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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week two of our Look Through
the Book of Judges. Day one of week two. We're going to start in Judges 6 this
week, stay there a lot of the time actually, because this week we're going to
learn about faith from a guy by the name of Gideon.

Now Gideon is not some guy who puts Bibles in hotel rooms. That is an
organization that named themselves after this man in the Old Testament because
they saw something about faith in him that they wanted to see in their lives.
And I pray that the same thing happens to you and I as we walk through this this
week.

That we'll see something about faith in Gideon that God can do in our lives.
Gideon's life story is absolutely filled with clear truths about how God uses
ordinary people. So if you're feeling like I don't know if I'm the faith person
you're talking about, this is a message that's directed exactly to you because
Gideon's life is an object lesson in how any of us can be useful.

He shows us how to get off the assembly line and out onto the road, letting God
begin to use us, making a difference in our lives. God wants you to do more than
just learn how to be a good Christian. He wants you to do it.

He wants you to make a difference with your life. So look with me together at a
guy whose life overflowed with the fear of failure many times and see how God
made a change in his life. This week and even in the next week we're going to
talk about how he was able to hear God's call and so how you can hear God's call
in your life.

How he was able to defeat an enemy and so how you can defeat enemies and see
God's victory in your life and how he was able to survive a victory. How he was
able to escape the pride that so often catches us up. So we're going to start
with the first few days this week talking about how do you hear God's call?

If God's going to use you in certain ways, if you're going to make a difference
through your life in this world, how do you hear God's call in your life? And
the first thing you have to do is the first thing that God did in the life of
Gideon. First thing you have to do is discover your identity.

You have to discover that you're a person who can be called. You have to
discover that you're a person that God does want to use. This comes first
because you have to know who you are before you can do what God has made you to
do.

The American president Harry Truman in some ways reminds me of Gideon because he
came to significance only later in life. Harry Truman once said, "In reading the
lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves.
" And many times, if you're going to see God's victories in your life, the first
victory has to be over the way that you see yourself, the way that God wants to
work in your life.

In fact, you're going to probably have to come to this place many times in your
life. Judges chapter 6 verses 11 and 12, listen to what happens. "Then the angel
of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to
Joash of the clan of Abiyazar.

Gideon, son of Joash, was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide
the grain from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and
said, 'Mighty hero, the Lord is with you. '" Now, in this experience that Gideon
has where God shows up, he's threshing out wheat in the bottom of a winepress
for fear of the enemy, and God shows up and calls him.

You learn that there are two ways to discover your identity, who you really are
in Jesus Christ. There's one way that works and there's one that does not work.
The way that does not work is you look at your circumstances.

You try to discover that God wants to use me, God wants to make a difference to
my life by looking at the circumstances of who you are, the circumstances of
your life. And Gideon is a perfect example of what happens when you let your
circumstances tell you who you are. Gideon and the people of Israel had been
under seven years of oppression from the people of Midian, the Midianites.

In fact, when the crops were about to come in in Israel, the Midianites knew
when this was and they would sweep to the land and they would steal all their
crops right before they harvested them. So that's why he's in the bottom of a
winepress threshing out grain, because he knew if the enemy saw him, they would
come and take the grain. He's working in a winepress for fear of the enemy.

He does not look like a natural born military leader, someone that God can use
to bring victory to this nation. Now, in one sense, a lot of people work in a
winepress. It's a picture of hiding from your potential in some task that's
right in front of you.

You find a safe place where no one will bother you and you do something that's
of some use. But deep inside, you know that you're hiding from the challenge of
all that God wants to do in your life. Truth is, I've hidden it in a winepress
many times, afraid of what God wanted to do next, retreating from what God
wanted to do next.

Not sure I was up to what God wanted to do next in my life. And one reason we
hide is because of what I just said, we're afraid. Circumstances have told you
that it's scary out there.

And the truth of the matter is, it is scary out there. Gideon was not afraid of
nothing. He was hiding from a real enemy here.

And so because you're afraid, you hide. You hide from the potential of what God
wants to do in your life. You hide from getting married.

Or you hide from a new career. Or you hide from sharing your faith. Or you hide
out from a God-given dream.

And you might even hide out in doing something else that's meaningful, but it's
not what God's calling in your life right now. Gideon was certainly afraid of
failure. Here he is, instead of fighting the enemy, hiding in a winepress.

We have another example of his fear of failure in the same chapter. In chapter
6, verses 25 to 27, God commands Gideon to go and destroy an altar. He begins to
work in his life.

And he did so, but listen to how he did it. In chapter 6, verse 25, that same
night, the Lord said to him, "Take the second bowl from your father's herd, the
one seven years old. Tear down your father's altar to bale and cut down the
asherup hole beside it.

Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on top of this height.
Use the wood of the asherup hole that you cut down and offer a second bowl as a
burnt offering. " So Gideon took ten of his servants, and he did as the Lord
told him.

But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night
rather than in the daytime. So here he is obeying God, but he's not just afraid
of the enemy. He's afraid of his own family.

He's afraid of his own townspeople and what they're going to say. So he does it
at night so no one will see what he does. He looks like a guy who is not a
candidate, not even in the running, not on the ballot for blessings.

Gideon, you look at the way he's acting, he's obviously born to be a failure.
But I want you to see something very clearly in this chapter. Three words, God
called Gideon.

God called this man. You look at your life and you think God wouldn't call me
because of what I know about myself, because of the fears that I see in myself.
God called Gideon and God is calling you as well.

God shows up to tell Gideon that while the circumstances he's facing are real,
they do not have to define who he is. I want you to notice God had no problem
finding Gideon in that winepress. We think we're hiding out somehow in this
little task that we're doing that's right in front of us.

We're not hiding from God. He knows exactly where we are. We think that our fear
will somehow keep us from God's will, from our desires, from life's best and
that's exactly not true.

Now it's still our choice in the end. It's our choice whether we're going to
trust our human fear or our Heavenly Father. But God calls fearful people.

He gives you that choice. You can stay in the winepress when you hear the call
or you can make the right choice of how to discover your identity, who God's
made you to be. Instead of listening to your circumstances, you do what Gideon
ends up doing.

You listen to what God says about you. For Gideon, it was a day like any other
day in the last seven years. He's just trying to survive and on this day God
calls this frightened man in the winepress and he calls him, did you notice?

Hail mighty warrior, hail mighty hero. Gideon must have looked over his shoulder
to see who else was with him in the winepress. He didn't feel like a mighty
warrior, a great hero.

God was not speaking of what he was doing that day. He was speaking of his
potential and God loves to do this. He loves to do this.

He calls Abraham the father of many nations when he has no children. Simon is
renamed Peter the rock when he was the most impulsive disciple and Gideon here
is called the mighty warrior while he's still hiding out from the enemy. What
does God have to say about you?

As you're listening to this right now, it's another day just like any other day,
but God's going to say something to you right now about who you are that will
change the way that you see yourself. You'll see yourself through his eyes, not
through your eyes and that changes everything. You see, to live up to your
potential is not enough just to see that you've got potential, to convince
yourself that you've got potential.

No, you've got to hear what God says about you, not what you say about you or
even some book says about you. What does God say about you? You have to hear
God's mighty hero for your life.

Now Gideon that day, he was totally surprised to hear God say this about him.
What would it surprise you to hear God say about you? Greatly loved?

Maybe you've never felt loved and part of God's call in your life is helping you
to recognize how deeply loved you are and that anything you're going to do to be
useful for God is going to grow out of the way that he loves you. Or hail you
who are strong in faith. You look at yourself and you think I'm anything but
strong in faith.

God's speaking of your potential, what he wants to do in your life. You who are
eternally forgiven, you who are a gifted servant, what would it surprise you to
hear God say about you? It may be the very thing that he's saying to you right
now.

You see, in any given moment, your life is either going to be determined by your
view of you or God's view of you. And what we need in order to live out God's
call in our lives is God's view of us. So let's pray and ask him for it right
now.

Father, we ask for something we cannot bring about on our own. Help us to see
ourselves through your eyes. The forgiveness, the love, the call, the
usefulness.

Help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Lord, we don't want to convince
ourselves that we are useful. We want to be called to be useful and only you can
do that.

Help us to hear from you, we pray. In Jesus' name we ask this. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look together at the next step with Gideon in hearing
God's call for your life.