The Hornet’s Nest – Part 1 (Part C)

You know how hard it is to thrash this wheat without the animals?

I'm doing it like I'm using a bow saw on a log instead of a chainsaw. David was considered the least in his father's house and boom, look what happened to David. I don't know how a man of God cannot love David.

He's just too real. He's not in some ivory tower somewhere writing poetry. No, something wrong with poetry. Well, he did write poetry actually. The Psalms without music are just poems. We lost a beat and God in His wisdom knew that had to happen because I don't like that song.

You know how we are. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Judges.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Judges Chapter 6 as he continues his message, The Hornet's Nest. I love those words of Paul, forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forward to those things which are ahead. He says, I press towards the mark for the prize, for the high calling of God.

And that calling is high. And it's high that it comes from God, and it's high that you can't get it. But it's the pursuit of righteousness that makes us a threat to hell.

Otherwise, again, what would get done? He says, but now Yahweh has forsaken us. You're wrong and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.

Yeah, the consequence of disobedience, as I've said. So here's a guy whose theology is all backwards and God's calling him into ministry for him because he's going to fix it. Gideon will look back at that day, and he's the one tells us a story. There was not a scribe sitting there, uh-huh, and then what happened? He preserves this story for us.

And I don't like how, again, commentators just trash him by the time we get to the end. We'll cover that when we get there, but for now, he's a hero of the Bible. He shows up in Hebrews Chapter 11 as one of the great characters of faith. Verse 14, and the Lord turned and said, go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Have I not sent you? So he answers Gideon's question in an unexpected way with a call to action. He just says, go in this strength. Yeah, see that fire in your belly?

Do something with that. You've been thinking about this, haven't you Gideon? See the key, the key is verse 12 of Judges 6, and Yahweh, the angel of Yahweh appeared to him and said to him, Yahweh is with you. That's the key. The pronouncing him as a man of valor, that is the key.

It means he's already taken all of this under consideration and he's going forward nonetheless. He does it with us all the time. Everybody that serves in the church does not deserve to serve. That's me included. None of us deserve this.

It is not our right to serve it until God makes it our right. And he does that by just calling us and saying, I want you to do this. I want you to do that. I'll be with you. But I'm so miserable. I know. So does everybody else.

Hope not. All right, back to this verse. I love when he says, so the Lord turned to him and said, that's a, you know, again, Gideon telling a story is sort of, you know, they're conversing with each other. It's like, you know, the Lord is pacing a little bit of something and he turns to him and he says, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

Have I not sent you? That is a direct order. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it Gideon.

Go. That's what it comes down to. I want to be the kind of Christian that when God says, you just sit right there until I call for you because he will call. Verse 15, so he said to him, Oh Lord, how can I save Israel?

Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least of my father's house. Now is he trying to weasel out of this or is he just telling the truth? I think he's just telling the truth. I would not want someone to send me on an assignment that I was, I felt unqualified for. I know what happens when people try to do a dangerous work and they're not ready. They get themselves and others hurt.

At least they break up equipment. This farmer was no warrior. What did he know about valor?

He's hiding in the wine press. Every Christian should love a Gideon in their own heart, in this rightful sense. If the story just ended, if the Lord said, you know what?

On second thought, you're right. You're no man of valor. Never mind, I'll get somebody else.

That would have been a tragedy. Gideon did not have a blind, baseless, unqualified pride with all emotion. Yes, yes, you want me to do it?

I'm there. That will get smacked out of you if you're going to serve with integrity and you will still serve effectively, but you just may not be as outwardly excited. You learn to say, you know what? I'm going to store up this excitement for when I get to heaven. And, you know, Mary hid all these things in her heart. What does that mean? We've got to live the life to find out what that means. You store things in your heart.

You don't zip. I'm saying anything, but I see something happening here. Moses and Jeremiah, there were others, they had reservations about entering ministry. I love to quote Moses, go find someone else. That's what he told God.

How can you not love that honesty? I mean, what did he know about serving God? Well, he knew. He tried. He tried it his way. Couldn't even bury a man in the wilderness without getting, in the desert without getting caught.

Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh. That's a standard answer. That's understandable. That people look for this high criteria. Where are your credentials, Gideon? What university did you go to? Where's your sheepskin? I don't have any. In fact, I flunked out. All I can do is, you know how hard it is to thrash this wheat without the animals?

I'm doing it, you know, it's like I'm using a boath saw on a log instead of a chainsaw. David was considered the least in his father's house, and boom, look what happened to David. I don't know how a man of God cannot love David.

I just, he's just too real. He's not in some ivory tower somewhere writing poetry, nothing wrong with poetry. Well, he did write poetry, actually. The Psalms without music are just poems. We lost the beat, and God in his wisdom knew that had to happen because I don't like that song. You know how we are.

Just play ten songs we'd like one and a half, maybe. It's a stroke of genius. I was just reading Psalms this morning in my devotion time, just saying that, you know, I wonder how, what the beat to this was.

I probably wouldn't have liked it, but it's so much richer with just the words. It makes me think. Anyhow, am I, he says here in verse 15 at the bottom, and I am the least in my father's house. Now, he might mean he's the youngest, or, and, or, I'm an outcast because my dad worships Baal, and I don't. And everybody else goes running after Baal, but I don't. So I'm the proverbial, you know, redheaded stepchild, as it used to be said in the industry that I worked, when you felt like you would be getting the short end of the stick.

It's very picturesque. Verse 16, and Yahweh said to him, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. Whoa, man, can you imagine God telling you that?

What, well anyway, the key, the Lord said to him, that's the key, and goes along with verse 12. As though numbers don't count to God, they do to us, and they're supposed to count to us. And if we stop counting the numbers, we get in trouble. We leave that to God. We have to, Jesus gave the parable, you know, you've got to count the cost, don't just go rushing off into things, you've got a good idea. You've got to think it through. The sons of this world, they think it through. I think about, you know, Christians in certain places, just missions for example.

You look at how much they struggle. You can't help but say there's got to be a better way to this. Going off, I'm just having my thoughts today, thinking about, you know, I would like to help somebody rethink missions. I think we could have some military tactics that would have proven effective if the Lord would bless it. That'd be a little bit better than just rushing into some things. Anyway, there's a lot of missions that doesn't work, just flat out.

Some do, some do not. Verse 17, I know it's probably the thought of 20 or 30 people hitting the floor in shock because we want things to work, just doesn't mean they will work. Life is too loaded with reality. That's why we want to escape it.

That's why we like entertainment. In fact, watch this dance. Verse 17, and he said to him, if now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who talk to me. I love this man. He doesn't have Bibles like we do. He doesn't have the, you know, the just shall live by faith, you know, the Jews request a sign that no sign shall be given. He doesn't have all that. He's just working. He's heard the stories that God delivers his people. He doesn't see the deliverance. And now he's being called to fight the Midianites? You're going to have to show me a little bit more than that.

What is he supposed to say? Okay. So, be careful that we do not rush into something and find ourselves caught in disasters, unqualified souls giving a bad testimony. It happens often.

Moses did not ask for a sign. He got them. I can't do that. You know, God put your hand in your robe. He pulls out his leprous.

You put your rod on the ground. It turns into, you know, God was, you know, working with his people. Second Corinthians, Paul says, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. Now that does not mean that if you are mindful of your insufficiency, that God is going to automatically now bless you because you have fulfilled the awareness of insufficiency.

It doesn't work that way. You can be mindful that you're insufficient and just be insufficient. You can be mindful of it and God uses you.

There's a whole bunch of things that goes on in this world to combat sin. When we were singing, when there's no more sin, when the saints go marching in, I would love to be the one that gets to take a chainsaw to the curse. When the curse shall be no more. That's what we were singing. When the curse shall be no more.

I'd like to take a hand grenade, a chainsaw. I just, I spit on it. I hate it so much because it messes up everything. It's such a real adversary.

It's not a movie. Of course, there'll be bigger fish to fry than venting my vengeance on such an ugly thing in creation as sin and the curse. Verse 18. You know, one proof that you are believers, that you hate sin. You just hate it. I mean, you may not walk around scraping your knuckles, I hate sin. I hate sin.

But you know when you're in that zone where you're conscious of these things and sort of your surroundings are blocked out, you are fully aware of your disdain for that monster, the curse. Verse 18. Do not depart from here, I pray, until I come to you and bring out my offering and set it before you. And he said, I will wait till you come back. I love this.

This is amazing. So let's go back to verse 18. Then he said, if now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who talk to me, you the angel of the Lord. Do not depart from here, I pray, verse 18, until I come back to you and bring out my offering and set it before you. And he said, I'll wait till you come back, Jack.

Oh, you just did. Gideon is treating this as it's a spiritual issue. He says, I'm going to make an offering.

I'm going to make this into a sacrifice for you. First Corinthians 2 5. That your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. He is aware that this is a spiritual thing. When Paul says that, he says, don't think about the carnal things.

Think about the spiritual things in a carnal environment. Gideon's own family, they had their altar. Gideon wants one. And that idol altar of his father was in direct defiance of the first and second commandment and all of the character of God. And Gideon knew that. That's why he knew the stories about God delivering the people. Verse 19. So Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from the ephod of flour, the meat he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and he brought them to him under the terebinth tree and presented them. This is amazing. You would think he just ran to the refrigerator, stuck it in the microwave, and in two minutes he's back outside with the meal.

That's not what happened. This ephod of flour, I'm told, is about 20 pounds of flour. There's a lot of goodies you can make with flour. He's making a meal that could last a family for a few days. He has to take the animal, the goat, the young goat, wait a minute, the Midianites, they're gobbling up all of the food in the pasture lands and yet he's sacrificing this. Maybe he's saying the better the angel of the Lord get it than the Midianites.

So it probably took him about an hour to kill, to dress, to prepare, to cook, bake, however he makes this, the unleavened cakes. But here's the beautiful part. I mean that part to me is wonderful. That's why I'm not going, he's a coward and I'm not doing any of that to Gideon.

I run to his defense. But here's the beautiful part. God waited for him to return. And then he received the offering.

He brought fire onto the rock. I mean God is just, I'll wait, I'll wait. You want to do that for me, I'll wait. A lot of work must go into serving God. A lot of work. You can't serve effectively.

Laziness is not a virtue. You've got to hurt. How many times in preparing for messages I just want to go run away, go take a long walk on the beach, just do something. But I'm only up to verse 10 and I've got 30 more to go. You grind.

Because that's what it takes. And the fear, the fear of not being prepared. I have nightmares.

I wake up, something like, oh, I was in the pulpit and I had nothing. I didn't prepare. We should be that way. Not all the time, you have too much to prepare.

But we should have some passion that makes us grind. Verse 20, the angel of God said to him, take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock and pour out the broth. And he did so.

How do you not love that? The angel takes charge. This is how I want it done. And Gideon says, aye, aye, and he gets it done.

Just like that. The angel of the Lord. That is to distinguish him from all the created angels. The angel of the Lord is the uncreated messenger of God. The messenger. Which who is, of course, the uncreated son who comes from the father. He has always been, he always will be. Verse 21, then the angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread and fire rose out of the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight.

Oh, man. He takes his stick and he goes, boom, and fire comes out the rock and Gideon is jaw dropped. He uses the rock as an altar. Hebrews 13, 10, we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

The writer of Hebrews was saying, if you consider yourself a Christian, you have no right going to the temple, making a blood sacrifice of anything because we have an altar and it is Jesus Christ and he is also the offering. He is the complete package of God for us. Moses brought water from the rock but the angel brings fire. What a glorious moment. Gideon was impressed.

He's impressed for the whole time. Oh, let me make an offering and then he sees this happen. Now he's still in his faith.

He's not, you know, overturned in a day. That's how life is, right? You have this great experience with God and you think you've got it and then you meet with something else and you're not as sure all of a sudden.

Fire from the staff. That's the first sign. The fleece of Gideon with the dew in the morning and that whole thing is the second sign and then there's the dream of the barley loaf, which I'm looking forward to getting to also and not this evening. Verse 22, then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of Yahweh.

So Gideon said, alas, O Adonai Yahweh, O Lord Yahweh, for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. Now he's, he hasn't figured this out. He's processing it. That's what I should say.

He's processing this. Where was I? Gideon perceived, he saw the Lord face to face. The Jews believed if you saw God face to face that you would die.

There's an element of truth in that, but not, but just an element and not a serious element. Exodus 33, they get this from Moses. God, when Moses said, now therefore, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way that I may know you. He wanted to see God. God said, well, you can't look at me. I'll hide you and I'll pass by, but you cannot see my face. Exodus 20, Exodus 33, verse 20, but you cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live. God was saying to Moses, I'm going to let a fuller me pass by, but you can't see it head on. You'll only get as I pass by. This is the foundation for Gideon's fear that he saw the angel of the Lord face to face, and he's alive to write about to tell us.

Magnificent. This whole thing, to see God. Manoah, the father of Samson, he too will see God. He gets a little emotional too. His wife has to say, well, if it worked that way, you'd be dead.

She won't tell him. We'll get to that in Judges 13, verse 23. Then Yahweh said to him, peace be to you, do not fear, you shall not die. See, he knew that Gideon is processing and saying, I'm done. I saw the Lord face to face.

How long before I finally, how long before this kicks in? And the Lord, he's departed, so he must have spoken it or imparted the word to him. Either way, he gets it.

That detail's not given. But he says to him, you shall not die. Don't worry about this. That's how we would say it. It's okay.

It's all right. He says, peace be to you. He says, Shalom, don't worry about this. Shalom means so much more than just peace.

It is coming from whoever it's coming from gives it life. And coming from the angel of the Lord is everything. When Paul writes in Romans 5, we have peace with God. It was big coming from a Jew like Paul.

That's a big statement for us. Verse, so the next time you get in trouble with yourself and the sin, you understand God is not looking to do you in. He saw you, he saw you plan that sin committed long before you were born. That's how much God knows. We get that now. Verse 24, so Gideon built an altar there to Yahweh and called it Yahweh Shalom.

To this day, it is still an ophrah of the Abiezrites, Abiezrites. That's as close as you're going to get. So he's inspired. He sees God. He's been interacting.

Now he's loaded. Well, if you serve, if you're in the music ministry, maybe you're not in the mood to sing. Maybe you can't find the songs to sing.

Maybe you cannot sing them with the passion that you know they're worthy of being, of receiving. You need inspiration. Sometimes it doesn't come. What do you do then? You force march. You just keep going. You let God, let God take it.

The world says let the chips fall where they may. We say we leave it with the Lord. That is honor. That is duty. That is serving where others can't. You press toward the mark.

You press toward the mark. The Gideon now wanted to increase the sacrifice because he's into this even more. Is anything too hard for Yahweh? God asked Abraham in Genesis 18. Of course, Jesus answered that. But with God, nothing is impossible.

Job discovered that. He said God could do anything. He realized that, standing before the Lord. He says I know that you can do anything, Job 42, verse 2.

Jeremiah admitted that there was nothing too hard for God. When you get a thought that even God can't fix this, that's Satan. Now there's truth to it sometimes, and we have to be careful because if we behave as though God is obligated to do something, to overturn something, he's not. But he can.

And all I need to do is find out what my role is in relationship to the Lord at any given time. Jesus told his disciples, with God all things are possible. But not all things are feasible. There are other people involved too. I mean suppose one day you want it to rain. Maybe somebody else has an event that day that doesn't need to be canceled.

It's a very important event. I might be preaching somewhere outside and God doesn't want it to cancel. So I'm just trying to give you a silly example of when we pray, we have to remember there are other people too. Paul testified I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

But of course before he gets to that verse he talks about how he knows how to be poor and he knows how to be rich, he knows how to be full, he knows how to suffer hunger. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, California. If you'd like more information about this ministry we invite you to visit our website crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges right here on Cross Reference Radio.