
no surprise. Now picture this. Gideon is down and he's
threshing wheat. So he's protecting this wheat from Midianites. He's

(08:27):
looking over the wall making sure the Midianites aren't coming,
and he's hiding from them and gathering this wheat to
feed his people. At that point, an angel of the
Lord comes to Gideon and says, oh, Gideon, all valuant warrior.
Now you'll excuse Gideon for saying, what are you crazy?
What do you mean, o value warrior? I'm not a warrior,
I'm a farmer. Do you see me. I'm hiding here.

(08:47):
I've been hiding for seven years. I'm scared to death.
Don't call me o value warrior. And the Angel of
the Lord says, the Lord is with you. Gideon says,
don't give me that stop. The Lord is with me.
Where's the Lord being? Where's the God our forefathers talked
about walcome through the Red Sea, seeing the walls of
Jeri Cole fall. Where's that God? Seven years, mister angel,
seven years, We've been in povers. We're hungry, we're starving,

(09:09):
and we're afraid. So back off. That's what literally, that's
a little loose translation, but that's what he says. Now,
but yourself in Gideon's place, Gideon says, you know, I'm
facing incredible odds here. There's one hundred and thirty five
thousand Midianites thirty two thousand Israelites, better than a four
to one odd and the odds are against Gideon. He's

(09:31):
scared to death, so he's gonna play a little game
with God. Now, I think there's humor all through this passage.
He goes to God and he says, in verse thirty six, God,
if you will save Israel by my hand, Now, notice
something God already told him he was. God already told
him in chapter six early on, I am going to
give the Midianites into your hand. We are going to conquer.
Now that's not good enough for Gideon. Think about the

(09:52):
word of God. He's not good enough for Gideon. So
Gideon goes back and says, Now, if it's true that
you will, then I will place a wolf fleece on
the third wish. What does that mean? Gideon said, God,
if you really will, I'm gonna place this wool on
the floor, and when I wake up tomorrow morning, I
want it to be wet on the wool and dry
on the ground around it. Gideon goes to sleep, wakes up.

(10:13):
That's exactly what God did. And then Gidding comes to
God and says, God, no, no, Now, don't be angry now.
He says that because he knows God's gonna get ticked. Look,
I told you I would. I'm God. It's just some
friend or neighbor. I'm God. I said I would deliver you.
Now I've given you one sign, you on another, which
is why it never works for any of you. When
you sit under tree and you say God, I'm in trouble.
Get me a word. You open it up and you
read a scripture. If you don't like it, you say, God,

(10:34):
give me another scripture. And if you don't like that,
you keep going. You're gonna You're gonna keep doing it
until you get the one you like. Fleece throwing or
opening the Bible blinded is not a way whereby to
discover the will of God. And so Gideon goes back. Now, God,
don't be mad. But here's the deal. This time, I
want you to make it dry on the fleece and
went on the ground around and God does exactly that.

(10:54):
Now what I notice here is God never reprimands Gideon
for asking him these questions. It's beautiful. Why because God
is going to be patient in building Gideon's faith. He's
going to have to build his faith in God's faithfulness
if he's going to be able to slay the giants
of Midian. Now listen, the same is true in your life.

(11:15):
If you want God to use you to accomplish something grand,
to be a giant slayer. It might be world hunger,
I don't know what, world peace, whatever it is. If
God is going to use you to accomplish something great,
how does he do it by giving you an easy life?
I don't think so by putting you in situations where
the rud is pulled out from under you, where the
odds are heavily stacked against you, and the only way

(11:35):
you can be victorious is God. And so that you
let go of everything else you trust on, you run
to God. God bills your faith when he comes in
to deliver, even though it's not in your timing, because
you want it done tomorrow. And then He comes in
and delivers. And the next time you have to face
a giant guess what, You're a giant killer. Now. I
love the exchange verbally between David and King Saul. Remember

(11:56):
and now again, I'm gonna play a little with the text here,
but God knows I mean. Well, David go into King
Saul and he says, I'll take this goud to life
out for you. I'll take him out. And King Sau says, look, man,
I've got a whole group of people out here. None
of them are willing to fight go Life. You're a
little shepherd boy. You're coming in out of the shepherding fields.
Would I why should I think that you can defeat
Go Life? Because look, everybody's on the line here he wins.

(12:17):
We all become servants. David says, let me tell you why,
and I'm gonna play a little I'll tell you why
because I'm a shepherd boy and I was out in
the fields and a line came out, pal SmackDown, he said,
A bear came out and body slam. I'm telling you
I have slain bigger giants because it's not up to me.
The battle belongs to the Lord, and the same God

(12:38):
who gave me the power to slay the line and
the bar is gonna take out this giant king. Saul thought, Wow,
this guy's got a lot of faith. And he does
have a lot of faith because God has built his faithfulness.
If you want God to build your faithfulness, if you
want God to make you into a giant killer, you
cannot have an easy life. You've got allowed God to
put you on the hot seat, pull the rud out
from underneath you, so that the only thing you can

(12:59):
trust in God, and God delivers, and the next time
you face a joant, you win. This. This is what
I say to all the young people in here listening carefully, God,
starting right now or probably years ago, will take advantage
of every opportunity he has to build your faith and
every opportunity to demonstrate his faithfulness to you. And God

(13:20):
cannot demonstrate his faithfulness and his power unless you're in
a predicament that is really, really bad, when the odds
are against you. First thing, you got to know, God
will use your difficulty to build your faith. Number two.
God will often require us to do what seems to
be unreasonable. Look at this, one hundred and thirty five
thousand Midianites in the valley, well trained, well equipped warriors,

(13:41):
thirty two thousand farmers, better than a four to one
odd Now, young people, stay with me. You can see
get in and says, okay, all right, take any breath.
God says, we're gonna win four to one odds. I
know God is going to do something special. Maybe we're
gonna blow the trumpet and call the Iphramites to come
over and help us. We'll boost our numbers, at least
get them even so it will be four to four.

(14:03):
So he goes to a staff meeting. Yes, God, I'm here. Okay, Gideon,
here's the forced order of business. Chapter seven, Verse two.
You have too many men. Excuse me, you got too
many men. God, is this like new math? It's one
hundred and thirty five thousand to thirty two thousand. That's
better than a four to one, and the odds aren't

(14:23):
in our favorite. What do you mean? God says, listen, Gideon,
I said you have too many men, because God is
building Gideon's faithfulness. So Gideon says, okay, God, what do
you want me to do? I want you to take
the army out. I want you to line them all up.
I want you to ask him one question. Raise your
hand if you're afraid. Now, it's four to one odds.
The Median Knights are well trained warriors. The Iselites are
just farm boys. Raise your hand out of the thirty

(14:46):
two thousand, twenty two thousand raise their hand. Said I'm afraid.
And God said to Gideon, tell them to go home. Now.
Can you imagine you're Gideon, oh manners, They're all leaving now.
This is not that preposterous because in Deuteronomy chapter twenty,
verse one through three, and verse twenty, God had already
told the Israelites, when you go into battle, you are
not to be afraid because the battle belongs to God.

(15:07):
It's not yours to fight. You just do what I
tell you to do. And then he said, if any
of you, if you are afraid, let that man, each
man go home to his own tent. It's God's way
of knowing what all of us know. Fear is contagious.
One coward breathes another coward, and before long, if you
don't trust in the power of God, you start talking
amongst yourselves, and nobody's listening to God. Paul told Timothy.

(15:30):
Ours is not a spirit of fear, of timidity. We
don't face things as if we're on our own or
helpless that the God we serve is able to save us.
And if you don't believe that God says to those warriors,
go home. There are times I want to say that
to my staff. Now I have a good staff, I do,
but I want to get them in the room and
I want to say to them, Look, you don't believe
that God can bring revival to this valley. Go home.

(15:51):
You don't believe that God can heal addictions. Go home.
You don't believe he can restore families. Go home. You
don't believe that he's using your situation as difficult as
it is to build your go home. That's what God says, Now,
that's easy for me to say another thing if you're Gideon.
Verse four. But the Lord said to Gideon, there are
still too many. Just when you think you can't get anywhere,

(16:13):
you go four to one, thirteen to one. God says,
still too many. By this time, I'm sure Gideon's like
the old guy who fell off the cliff. And he's
hanging on by a branch jutting out of the rocks,
and he yells up over the cliff and he says,
is there anybody up there? And a voice comes back, Yes,
it's God, help me. God, Okay, just let go. And

(16:34):
about thirty seconds later, the God says, is there anybody
else up there? That's the trouble. When God gets involved,
he may require you to do something that seems to
be unreasonable, but it is the key to your success.
So Gideon takes the gods down. God says, I want
you to take them down to the spring of Heron.
I want you to have him take a drink, and
I want you to watch the way they drink. Some
are gonna get down on all fours and they're gonna

(16:56):
drink the water from the spring with their lips to
the water but there's a whole other group. They're gonna
get down on one knee and they're gonna take the
water and scoop it with their hand into their mouth.
God said Gideon, I want you to watch them. Everybody
that gets down on all fours and drinks straight from
the spring with their lips. Send them home with those
guys who were afraid. Everybody else that gets down on
one knee and scoops the water into their mouths. I

(17:16):
want you to use them, and I'm gonna use them
to defeat the Midianites. Now do you want to know
how many went home? Nine thousand, seven hundred are gone,
three hundred men are left. Three hundred men now one
hundred and thirty five thousand to thirty two thousand. We
started out four to one odds. We moved to thirteen
to one odds. With one hundred and thirty five thousand
and ten thousand. Right now, I'm sounding like an auctioneer

(17:37):
because I'm moving quickly. One hundred and thirty five thousand.
Now we have three hundred. That's four hundred and fifty
to one odds. This is hand to hand combat. Four
hundred and fifty could run up on one guy and
beat him half to death or to death. Why the test, Well,
let me meander a little bit here. Here's what I
think God was doing with Gideon. He said that the

(17:59):
spring of Heron was right next door to the enemy camp,
which means when you're getting a drink of water, the
enemy's looking right at you. You're looking at the enemy.
Those guys who got down and just drank with their
mouth took their eye off the enemy, and the only
thing they were interested in was getting their need met.
But those guys who got down on one knee and
took the water and scooped it to their mouth, they
kept one eye on the enemy and one eye on

(18:19):
getting their physical need met. Here's the deal, God saying
the Gideon. There's some people who are in this battle.
They're not serious about the battle. And if they're not
serious about the battle, they're not gonna make it. Send
them home. There are lots of people in the battle.
That's what Christianity is. It is a battle for us
to become conformed to the image of the Son of God,
and to do that is gonna require some pain. And

(18:41):
sometimes when we feel like the odds are against us
and there's no way out, and if you're not in
the battle and you're not serious about it, when the
difficult times come, you're gonna run and you're not gonna
be open to God shaping, molding and conforming you. C. S.
Lewis and Mere Christianity wrote one of the most powerful paragraphs,
it's not on the screen. You're gonna have to listen.

(19:02):
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes to renovate
the house. At first, you can understand what he's doing.
He's getting the drains right, stopping the leaks in the roof.
You knew those jobs needed to be done, so you're
not surprised. But after a while he starts knocking the
house around in a way that hurts, and it does
not seem to make sense. What on earth is he

(19:23):
up to answer? He is building quite a different house
than the one you ever thought of. He's throwing out
a wing here, and putting on an extra floor there,
and putting up towers and making new courtyards. You thought
when you first came to him he was going to
make you into a decent little cottage. But he's building
a palace. Why because he intends to live in it himself.

(19:46):
Listen your response to seemingly insignificant little test will be
the determining factor of whether or not God uses you.
Your response to seemingly insignificant little tests, like how you
act around your boyfriend or girlfriend, what you do when

(20:08):
you have a tough decision to make that will be
in consistence with Christ or with the way of the world.
Those little tests may not mean a lot to you,
but to God they will determine. They will be the
determining factor of whether or not God uses you to
slay a giant. Somebody says, well, Jeff, are you telling
me that if I kick and scream and I respond
poorly to difficult times or the hard decisions, that I

(20:29):
forfeit my opportunity to be used by God. Chuck Wendall says, no,
you just guarantee that you're going to stay in the
trial a little bit longer until you get it right.
When the odds are against you, God may require you
to do something that seems unreasonable. Number three, God will
always lead us to do that which gives him the
most glory. And now stay with me the beautiful story.

(20:49):
It starts to evolve, starts to grow because in verse two,
the Lord said to get in. You have too many
men for me to deliver Midian into their hands in
order that Israel may not boast a against me that
her own strength has saved her. Now we're getting the
Dally picture right now, it's starting to become crystal clear.
Why is God sifting the army because he wants to
make sure at the end of the day, when the

(21:09):
victory comes, the only one who gets the glory is God.
Now you think about it, four to one odds, you
could say, you know it, it was the oddsbury against us,
but we fought hard and won thirteen to one odds.
You know it is very difficult, but we did it.
But if it's one hundred and thirty five thousand to
three hundred, four hundred and fifty to one odds, the
only way to be victorious is God. That's why when

(21:32):
you're in the middle of a difficult situation and you
feel weak, that's when you're at your strongest. Do you
know why, Because that's when God moves in and gives
you his power. The weaker you feel, the stronger God is,
and the weaker you feel when you experience the victory,
you know that God gets the glory. You know, the

(21:52):
only way you can describe what happened is because God
moved in and did a miracle. God gets the glory.
You know it. He knows it. And everybody around you
is they watch how you responded to this difficulty. They
know it. Now, folks, I've seen this in churches and people.
Let's do churches first. This church right here, there was
a group of people that met about I don't know,
five miles from here, but they were convinced a lot

(22:13):
smaller group thans here at this church. Now, they were
convinced that this property was given to them by God
and this is where God wanted them to do ministry.
So you know what they did. They did the numbers,
put them on paper. When they did it, they said
this is impossible. And that proved to them that it
was from God because they did it. And look what
God provided. And you're enjoying the faith of a small,

(22:36):
committed core in the power and faithfulness of God. But
I've also seen it in individuals. I want you to
stay with me here. You've heard me talk about my
experience in Zimbabwe of losing our first child. You've heard
me talk about the faith of my wife. I want
to tell you something, and men listen very carefully. There's
an indirect lesson in this. You know, we lost our

(23:00):
first child. I was newly married. We hadn't been married
that long, obviously, at least nine months, but we hadn't
been married. I was new at the marriage ceremony and
the marriage relationship, and so I was learning how to
be a husband, much less a father. And when we
lost our child in that accident, I did not know
how to respond to my wife because I was raised

(23:23):
in a home where if there's something really really difficult happening,
everybody just ignores it sound familiar, and so when this happened,
I did not know how to comfort my wife. I
didn't have the foggiest idea because my parents hadn't taught
me that. And I just prayed, God, you know what's
going you know, God, I don't know what to do

(23:43):
what I say to her, And you know, the thing
that my wife needed most of all was what her
husband to hug her and assure her that it's okay,
that she has loved and that God is on the throne.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
You've been listening to today with Jeff Fines. Thanks than
for joining us. Next time, we'll bring you the rest
of this message from pastor Jeff.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Now you talking about a funny dream. A big, mean
loaf of barley bread came down the mountain, hit the tent,
struck the tin, and it fell upside down. Now that's funny.
But what's more funny is the interpretation because his friend
doesn't even pause. Wow, I don't know what that means.
It means this can be nothing other than the sword
of Giddyon, son of Joe Ashley isral like God has
given them Midianites and the whole camp into his hands.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
What you can listen to more messages like this. Just
search for Today with Jeff Finds wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
We'll bring this Today Today, Today Today with Jeff Fines