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(upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to week three
of our look through the book of Judges, day one of week three. We're going to be
looking at Judges chapter eight verses one to four today. And in many ways, as
we turn to Judges eight, we are turning to part two of life lessons from Gideon.

Part one we just looked at was how to face your weaknesses and what great
lessons he teaches us. Part two is how to face your successes or maybe how to
survive your successes. One of the greatest enemies of you being useful in
serving God, one of the greatest enemies of future success in your life is past
successes.

Success, yes, is the goal of what we do when we serve God, but in a strange
twist, it can also be the enemy of doing anything else to serve God. There's
this phrase that success reads greater success, and that's sometimes true, but
it's also often not true. It's often true that success instead breeds busyness
or pride or fear or self-satisfaction, and all of those things get in the way of
living the life that God wants you to live, of doing the things that God wants
you to do.

One of the key leadership skills every one of us has to learn is the skill of
how to handle success. And a major reason that many people hang just on the
outside fringes of gratefulness, of greatness, of usefulness in their life is
they've never learned how to handle victory. They've never learned how to handle
success, because the truth is there is a price tag that's attached to success.

If you're not willing to pay that price, you will always be afraid of the
success, of the greatness, of the usefulness to God. The price tag of victory
centers around the word change. Success changes your life.

Your relationships change, your responsibilities change. In one sense, we wait
all of our lives for our ship to come in, but when it arrives, we're not sure we
want to give the time and the energy that it takes to unload that ship that came
in. So the question is, can you survive a victory?

And the answer is absolutely yes. God wants you to live a useful life, a
victorious life, a life where he's doing great things through your life, and
maybe you've been discouraged in the past by some of the struggles that
accompany the victories and even the successes in your life. I want Gideon to
encourage you these next few days, encourage you to understand in advance some
of what you'll face, but also encourage you to see some of the ways that you can
handle those struggles to survive the victory so that God can do greater
victories in your life.

We're going to look at four things in the life of Gideon the next couple days.
First thing you gotta do to survive the victories is you've gotta number one,
handle the voice of the critic. You have to handle the voice of those who want to
criticize.

Success draws criticism like honey draws flies. Everyone wants to be in on the
success. Everyone has an opinion.

And because of this, those involved in a success and living a useful life have
to put up, have to put up with criticism. And the criticism will go as broad as
the success. If you have a family success, you'll hear criticism in your family.

If you have a success at school, you'll hear criticism all over the school.
Whether it's at your work, you hear it at work. If you have a success that goes
country, the entire breadth of the country has this success in mind in your
life, you're going to hear criticism across the country.

Now what draws the fire? What draws the criticism? Well, it's born of jealousy.

It's born of opposition, people who want to do it in a different way. It's born
just of notoriety. If people see something, they want to somehow attack it
sometimes.

It's the quarterback syndrome. The quarterback gets blamed for the fumble, not
the lineman who missed the block. And in chapter eight, verse one, you see
Gideon's problem.

You see the criticism that came his way from the tribe of Ephraim. Let me read
that verse. Then the people of Ephraim asked Gideon, why have you treated us
this way?

Why didn't you send for us when you first went out to fight the Midianites? And
they argued heatedly with Gideon. Now this criticism seems to be born of
jealousy.

Why weren't we allowed to be in on the victory? So how does Gideon respond? If
you were Gideon, how would you have responded to this kind of attack?

Just think of all the quick-witted answers you could have come up with to put
them down. If God had wanted you, he would have invited you, or better luck next
time, or we could only take reservations for 300. Sorry, guys.

But he doesn't go that direction. No, he doesn't criticize back. He doesn't
attack back.

Look at what he says in verses two and three. But Gideon replied, what have I
accomplished compared to you? Aren't even the leftover grapes of Ephraim's
harvest better than the entire crop of my little clan in Abiezer?

God gave you victory over Oreb and Zeb, the commanders of the Midianite army.
What have I accomplished compared to that? When the men of Ephraim heard
Gideon's answer, their anger subsided.

Look at what Gideon does here. He magnifies their achievements and he minimizes
his successes. That's what you do with a critic.

You magnify their achievements and you minimize your successes. Magnify the
achievements of someone who's criticizing you? Yes.

Yes, that's the example that's given here. Other places we see this same example
given in the scripture. You see here revealed a very specific character trait
which enables you to survive a success.

It's the character trait of humility. To survive your successes, you must have
humility. The humility that keeps in perspective God's work through you that
doesn't become prideful.

And the humility to see and to give praise for how he's working in other
people's lives also. To be grateful for what he's doing in other people's lives.
So one of the keys to surviving the successes in life, to go on to the next
success that God has for you, is humility.

Now we learn a second thing from the example of Gideon. Not only do you need to
learn to handle the voice of the critic, number two, you need to accept the need
for faithful endurance, for faithful endurance. Living a useful life before God,
it's a lifestyle.

You can't turn it on and off. You have to keep it running. And once Gideon leads
in this victory over Midian, he for the rest of his life is going to be a leader.

He's going to have to faithfully endure. Now deep down, many of us are fearful of
success for usefulness before God, because we recognize the lifetime of
commitment they imply. And we're not sure that we want to make that lifetime of
commitment.

Well, settle that in your heart right now. God wants you to live a lifetime of
commitment before him. He's made you to live that kind of life.

Now Gideon, in a very practical way, shows us what this means in Judges chapter
eight, verse four. They've just defeated the Midianite army. They're chasing
them to finalize the victory.

In chapter eight, verse four, Gideon then crossed the Jordan River with his 300
men. And though exhausted, they continued to chase the enemy. Look at those
phrases.

Though exhausted, they continued. They were faithful. Though exhausted, they
continued.

They endured. Gideon recognized that the success that they had, it didn't end
when Midian ran away. They needed to pursue the enemy.

They needed to defeat the enemy. And unless Gideon had pursued and defeated
Midian before they could rebuild their army, this victory would have been
wasted. Do you think the Midianites would have fallen for that trumpet trick a
second time?

No. So they faithfully endured and they completed the victory. Gideon here
reveals a second character quality which enables you and I to handle victory,
the quality of faithfulness.

To survive your successes, you must be faithful. You must faithfully endure. You
have to finish the victories that God has started in your life.

I remember many, many years ago when our oldest boy, Ryan, was still in
preschool. We took him out fishing. He and his grandfather at a dam where the
water was about, oh, 30 feet down below us.

And you'd throw the hook in and catch a fish and you'd reel it all the way in.
Well, he caught a fish and he started to reel it in and he got it about 20 feet
up and he had 20 feet left. And he looked at his grandfather and he said, "I'm
tired.

" And he stopped reeling. If he was going to catch the fish, he had to reel it all
the way in. That's faithfully enduring.

And there's some things in my life, in your life, where we've caught the fish,
we've caught the victory, but now there's some faithful enduring that God has
for us to do. It's one of the ways that the successes in our lives are stewarded
in such a way that they bring greater and greater glory to God. So how do you
survive the successes?

Two things we learned today from Gideon, humility and faithfulness. I need God's
strength for both of those. I'm sure you do too, so let's ask him for it.

Our father, we can't find these qualities in ourselves apart from you, but in
you, we find them both. So we come and we ask that you would give us a humble
heart. Give us a faithful heart.

Instead of us trying to be humble, we want to trust you for humility. Instead of
us trying to be faithful, we want to trust you for faithfulness. And so we trust
you right now.

In Jesus' name, we trust you. Amen. Join us tomorrow, we're going to look at two
more truths from Gideon's example of how to handle success.