Today we are wrapping up our collection. We're calling voices, and we also have another household favorite. She is no stranger to this desk. She does a phenomenal job. We're so delighted to have Katie Kazadi back in the house. Katie, get up here. Preach the word, do your thing. Let's go.

Good morning, church. Good morning. Ooh, I can see you today. Hey, I dare you to sleep this morning. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. Well, good morning. I am so glad that we're all here today. Did you come this morning prepared with your heart prepared to hear from the Holy Spirit? Yes, I know nobody gets out of bed and drags themself on a Sunday morning in this hot sun to church just to be cute because that's what people do. And even if you don't realize that you're here this morning because there is a deep hunger in you that wants a touch from God, that wants a word from God. And so this morning we come to the table together, me just as hungry as you, me, just as needy as you. And we know that every time that you lean into God, he always leans back into you.

And so this morning, I'm I'm, I'm excited to share the word. I want to again, just welcome all of our first time guests. Welcome to our vitamin E Fam online. We're so glad that you're with us. If it is your first time, I highly suggest and encourage you to come back next week when our pastor Tim Rivers is here so you can know what this church is really like because I am not the full representation. So if you do not like me today, you have to come back one more week and hear our pastor. I think you'll like me. I mean I'm pretty likable, but it's okay if you don't. I just want to encourage you to come back. We would love to have you back again. Speaking of our pastor, can we give it up for our pastor Tim Rivers not here today. Thank you so much. I'm sure he's watching and feeding right now. I'm so thankful for the leadership of Tim and Denise in this beautiful season and just honor God for the labor and I'm so blessed that to know that they are able to take a breath and rest so that they can be healthy for us to lead us well. So can we thank God one more time for them?

Well, we go into the word today. You know that right? We going to stay in this book. If you have not experienced me, that's what I can tell you. We're going to go to the Bible, we're going to stay in the Bible, we're going to start there in there and everything else in between. So I want to encourage you that the verses, I don't have time to read that you go home and you read them in context for yourself and dig a little deeper into what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to start eventually, I'm going to the Old Testament. I'm going to spend most of today telling an Old Testament story that is extremely powerful. But I want to start with two verses in the New Testament just to sort of use as an anchor and a backdrop for the message and the story that we're going to relive from the Old Testament.

Okay? So I want to start with two verses two Corinthians 13, four says this, it says, for to be sure he was crucified in weakness. Yet he lives by God's power. And likewise, we are weak in him. Anybody else weak in here? We are weak in him. Yet by God's power we will live with him in our dealing with you. Hebrews 11, the famous chapter, the Faith People. He gets tired of going into detail about all these characters and he goes, I'm going to just sum up a few of these because I don't have time. And he literally says, I don't really have time for the details. He goes, and what more shall I say? I don't have time to talk about Gideon Barack Sampson, Jeff, the David Samuel on the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms administered justice, gained what was promised who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword.

And this is the important part. I want to know about them. Whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed for an armies. He says in this chapter, I don't have time to tell you all the details of folks likes Samson, but what you need to know is everything they did was only because by the power of the Holy Spirit, I took their weakness and it was turned to strength. So today I want to ask the question of this text, how do you take weakness and turn weak weakness into strength? The day I want to preach from the title win with the Hand, you have win with the hand you have. I feel the spirit of the Lord upon me this morning. I want you to know that you can win with the hand you have. Holy Spirit, we invite you, we welcome you.

We beg you to come to breathe on this word. Get into the dead and weak places. Breathe your breath of life and change us. Do not let us walk out of here the same we beseech you and plead with you. Holy Spirit. Jesus, take our weakness and show us how to turn it into strength. And we believe you for this. We lean into your word like never before in Jesus name. And all God's people said amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much Amos, can we thank God for our worship team? I want to thank you, thank you Elgin for coming in and just really preparing the atmosphere with the presence of God. Today I want to relive a story in the book of Judges and the Judges. It's kind of a scary book in the Bible. I highly suggest it's not the first book you read if you're new to the Bible because it gets a little crazy and it's a little bit violent and a little bit explicit and everything else.

But it is an important book in the Bible. And I want to relive a story about a particular guy there. I've heard a million sermons about, I have never touched this text. I've never preached on him, never even about him around him or anything close. But a few, about a couple months ago, the Holy Spirit led me to this. And as I studied him, I could not stop. I could preach four messages off the revelation God gave me from this message. And today I'm going to honor my time and I won't do that, but I could because I have been so blessed to read this and see it in a way I haven't been before. Most people who read this would say the main story of this story is Gideon. The main character of the story is Gideon. If you know me, I would like to argue that the main character of every story is God.

So as we watch Gideon like any other character in the Bible, we watch him with the understanding that he is there while we will find ourselves in him in the text and relate to him. In some ways we are not really coming there to learn about him as much as we are coming to learn about God. So what is his story teaching me about God? Because every character the Bible introduces us to is really there to introduce us to another side of God that we have never known. It is a way of us coming to know the God that we have read about a little bit deeper. So today we want to watch Gideon and I want to learn from him and relate to him, but mostly I want to watch God and I want to see how God interacts with him. So in context, the book Judges, when we meet Gideon, lemme just tell you this, there's this crazy cycle happening, right?

God has led them, his people into the promised land and he said, okay, after 40 years of wandering, this place is yours. You have have promised land is yours, but you have two directives from me. Number one, the Canaanites are still there. I didn't drive them out. You drive them out. This is not their land, it's yours. They're idle worshipers. You drive them out. And the only other directive you have is that you will only worship me, that you will have no other gods and no one else will you share my worship with. So get rid of the Canaanites because they worship idols and then worship me only. That's the only thing I'm asking you of you. Well, they go in, they look around and they're like, you know what? There's a lot of Canaanite here. This look like a lot of work. We could probably just kind of like you stay in your place and we stay in our place.

And so they allow the Canaanites to stay no matter what God had said. And slowly but surely what happens is this cross-contamination. It is an unintentional where you get close enough to something and you swear it will never get on you. But it's the stuff you can't see that is invisible that will cause a person with an allergy. You say, I didn't eat an egg and why am I having allergic reaction? It's the spatula used on an egg and it's the stuff you can't see that's still got on it. So there is this cross-contamination that happens and now they come in and because they have planted themselves too close to Ida worship, it seeps in, seeps into them. They fall into idle worship and start worshiping God. And it is God and other god's, God and because we need the weather to be good.

It is God and God and we allow compromise and these cycles of idolatry till God wants his people back so bad that what he does is hard for us to understand. If you just read out of context and you don't understand God's heart, he seems a little harsh because what he does is when they fall into this cycle, he gives them over into an oppressor. He says, okay, I'm withholding my, I'm going to withdraw my hand to protection. Now you handle these crazy people and yourself, these kings, watch them, let them be your leader. So what happens is they fall into oppression over and over again and to the point it gets so bad they finally cry out to God for help. And then he's raising up a deliverer, which in the bud book of judges is called a judge. It's not the judge that decides about your case, different kind of judge.

It is a deliverer who will lead them out of this oppression and into freedom. So it's this cycle of they fall into idle worship. God has to harshly deliver them into the hand of their enemy until they get desperate enough to cry out to him. And now he can save them. And it seems harsh, but it's kind of like this. It's kind of like when you sa, you're trying to save somebody who's drowning. I don't know personally this, but they teach you that when you're trying to save someone who's drowning, they oftentimes in their panic, they will try to kill you. They will fight against you trying to save them, yes, to try to save themselves. And if you let them win, you're both going to die. So in order to rescue them, what you have to do is knock them out. The most merciful thing you could ever do to a person drowning is to knock them out, punch them straight in the jaw unconscious.

And when you get almost back to the shore and they start to wake up, they're going to be really mad at you. Like, why would you do this? It hurts. Yeah, it does hurt, but what you don't understand is what I saved you from. And so God is constantly trying to rescue his people from drowning, by knocking them out. And I thank God for every punch in the jaw I have ever taken that got me to the other side. So anyway, we're in this cycle and that when we walk onto this scene with judges, they're back in the cycle where after 40 years a peace, they have fallen back into idolatry. And so for seven years, God gives them over to the Midianites to be oppressed. So what happens? What this is what the Midianites do all year, all year, the Israelites work so hard on their harvest, they fatten their calves, they get their animals.

This is their food, this is their livelihood. There is not a Kroger up the street. So they have to plant their own stuff. They grow their own stuff, they fatten their calves and everything. And when it's time to harvest at the same time every year, the Midianites roll up on them. So many of them, you can't even count them. The Bible says, and they steal. They destroy every crop. They take what they want. The rest, they destroy it. They kill every animal, everything they can touch. So everything you work for all year is gone. And the only thing that you will live off of for the next year is whatever you could hide. The Bible says it gets so bad that they literally build caves in the rocks and they start living in the caves. And every single year they work so hard and it come.

And now they don't know. The Bible says they're literally impoverished and destitute and starving. So now God's people are humiliated and with nothing left. And every year this happens and finally after seven years, they cry out to God. So God's like, thank God y'all were passed out for a long time. He goes, thank God I'm going to rescue you. Phase one, he sends a prophet, so correct him, a prophet shows up and goes, Hey, I want you to know everything that's happening to you. It's not the enemy's fault, it's your fault you did this, your idolatry did this and you withdrew my hand. It's not them, it's you. And then he gives them no hope. No, but I'm going to rescue nothing else. The prophet just drops the mic and leaves town and they're just left with this thought of, okay, we get it, it's our fault now.

But phase two is now God's like, okay, I need another deliverer. And so he decides he's going to find another deliverer. And in verse 11, when we read right now, we are about to eavesdrop on a conversation. I want to tell you in advance, it's a conversation between a farmer named Gideon and God, not an angel God. And I'm telling you that now because I'm telling you in advance what Gideon doesn't know. When Gideon has this conversation, he has no idea who he's talking to. This is a theophany. When God decides that instead of coming and speaking through a bush, or instead of sending an angel that he is going to step out of heaven and come down himself face-to-face. So Gideon is about to have a face-to-face conversation and we know that, but he doesn't. The timing of this conversation is this is the time when the enemy is preparing to come.

It's the time they dread all year. So everyone's emotions, they're very vulnerable and raw, they're all scared. They're freaking out at this point. They're trying to hide everything they can and see if they can get enough to survive until the next year. So the emotional state of the people is very raw and vulnerable. And that is where we meet our farmer named Gideon. In verse 11, are you ready to read? Yes. Now, to be confusing, you see the angel, the narrator is trying to play this game with us I think. And by the end you'll realize it's not an actual angel. The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in ofra that belonged to Jo Ash where his son, Gideon was threshing wheat and wine press to keep it from the Midianites. And when the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you mighty warrior.

Pardon me, my Lord. Gideon replied. But if the Lord is with us, then why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us and he'd given us into the hand of Midian and the Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength you have and save Israel out of midian's hands. Am I not sending you a pardon me getting reply. But how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest of Manas and I'm the least in my family. And the Lord answered, I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive and getting replied, if now I have found favor in your aye, give me a sign that this is really you talking to you.

Please don't go away until I come back and bring an offering and said it before you. And the Lord said, I will wait until you return. And this is the point where God waits. I wish I had time to preach about God waiting, but right now Gideon says, if this is you, I need confirmation. I don't know who you are. Can you stay here? Now Gideon, in the next few verses, I won't read them all for the sake of time. He goes, he gets an offering, a food, offering a goat and a bread, and he does all this stuff prepared. And he comes back, he brings it to this angel of this being he's trying to figure out and he's like, put it on the rock. So Gideon puts it on the rock and fire comes down and consumes the offering. The food just disappears, the drink just disappears and he looks up.

And also God has disappeared. So this is a pretty convincing sign. And now Gideon starts to freak out because he's a Hebrew boy and he's been taught, if you ever see God's face, you dead, you dead. God will kill you. And he realizes, I just saw this guy's face, he starts freaking out. And then the Lord says in verse 23, but the Lord said to him, peace, do not be afraid. You are not going to die. In other words, not everything that they've told you about me is true. You're not going to die. So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and he called it the Lord is peace. Now let's talk about this. When God comes to Gideon, we find Gideon threshing wheat in a wine press, which is really a ridiculous idea. I dunno if you've ever thought about that. Wheat would be threshed on a mountaintop because to thresh wheat, you need the wind that comes to help separate it and to make it easier, there's cows on the mountaintop to help you tread it out.

To do it in a wine press is to do it in the valley. It makes the work of threshing wheat so much harder. But he is here in a wine press because he has found the perfect hiding spot where he thinks it's going to be harder work, but I can get enough grain here threshed that I can take and hide and I have to get enough to try to survive. And so he has told no one else, not even his servants or anyone else because he's so scared that someone will give up his secret. So he is alone in a wine press threshing weeks because isolation makes everything harder, but it makes it feel safer. So he's alone in a wine press and as scared as he is in hiding, nobody knows where I am. All of a sudden God just rolls up on him unannounced, shows up under a tree and starts shouting random stuff at him.

The Lord is with you mighty warrior. And I'm like, Gideon is like, whoa. I don't know what word came out of his mouth. They probably had four letters. I'm just assuming this would've scared him to death. He just comes out of nowhere. The Lord is with you mighty warrior and Gideon's like he's entertaining the conversation. I'm a New Yorker. I get that because in New York people would just come up and say the most random stuff to you. And if you can't disrespect them and be rude because you don't know what they're capable of. So you entertain the conversation. Yeah, I'm going to entertain the conversation. Smile. And so Gideon is like this guy showed up out of nowhere, he's entertaining the conversation. God shows up as a random guy under a tree goes, Hey Gideon, mighty man, a valor warrior, the Lord is with you.

And God’s like, look, I don't know what kind of seed bearing plant you have been smoking over there on that tree, but I am a farmer, not a warrior. And I don't know if you know, but I'm actually here hiding, which is I'm pretty sure the opposite of mighty. And here I want you to notice something that Gideon is so consumed with his struggle that he almost misses his first. He does miss the first clue that this is a holy moment. He misses the first clue because he had the perfect hiding place that not even his own people knew a bet. And yet somehow God found him. He found him exactly where he was because you can hide from everyone else, my friend, but you cannot hide from God. And I just want to remind someone today in this room that you may have gotten really good at hiding from everybody else.

You may have convinced everyone else but you have not hidden from God. God knows exactly where you are and he knows how to find you. Listen, God will find you behind your mask and find your filter. He will find you behind that reputation that you've built, that you're happy and you're strong and you've got it under control. He will find you hiding between the filters and the decorations and the find the titles and the degrees that you're hiding behind. He will find you. He will come to church and straight up find you between an amen and a hallelujah. He knows how to find you because I want to tell you this, that God is bigger than you could ever, ever imagine. And yes, as big as he is, he is still small enough to fit between your face and the pillow that soaks your tears and drowns your scream my friend.

You can hide from everyone else, but you cannot hide from God because God knows where to find you. He finds him in a wine press, which is ironic a bit and symbolic to me because this is usually a place of pressing a wine press is where you use controlled pressure to apply to something called the grape. And out of it you extract something that was inside of it that has a greater value than anyone else could know. Just biting that grape. And Gideon has no idea he's in a wine press, but God is about to press him. God is about to take Gideon and pressure, add pressure to him until something comes out of him that he never even knew was there. God is about to press wine out of weakness. Yes. And so for Gideon, he's in a wine press and his wine press is a lot like what our wine presses are.

His wine press is a place of desperation and fearful calculation. He knows anytime the enemy could come and his mind is running like crazy. I don't know if you understand what it is for your mind to run like crazy because he's trying to figure out how much time do I have? I know they're coming soon, but I don't know when and how much will it take to make sure that I don't fail my family because I cannot be the father that starves my children. How much do I have to do? And he becomes desperate and he's sweating and he's desperately calculating. When could they come? It is a place. The wine press is a place of desperation and fearful calculation where you feel like you're running out of time and it becomes, time starts to taunt you. And all you can think about is you find yourself acting crazy, but I'm supposed to be married by now.

I'm supposed to have had a child by now. I'm supposed to have gotten that promotion by now. I am supposed to have healed by now. And time just starts to taunt you when you are in the wine press because it feels like you're running out of time for him. It is a place of perspiration. He's beating the weight, the wheat working so hard and he's sweating. Just work, work, work. And when you do that to yourself, what happens is with sweat comes something called adrenaline and it hides and you don't even know when you're hurting and you don't even know when you're injured because you will work right past it and not even feel it until it's too late. The wine press is a place of frustration is one thing to continually have to fight battles. But I'm so tired of fighting the same battle every year, seven years of the same battle over and over.

And if I could get one win, I would feel like I could do something. But I'm frustrated because it's the same battle every single year and I keep losing. And at this point it would be easier if the enemy would just kill me, but instead he is torturing me with my own life. Wow. The wine press is a place of isolation where you decide I've got to do this all by myself because I cannot trust anyone else with my secret because my secret could expose me and my secret could cost me everything. And so I've got too much lose to risk trusting other people to be here with me. The wine press is the place where you decide if I cannot live, I will survive until I die. And this is the place where God finds Gideon. So Gideon is like mighty warrior. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm here hiding and quietly God whispers. I don't know if you noticed, but I found you.

Because God knows where to find you. Well now he doesn't know it's God. So when this guy says this to him, it kind of triggers something like I'm like, whoa, Gideon, okay, Gideon just starts to go off like, oh yeah, really? The Lord's with me don't look like it. Have you seen what's happening in my life? Have you seen the last seven years? If God is with me, why is all this happening to me? If God is with me? All the stories my grandpa told me, that whole dead religion, where's that at? Because they told me about a God who delivers. But all I've experienced for the last seven years is oppression. And he starts just vomiting his feelings out with two questions in his statement. Why has all this happened? Why have I gone through all this if God really is with me? And if God is with me, then where are the stories I've heard about him? Because I have spent seven long years holding onto an old story that seems to be folding apart. I want to know where is the God of my grandfather. And then after his two questions, he makes a statement and an accusation right in the face of God himself. And he says, you abandoned me.

And he doesn't know it, but I know it. So I'm reading and I see because he's saying all this to Old Testament, God,

Strike a joker dead because he touched the ark wrong. God, I read this and I'm like, I'm going to back away and watch the lightning strike, right? And I'm watching and I'm waiting because the preachers tell me that God is not pleased with this. And the commentators tell me that God is not pleased with this. But I feel like somebody has put words in God's mouth because I read the whole thing and I read it a lot of times and I searched and I could not find one time where God shows any sign of being bothered. By the way Gideon is speaking. In fact, it almost seems like he was asking for it. Why would you ask such a triggering question to what God who doesn't even know you're God? I just want you to know this, that God is what they call in theology an initiator.

And I would call it an instigator that God is always starting something. And when he comes to getting he's, he's instigating. And I believe he is trying to instigate a conversation with the real Gideon, an honest and raw conversation. Because the enemy's number one tactic, not number one, one of his top tactics is to get us to disengage with God where we're still trying to live and call ourself a Christian, but we don't really talk to God anymore. We don't feel comfortable enough telling God who we really are. And he isolates us by making us so scared as if God cannot handle the real us. But God came down and he starts poking Gideon like Gideon, I didn't come all this way to talk to the fake. You go ahead and tell me how you feel. Tell me where you are at because God knows where to find you, but he also, God knows what he'll find in you.

God is not surprised. Why come? What comes out of him? And he starts to listen. He goes, finally, okay, just be honest, be raw. And all his raw emotions are just coming out into the surface. God, where have you been? Where has God been? Why'd you love my life? Kiss one. Why did you lead me? And you think that God is going to be like, you know what? Forget this guy. Turn away from him. But the Bible says the most beautiful words in verse 14, it says, then the Lord turned toward him. Yes, yes. I want you to remember that God is not looking at a stranger when he looks at Gideon, he's looking in the face of a man. He formed inside his mother's womb. And he goes, I know you Gideon, I know what is behind these tears. I know what is behind these eyes. And so I'm going to allow you to tell me how you really feel to ask me your questions. Tell me why you mad son?

Tell me what is really going on. I understand I knocked you out. It hurts and you don't understand it. You don't understand that I've been trying to save you the whole time. And then God looks at Gideon and I believe he looks at his anger and his frustration and God's like, okay, now I can use this, this I can use this raw emotion I can use because he's not done instigating. Because first he will instigate him into a conversation and now he is going to try to incite him to fight. He's trying to incite him to go instead of hiding to begin fighting. He goes, oh, you mad. What happened? Why you so mad? Gideon Gideon's like took us all our people, put us in the hand. Admit, oh really? What He did that well? Well what you doing in here hiding? Have you ever thought of fighting?

Have you ever thought, Gideon, why don't you go take it back? Why don't you go take them out of the Midian hands? Why don't you go? And I think God says that to us sometimes. He wants to get us to place where we're mad enough and raw enough about our life where he goes, oh yeah, you mad. What'd he take from you? Take it back. Did he take your family? Go take it back. Did he take your dignity? Go take it back. Did he take your purity? Go take it back. Aren't you tired of the enemy? Take, take, take, take it. Come on yo, take it back. He goes, why don't you go deliver them out of the hand of Midianites? And Gideon's like, what me? And he goes, am I not sending you again? It's like, okay, first of all, we haven't introduced ourselves yet, so let me introduce myself. I'm the weakest and the least. And second of all, do it together. I'm still trying to figure out who is you. You'll go with me and I sense something holy happening. There's an activity that's heavenly happening, but I don't really understand the church. So I'm going to ask you, I want to leave and prepare a sacrifice. Will you wait till I come back and God goes, oh wait, he leaves God sitting in the dirt goes and kills a goat. Do y'all know how long it takes to kill a goat? I have no idea, but I know it's not quick. You got to chase the thing. Snap it. I've heard and he, I don't know.

But here's the thing, not only does God know where to find you, and not only does God know what he'll find in you, God knows how long it will take to get you from no to yes. And he came with time to wait. And I want to remind someone today that you have not exhausted the patience of God. He knew how long it would take when he came to you

And after all that time getting kills a goat, baked some fresh bread. I mean this is a lot of time. Leaves God sitting and he comes back and God is right where he left him. And he goes, I need confirmation. That's when this happens. And God gives him the confirmation and now he going to give him his first assignment. Now that Gideon knows this is God and understands I'm meeting with God himself. Yes sir. Tell me what to do. Okay, we're going to fight the meeting nights. He goes, yeah, first though, I need you to to fight a different battle before I send you out there first the enemy has been attacking you from the outside because you gave him a place on the inside. And so your first inside job is it is going to be inside job. The first assignment is you're going to have to tear down the altars here because before I sent you to defeat the enemy out there, you need to first conquer the enemy that has been built here.

And so he says to him, here's your first assignment is tonight all those altars, that altar that your father built to bail and other gods, I want you to go today and I want you to tear it down. I want you to kick that thing down, break it. I don't care that your father built it. You tear it down. I don't care how long it's been in your family. You stop it, you break it, you break it. He goes, Gideon, the first thing you do, you're going to go tear down that altar. And I actually want you to use the pieces of it to light a fire on a new altar. My God, I could preach that. I want you to light a fire on a new altar after you tear this one down. And then after you've done that, I want you to go steal your father's goat, the one that's seven years old, one here for every year you have been oppression was that goat was born on the day that you entered into this oppression and he's going to die the day it ends.

Seven year old goat. I want you to bring that seven year old goat and sacrifice it. And that is their first assignment. And God is like, or Gideon is like, bro, you said lead a nation to war. And I freaked out. I couldn't do that, but I could tear some stuff down. I could tear some stuff down. I could break some stuff. And so Gideon, the Bible says that Gideon decides because he knows if he does it in the light of day that they'll kill him. He decides to do it at night because he is afraid of them killing him. And I would suggest to you that they were still going to kill him the next day. He won't going to stop then from the, so his goal wasn't to avoid death, but Gideon said, I'm going to do it at night because if you kill me, you won't be able to kill me before I am done.

You are not going to be able to finish me off before I finish doing what God has sent me. He here to do. So he goes and he builds in the dark. And God always loves people who are willing to build in the dark while everybody else is sleeping on you. Hey. And they wake up the next morning, where did you come from? I've been building in the dark baby. I have been building in the dark in the morning. They wake up, they see the alls are destroyed and they want to kill him of course. And he's like, yeah, but I did it at night so at least I'll die done. But God intervenes and prevents them from being able to kill them. You could read how yourself, but now all of a sudden the enemy shows up,

He finishes his first assignment and now here comes the median ice and it shows up and it says then not before, not after, but when the enemy shows up, then in verse 34 says, then the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. The spirit of the Lord in the Old Testament represents the divine empowerment of God to do something supernatural that you could not do on your own. And I want to tell you, when God came to Gideon in the beginning, he couldn't imagine being able to do what God was calling him to do. And when God comes to you, you'll never be able to because you don't have the grace for tomorrow. Today you will never be able to imagine yourself fighting the battles God is going to lead you to. And so you step into the ring because grace is something that you can't weigh.

And so you look at that fight and you go, I don't belong in that ring. That's a heavyweight and I'm a lightweight. And God was like, that's fine because the grace doesn't come on you until you step in the ring. And you know what? You are actually going to outweigh your opponent once you get in there. But if they wage you before they wouldn't let you fight. So the grace comes once you step into the ring. So we go in a cut way before and then once you get in, a grace comes upon your life and they have no idea where is this strength coming from? Where is this power? It is the grace of God. Grace does not come while you hide comes when you fight. Yes. And the grace of God comes and instantly this weak, seemingly weak man now summons the same people that were just trying to kill him five minutes ago, summons them and says, come on, let's go to war.

He gathers the whole nation to go to war. And the enemy, he looks at the enemy and he's looking at his army, his troops, and he's like, oh. Oh my goodness. Okay, well there's some of us, but it's not enough. It's not enough. Gideon goes, or God goes, Gideon, we have a problem. And he's like, yeah, I know we're outnumbered so we're too weak. And God goes, no, actually you got too many. I want you to cut weight. I want you to cut weight. Okay, cuts it down. Whatever you say, God never done this before. So whatever you say to do, it's on you. He cuts it back to a smaller army and God goes, ah, still not an up bro. You got to cut that back to 300 men. In other words, I need this to be so ridiculous. I need this to be so ridiculous that when they look at this, they will go, ain't no way in the whole world that anything could have done this except for the grace of God.

Gideon has some of them for war cause he doesn't have an instruction. And this is where you hear about Gideon. People talk trash about his fleeces that he threw out and he gave God two days worth of confirmations he needed. I need two days worth of confirmations to be sure this is you. And so I wait for God to be like, come on bro, I'm done waiting for you. And God does not, there is no hint of any kind of frustration from God, but there's also no rush the enemy's here. God, why are you not rushed? He is not in a rush. He is not bothered whatsoever. He already knew how long it would take him. So there is no rebuke and there is no rush. He goes, okay, now I want you to cut it back. And now we got 300 men. And when it gets down to a crazy number, like 300, I think Gideon has to start doing the math.

He's like, whoa, hold up, hold up. Wait. I'm seeing a pattern. And now we need to rewind for one moment as I close to the wine press because we looked at the wine press from Gideon's perspective and ours, but we did not look at it from God's perspective. We looked at it from the ground and not from sky. And I want to rewind and I want to go back and God is in heaven. He's listening to Israel cry out. And he's like, okay, they're finally crying out. I'm going to go and rescue him. So I got to find a guy because anytime God does anything on the earth, he finds a man that he can partner with on the earth. And so he goes, I got to find a guy. He starts looking around, Gabriel's like, well, what do you think? He's like, there's this guy over here, he's hiding. I think he'd be perfect.

And this only works because here's the thing, God is in heaven. And he's like, listen, my goal isn't to beat the Midianites. I did this from heaven. I can stop it from heaven. I'm not going down there because I need someone to win a war that I started because I could stop it from here without his help. I could confuse him. I could do that any way I want. I'm not coming to win a war. I'm coming to win back my worship because the whole point of this is not about Midian. That has never been a problem for God. He's coming down here because they've fallen into idolatry and he's saying, I'm not leaving heaven to go down there and to win some people. I'm going to get back my worship and a strong man can get me a win, but I need a weak man to get me worship.

A weak man can get me the worship that I have come to get back. I didn't come for a win. I came for worship. And I, I'm looking at this guy and I know what you're thinking, but I think I believe, I know I can get him from here to Hebrews, but all he needs to turn his weakness into strength. He needs a little time with me. I got to go down there myself and Gabriel's like, are you sure? Because I'm ready. He's like, bro, you are not ready. You'll be ready when Mary comes, but you're not ready yet. I got to go down myself, so hand me some skin, but don't grab that one. That one's for the cross. Just give me some regular dude looking skin. Grab me some skin to go in again was like, okay, we can get you dressed, God.

But here's the thing, battle's not start like the enemy's not even coming for a few days. Why you going so early? He goes, yeah, I got to go early enough because I know Gideon, I have to have time to get past his insecurities. I have to have time to get past his questions, to get past his walls and past his anger. I know it's going take Gideon a little time, but I know if I can get him to hear from here to Hebrews if I can spend a little time with him because nothing changes a person like time with God. And he intentionally finds the weakest person that he can find because we think when God turns weakness into strength that it's a makeover, that he's looking for a makeover. But all he's looking for is a marriage. God isn't looking to make your weakness into a strength.

He's coming down to ask for your hands in marriage and says, if you take your weakness and you marry my strength, we can birth something so beautiful and no one will ever think it looks like you because my genes are too strong. I'm going to get your weak genes come together with the mind and everything. You birth will only like me look like me, so you'll never get my worship. God has always been about weakness as Amos, would you come if he says, if you take my hand, you can win with a hand you have. And if it looks like you have a bad hand, if you marry me and you take your weakness and you marry my strength, you can win with the hands you have. It's like why Moses goes to God and he goes, wait, hold up. You want to use my mouth?

That's my one weak spot, God, why? Why my mouth of all the things? Can you change this? And God literally says to Moses, who made your mouth? In other words, I made your mouth weak. I gave you the weakness you need so that when you step into this next place and I use your mouth, everyone will know this is the hand of God. This ain't Moses mouth. This is the mouth of God because God always been about weakness to strength. Jeremiah said, I am too young. And he said, bro, go win with the hands you have. I knew you when you were younger than young. I knew you when I formed you, and your mother's will go win with the hand. You have Jeremiah go, I wish I had time to rewind a couple chapters and tell you about a guy who named Hud. And the Bible says he had a bad hand.

He literally had a bad hand. He was left-handed and it was considered a weakness in those days. And instead of hiding it, he honed it and nobody knew. And so he was able to walk in and to have a face-to-face with a king. And nobody ever searched his right leg because they never assumed anyone would fight with a bad hand. And so he walked in there and they missed it. He assassinated his key because instead of hiding his weakness, he honed it and he used it for God's glory. And he figured out and showed us that you can win with the hand you have. When God wants a win and worship, it's always about worship. And so we always look for our weakness. In fact, when God sent Jesus to accomplish something on this earth, he said, you got to have a weakness. And everybody goes, whoa, Katie, that's theologically crazy. You can't, Jesus wasn't weak. He was perfect. The scripture we read in the beginning says He was crucified in weakness. What was the weakness that God gave him? See, in order for Jesus to accomplish on earth what God was sending him, he had to have a weakness. And that weakness was it in an unbreakable God needed a body that would break.

He was his weakness. In order to fulfill every prophecy he had to have a back that would break open 39 times so that by his stripes we could be healed. Yes, he needed a side weak enough to split wide enough that blood and water would flow. He needed to be weak enough that his tongue would swell to the point that he would finally cry out. I thirst the God of heaven, the thirsty fountain. He had to be weak enough that hands and feet could break apart and the hand of God, which has always represented the strength and the power of God, the hand that holds the world would forever hold a hole. And when Thomas sees it, he reminds Thomas and he tells us today that it is possible to win with the hand you have and with a weak body and holds in his hand. Jesus won the victory. And when he had resurrected body, he kept the hole in his hand. And I want to remind you today that if Jesus could win with a weak hand, then you can win with the hand that you have. I came by the power of the Holy Spirit to instigate a conversation that you've been afraid to have with God. And you're paying all this money to a therapist to say stuff that you're afraid to say to God

If therapy is amazing. But if you're saying paying someone to listen to you say stuff that you won't say to God, you will never fully be healed.

And when Gideon was real enough and honest enough, and I'm not talking about coming at your face and disrespecting God, I'm talking about telling the truth and asking the questions that you have thought that he can't handle God, I don't understand that. And understanding that like with Gideon, he doesn't turn away. He turns towards you because you are not a stranger to him and he knows what is behind every conversation. I want to tell you today that for some of you, God has found you in your wine press, thank you to let you know that he knows where to find you and he already knew what he would find in you. And he is you have not exhausted the patience of God. You have come today and God is saying, all right, but are you done hiding? Yes. And are you ready to fight is when you hide instead of fight. What happens is you think, okay, I'm just going to be here and survive. And God is calling you to another place to fight. You don't want to do it. But what happens is if when you decide to hide and not fight, you hold back the worship that God deserves

And you responding to God's call is really you saying, I'm not going to stand back because of my weakness. I am going to give my weakness to God, not try to change it, but believe my weakness could be turned to strength. If I put my weakness in God's hand and marry it, then my weakness could be turned to strength. Do you believe it today? I mean, do you really believe it?

I want us to pray this morning as my comes. Father, I thank you this morning for your words and I thank you, God, that you are starting and initiating something today. And someone you have come like Gideon to instigate them to a real conversation, but you've also come to incite some people to fight. What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose?

And so I pray by the power of the Holy Spirit that today would be a moment that marks them. That is the day they decided to take their weakness and submit it to you, Lord God, and finds that your weakness is made perfect because when I am weak, then I am strong. And I thank you, father for the worship that will come out of this moment, out of people's obedience. You thank you for your word. May it bear much fruit in our lives in Jesus name, and if you're thankful for his word, why don't you give God a shout of praise. I love you.