Gideon called to Courage

The speaker starts by explaining that they will be discussing the story of Gideon from the Old Testament. They mention that the people of Israel were unfaithful to God and as a result, they were handed over to the Midianites for seven years. The speaker reflects on how the guilty often drag the innocent down with them and how silence and inaction can lead to cowardice. They emphasize the importance of being informed and taking a stand against evil. They mention how the Midianites were cruel to the Israelites, causing them to hide in mountains and caves. The speaker discusses the concept of cowardice and how God has given believers the power and love to overcome it. They talk about the consequences of the Israelites' unfaithfulness, such as crop destruction and starvation. The people eventually cry out to God for help. The speaker emphasizes the need for consistency and closeness to God, in order to avoid his discipline and missed blessings. They explain that God disciplines those he lo Yes, we are recording, I think. Yeah, I can see my sound wave there, so we're good. So I'm doing like a topical today, since I won't be here next week, although this originally was a two-parter. I had to kind of rework it, so if I have to fill in for Dana another time, I may do part two. So we're going to be talking a little bit about Gideon tonight, but before we go any further, we always like to go to the Lord in prayer, so let's do that. Dear Jesus, again we come to you with your holy word open before us, and we know that it's perfect, but we know that we're absolutely not. We have sin in our lives. We know that even though we have eternal life, and we know the Holy Spirit lives in us, we know the sinful nature also lives in us. One day that will die, but until then, Lord, we have to come to you often and ask that you would forgive us of the times that we have listened to the wrong voice. We ask that you would cleanse our hearts that we might receive this holy word in a clean heart. We ask this, Jesus, in your name, amen. So yeah, we're going to jump back in the Old Testament a little bit, back to Judges. Remember, that was God's original way that he wanted to lead the people. He didn't want kings. He didn't want rulers like that. He wanted judges that would come to him, and then he would go to them, and so he would be really the king leading the people. But the people, they wanted a king like everybody else, so the time of the judges did pass, but right now we are in Judges 6.1, and we're seeing what Israel seems like they can never be faithful over a little bit of time, and I guess we're a lot like them. Judges 6.1 said, the Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Midianites for seven years. This is scary. Seven years, that's a lot. That's a big chunk of your life. But they were being unfaithful, and some people say, well, you think they were all guilty, and the chances are they probably were not all guilty. There was probably people that were not partaking in this, but sometimes the guilty gets dragged. They drag the innocent in with them. You see it all the time. It's not fair, but we are a fallen people. We are a fallen creation, and many times a father that's not doing his job, the kids suffer. A mother that's not doing her job, the children suffer. in a marriage, and one of them is not doing her job, and the other suffers. That's the sad part of our fallen state, but enough of the people had turned against God that he decided to bring judgment on the people, and because a lot of times it's not that you maybe are doing something wrong, but you're letting things go wrong around you. You're not fighting. You're not standing up for good, and so sometimes the guilty drag the silent down with them. I love this little saying here, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, and we have been seeing a lot of this with the Christian community. They've been lied to and told that they should just hide and not take any part in their country and how it's led, no part in voting and all those kinds of things, not making themselves aware of what's going on, and somehow they think that that's a good trait. That's a bad trait to not know what's going on around you. This country has done a lot of evil to the Lord, and not all people, but many people have just remained silent and just let it happen. Abortion, for instance, people just step back and just let that happen. Sexual perversion, laziness, as we look today at the numbers, unemployment used to be a good measure of how your economy was doing, but it's not anymore because nobody wants to work. Unemployment is going to be, as far as your opportunity to work is there now, people just don't want to work. Lots of types of idolatry going on today, and like I said, many people don't like what's going on. I don't want to listen to the news. It just oppresses me. I just don't want to listen. I don't want to know anything about politics. That just oppresses me, and boy, the enemy just loves that because you're such an easy mark then. Not knowing gives you no excuse when judgment comes. Remember the old thing, ignorance of the law is no excuse. That's what the police will tell you if you're driving 70 in a 40, which I do once in a while. They will tell you, even if you didn't see the sign, they'll tell you ignorance of the law is no excuse. You should have known what the speed limit is. So God removed his protection from the Israelites because they were living like this, and that's all that has to happen for judgment to fall upon you, just remove the protection of God. Now what Israel was doing, they were putting other gods before him. It sounds familiar. When I ran the numbers on this, it's gone up. I assume it's gone up a little, but right post-COVID times, there were only 22% of people that claimed they were going to church, 22%. That is a sad number for a country that was founded on God. Back in Judges 6-2, the Midianites were so cruel because he allowed the Midianites to take them. The Midianites were so cruel that the Israelites made hiding places for themselves in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds because they would take all their things. And so the Israelites became cowards, and cowardice is a result of unfaithfulness. This caption says, silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. That's when silence becomes cowardice, when you know there's something you should do and you don't do it. And then in 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote this to him, for God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of sober-mindedness. I know some of you are saying, well, I thought that said he didn't give me a spirit of fear. But when you go back to the Greek, the word that normally translates fear is phobia, like claustrophobic, arachnophobia. That's not the word used here. The word here is doulos, which means cowardice. So it's a different kind of fear. And so, for God has not given us the spirit of cowardice, but of power, and that word for power is dynamos, like dynamite. So he's given us the spirit of dynamite power and of love, and he used the best word for love, agape, the most meaningful love, and sober-mindedness. That word in the Greek sounds almost like sophomore, but it means common sense, making decisions based on facts, making decisions based on truth, instead of just following the crowd. So he said, you guys should not be cowards, you should be dynamite powerful, you should be loving like Jesus, and you should have some common sense in your brains. You should be doing your research. You should know that what you believe is true. Something is not true because you believe it, you should believe it because it's true. He said, whenever the Israelites planted their crops, marauders from Midian and Amalek and the people of the east would attack Israel, camping in the land and destroying the crops as far away as Gaza, and they left the Israelites with nothing to eat, taking all the sheep, goats, cattle, and donkeys. These enemy hordes, coming with their livestock and tents, were as thick as locusts. They arrived in droves of camels, too numerous to count, and they stayed until the land was stripped bare, so Israel was reduced to starvation by the Midianites. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. Sounds like they had a border crisis, doesn't it? I think they needed to build a wall, didn't they? And you know, they didn't care, they just moved in on them and depleted their resources. They just came in and didn't give them any respect and took all the work they did away. It's good to remember that people in general are evil, and that's just how mankind is. Scripture says, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. In the original Bible that the founders brought over, it even said, and governors was added to that version, I thought was kind of interesting. But the unfaithful, they just put God in the trunk. They don't think they need Him, hoping that one day when they do need Him, somebody dies in the family, they get sick and get put in the hospital. They just hope they can pop that trunk open and there God is all fully inflated and ready to put on. That's what they're hoping for. But whenever they're not having problems, they just throw Him in the trunk. That's what Israel did. Then finally, they had to pull out the spare tire. They cried out to the Lord because of Midian. They were taking God for granted. And finally, they suffered to the point where their hearts started to change. That's what suffering does for us. God doesn't want it to be like this, though. He doesn't want us to be drifting and coming back and drifting. He wants us to stay consistent, stay close to Him, stay close to the shepherd so that the predators can't get to you when you stay close to the shepherd. Then you can avoid the discipline of God and also all those missed blessings. You can't count those. You can't count what you didn't get to start with. That's a sad thing. All the missed blessings when we're not living right, all the beautiful things that God had all wrapped up for us that He can't give us anymore because we're not living right. Scripture says, For the Lord corrects those He loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights. One of the best ways to know you're a Christian is that when you do wrong, God disciplines you. That's one of the best evidences you're a Christian. And what's so funny is when you get disciplined, the enemy will tell you that you're not a Christian. The enemy will tell you that God has abandoned you. And it's totally opposite of that. He disciplines you because He loves you. He said, Draw nigh unto God and He will draw nigh to you. He puts it in your court. So after much suffering, God heard their cry. Thanks to those who humbled themselves in prayer. Thanks to those who let their hearts be filled with humility. So the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites and he said, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt. I rescued you from the Egyptians, from all who oppressed you, and I drove out your enemies and gave their land to you. Sometimes people say you shouldn't keep score. I understand what they mean. You know, you shouldn't, every time you do a favor for somebody, write it in a book and expect to get it back. I understand that. But you need to really kind of keep score of what you're doing. You need to know when someone helps you, when someone's good to you, because Jesus did it all the time. God did it all the time. He always reminded them. Don't you remember what I did for you in Egypt? Don't you remember what I did for you when the Amalekites attacked you? Don't you remember what I did to you when the Midianites attacked you? You should remember when someone does good for you. And then someday, maybe God will make a way for you to do something good for them. He said, I told you, I'm the Lord, your God. You must not worship the gods of the Amorites. That's why they lost the land. He had a relationship with them of some sort in the past. We don't know anything about that, but he had a relationship with a lot of these peoples and they also betrayed him. So that's why he took their land from them. He says, you must not worship the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live, but you have not listened to me. This thing says, but what happens when the sheep do not hear God's voice? They get disciplined. Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree of Ophrah, not Oprah, but Ophrah, which belongs to Joash and the clan of Abiezar. Joash was Gideon's dad. Gideon, son of Joash, was threshing wheat at the bottom of the winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. You didn't want to be threshing wheat down low like that. Usually you went to the top of the hill and you would take the wheat and the chaff and you would throw it up in the air in some kind of a tool they had. When it was up in the air, the chaff would blow away and then the grain would fall down into the device you were using. So you kind of needed to be up on the mountaintop. You needed to be somewhere where the wind was strong, but they were so afraid that if someone saw them doing this, they would steal it from them because they were such cowards because they had got out of the will of God and they no longer had him to strengthen them. These are God's people, the princes and princesses of the king, just like us. They're like royalty, right? God chose this nation and he chose us. The scripture said, I can raise up from these stones, descendants of Abraham, which are you and I. We were those stones he was pointing to. So here they are, princes and princesses, hiding like little girls, hiding from their responsibilities, cowards. But God's going to give them a chance. And the angel of the Lord appeared. Now whenever you see the angel of the Lord, you're talking about Jesus Christ before he took on that body in the manger because Jesus has always been. The manger was not when he started. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, mighty hero, the Lord is with you. It shows you that he has a little bit of a sense of humor. Here this guy is hiding because he's afraid, he's a coward. And God comes up and Jesus, the angel of the Lord says, mighty, mighty hero, the Lord is with you. Which is awesome that God looks at what you can be and not what you are. Gideon knows that something is different. Jesus could hide his glory or show his glory, but he sees the holiness of the one before him and he questions the statement, the Lord is with you. He said, the Lord is with you. So Gideon replied, if the Lord is with us, why has this happened to us? And where are the miracles our ancestors told us about? And they say the Lord brought us out of Egypt, but now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites. He didn't really know who he was dealing with, but he knew something was different. He forgot to tell the part of the story about how they were worshiping false gods and how they were being disciplined because of their unfaithfulness. He kind of forgot that part, didn't he? The unfaithfulness, the idolatry, the sinful living. And I thought I'd share this little story of the balloon, I thought it was kind of funny. So the woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below and she shouted to him, excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am. The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, you're in a higher balloon, approximately 30 feet above the ground elevation of 23,046 feet above sea level. You're at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude. She rolled her eyes. You must be a conservative. I am, replied the man. How did you know? Well, answered the balloonist. Everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me. The man smiled and responded, you must be a liberal. I am, replied the balloonist. How did you know? Well, said the man, you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantities of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea of how to keep and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were before we met, but somehow now it's my fault. I thought that was good. Gideon's kind of doing the same thing. He's kind of blaming God for where he is. Oh, you know, he's abandoned us. What happened to the God of Egypt? He's abandoned us. Blaming him in a way. But this is natural. You know, it's natural. You know, when I've done a lot of funerals where I had to deal with this very thing because they would want to blame God that, you know, God took away their loved one. And I had to explain to them, God didn't take away your loved one, your loved one died. That death isn't God's thing. He didn't bring death to this world. We brought death to this world. Your loved one died of whatever he died of or she died of apart from God. You have to kind of bring from perspective, you know, but it is natural that we always want to do that. And God understands. And Jesus understood this when he was talking to this man. And he didn't take the bait either. He didn't take the fight. He was kind of like taking a fight. Most people would argue back, right? It's not my fault. You guys don't know, but Jesus did. He just let it go. Then the Lord turned to him and said, go with the strength you have and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I'm sending you. Now this is scary, being sent somewhere to do a job that you know you're not qualified to do. I definitely have been here many times, being sent to do something you know you're not qualified to do. We talked about the funerals. I've never walked away from a funeral. I mean, when you go to do those, you just always feel like you failed because what can you say really to ease the pain of someone who's just lost their wife or their husband or their child. But God sometimes sends you to do things that you're not qualified to do. He knows you're not qualified. This caption says, God not only sees where you are, he sees where you can be. He loves to use you in your weakness. In our weakness, his glory is made perfect. But Lord had then replied, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family. And you see this all through the scriptures, that God always picks the weakest and the smallest. He told Abraham, I didn't choose Israel because you were the strongest. As a matter of fact, he said, you're the weakest. You're the smallest. You know how many people were in Israel at that time? One. Abraham. That was it. He was the only Jew. God said, I didn't pick you because you were big and strong. I picked you because you're small and weak, and I can work through you, and I can get glory through you. And yet churches still to this day think that you're not successful unless you have a big, glorious, shining, crystal cathedral, and you have, you know, six-figure musicians, and you have all kinds of assets, and all kinds of money, and salaries, and it's amazing. All through the scripture, God always picked the opposite end of that spectrum, even his own disciples. Look at them. Fishermen, and farmers, and tax collectors who were despised of men. But the beginning is coming to terms, the beginning is coming to terms with the truth, and he is doing this. Gideon is doing this. He's showing some humility here, and this is a great trait. God can use you if you have humility. He can use you. The Lord said to him, I will be with you. Don't worry about what you can do. Don't compare you to the problem, compare the problem to me. I will be with you, and you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man. Gideon replied, if you are truly going to help me, show me a sign to prove that it is really the Lord speaking to me. Now, God isn't a big fan of signs, and especially in the New Testament. He said an adulterous, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. Now, sometimes he will give a sign, and especially then, the Holy Spirit wasn't indwelling the people of that time. King David is the only one we know for sure had a permanent indwelling, because in 1 Samuel 16, 13, the Scripture said that the Holy Spirit entered David from that day forward. But other than David, the rest of the Old Testament saints normally only had the Holy Spirit for a battle, or for maybe a term in office, or the Holy Spirit didn't indwell them permanently like he does now. So I think maybe now that's why God really hates the signs a lot worse. But you know Bill Ingle, I think is how you pronounce his name, he's the one that always says, here's your sign, here's your sign, so that's kind of like what Gideon wanted. Judges 6, 18 says, don't go away until I come back and bring my offering to you. He answered, I will stay here until you return. So Gideon hurried home, and he cooked a young goat, and with a basket of flour, he baked some bread without yeast. I'm thinking maybe Gideon wasn't married, or maybe he was married and he didn't want to upset God with his wife's cooking, I'm not sure which, but either way, he went home and did it himself. Then carrying the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, he brought them out and presented them to the angel who was under the great tree. Look at all that stuff he did. He got a young goat, a basket of flour, he baked bread with yeast, he brought a broth a pot, and I can't even get a cherry pie and some strawberry milk. I mean, you guys haven't even brought me any of that. There is that whole thing about him being God. I know, that makes it a little bit different. Well the angel of God said to him, place the meat and the unleavened bread on this rock and pour the broth over it, and Gideon did as he was told. Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and bread with the tip of the staff in his hand, and fire flamed up from the rock and consumed all he had brought, and the angel of the Lord disappeared. I guess he wasn't hungry. He burned it up, man. I won't do that if you guys bring me a strawberry rhubarb pie. I won't do that. I'm going to put my staff on it and burn it up. Although when I was first married, that was kind of the result of every meal that Shelly made for me. She's not here either. When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he cried out, O sovereign Lord, I'm doomed. I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. They knew that Scripture said if you saw God, that you would die. Well you see in God the Son. They don't really understand the whole God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They don't understand that yet. We barely understand it now, but all he knew was he had God before him and he didn't die and he was scared to death he would die, but Jesus said, it's all right, the Lord replied. Do not be afraid. You will not die. Gideon built an altar for the Lord there and he named it Yahweh Shalom, which means the Lord is peace. You hear Jews say that all the time, Shalom, for peace. The altar remains in Ophiros, no I mean Ophiros, in the land of the clan of Abiezar until this day, that meant until the day this was written. That night the Lord said to Gideon, take the second bull from your father's herd and one that is seven years old. Pull down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole standing beside it. So these guys are Jews and they have an altar of Baal in their home or near their home. That's crazy. When you take the second bull from your father's herd, I mean, pull down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole standing beside it. And so repentance, this is repentance, you know, repentance, the word metanoia in the Greek means to turn away from, to change directions. It's about faith is what it is. In the Hebrew, the word for repentance is Shab. It means to turn back, return, return to the starting point, restore and come back home again. The word Shab in the Hebrew and the word metanoia in the Greek are the same word, to turn direction. Now it can be used also to turn from bad to good or from good to bad, but it's in the Bible. It's always used to turn from bad to good. So we see here that they were, that his family was very unfaithful, but it was probably very fashionable to have an altar of Baal in your house and an Asherah pole. It was probably very fashionable. Like today, a lot of the things we do, you know, are like in vogue, you know, they're in style. A lot, you know, everybody is, runs three or four social media platforms. Probably companies like Disney, everybody thinks, oh, you know, I'm going to go to Disney World and they'll have their Disney stuff and their Disney shirts. And that would be really about the same thing as having a statue of Baal, because here Disney is probably the most evil company on earth. And they support child pornography. Whenever they do a bust in Florida for the secret, they get online and they get people to try to meet young girls, which really is a federal agent. Sometimes half of them are Disney employees. Sometimes half of them are Disney employees. They're an evil company and they hire those people knowing their records, knowing they're pedophiles. But they accept that as a normal lifestyle. They call them, what's the term they're using now for them? Minor attracted people, M-A-T, right? Minor attracted people, because that sounds better than dirty, nasty pedophile who deserves to be shot in the brains. I don't know, they should use that one. But we are a lot the same. You know, see, we put things like that because Disney is so fun. Their theme parks are so good. Their movies are so awesome. And you can bet they were using those same excuses. Oh, but look at my altar to Baal. Look at my asher pole. Look how nice it is, how much it's worth. And we do the same thing with sports and hobbies, and sports and hobbies, there's nothing wrong with them until you put them before God. When you start putting them before God, everything becomes evil. Even something that's not evil becomes evil when you put it before God. Ignoring evil so that you can indulge in some pleasure. Now Jesus is a forgiver and he wants repentance. And now it's time to make things right. So he's going to put some feet to his faith. And he says, then after you tear down your dad's altars, then build an altar to the Lord your God here on this hilltop sanctuary, laying the stones carefully, sacrifice the bull and the burnt offering on the altar, using as fuel the wood from the asher pole that you cut down. Now we have a picture of one of the asher poles. They have found some of them. A lot of times, asher was a God that they connected trees to. So sometimes an asher would be a grove of trees that they would worship, just a big grove of trees, just a whole bunch of trees. And sometimes it would be a tree that was carved, or a pole that was carved to look like a tree. And so asher was the mother of, according to them, we know that asher was nothing but a figment of their imagination, but according to them, asher was the mother of over 70 gods, including Baal. She was Baal's mother according to their tradition. And it was a big fat lie that they were kind of, but if you didn't accept it, you weren't, you know, you were, like, canceled, kind of, kind of like today with the evolution, for instance. We're studying creation science in Sunday school. And evolution, if you don't accept that as truth, you get made fun of and they call you all kinds of things. But when you look at evolution, it has been disproved over and over and over again. There's no way on earth that that theory could ever possibly work. Even though these asher poles and these altars are make-believe, they mean nothing, but still, it was fashionable for everybody to stand behind that, just like it's fashionable for people to stand behind evolution, or like the gender issue today. What's your pronouns? And they're like, you know, what gender are you? Even on some of the federal forms, I filled out some forms lately, and like, of course Shelley's not around this year, I got my AR out of the way. I keep meaning the teller, I put that in layaway. And I had to fill out the form, you know, to get the guns. And they ask, they have a choice, if you're male or female or what, how do they word that last one? Yeah. They have a choice on a federal form for a firearm. They have like, you know, if I was a transvestite, you really think I'd be buying a gun? But you know, but we're supposed to just pretend that's true. We're supposed to pretend with them that that's true. And this is what was going on here. Same kind of thing. So when we make fun of them for worshiping these false gods, really, we can't make fun of them a lot. Because we're doing just as stupid of things, really. We're putting other things before God. But his message was for change. Burn down your old life. You know, tear down that ashore pole. Burn down your old life and fuel your new life with the old life you're burning down. And it kind of reminds me of when you're, before you're a Christian, God might bless you to be a good, you know, musician. You get a real interest to play guitar and maybe you're playing in a band, I don't know, called like, Double Smack or something like that. And no, but when you, a lot of times, of course, that was a Christian band. But, you know, you'd meet these people that were in these really nasty bands, you know. They're sitting around, you know, I always say if you find a good guitarist, usually you find a guy that smoked a lot of pot when he was a kid. And they get really good at guitar. But see, God knows that that person later is going to be a Christian. He knows they're going to get saved later. And he, and he's going to let them use their old life in a way that honors him. You know, they're going to burn down their ashore poles. They learn the music for the wrong reason. But now God can use it for a good reason. And you know, might be able to, maybe a saint of the speaker. You might be the big mouth in school that always wants to talk. And then now God might stick you in a pulpit someday and let you talk about him. Or maybe you like to teach things. You know, maybe, you know, you'd like to dance, you know. Anybody in here want to dance for us? No, no, but there are some really neat spiritual dance that I've seen before. So Gideon, back to Judges. So Gideon took 10 of his servants and did as the Lord had commanded. But he did it at night because he was afraid of the other members of his family's, father's household and the people in town. So you see, he had to make some really tough choices. Even had to choose against his family. That seems harsh. It seems really hard and harsh. But sometimes you have to separate from the ones who are dragging you down. And that family had gone astray. I mean, they had false gods in the house. And you know, it may happen in a very slow fade. Very slow, a lot of times that's how we get in bad places. So Gideon had to choose God over everything. Luke 14, 26, Jesus said, Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters, yes, even one's own self, can't be my disciple. He's got to be first. A disciple is a person who follows God. He's not saying a Christian. A Christian is a person who trusts Christ with his eternal life. A disciple is a person who actually wants to learn from God and wants to be a pupil. The word mathēpēs in the Greek means a pupil, a student, a learner, a follower. So several versions here says that it actually uses the word hate of people. Hate their father, mother, spouse, children. Now, it's not using the hate in the English sense. The word mathēpēs for hate means to love considerably less, meaning you're choosing two things and one is way more your choice than the other thing. That's what the word mathēpēs means. So he wasn't saying to hate someone like we think of hate. He was just saying that everybody should be way behind him. Being a disciple is more costly than conversion. Conversion is free, but discipleship is not free. It costs you something. It requires a calling from the Holy Spirit for courage. Scripture here says, I love that passage. There's times you just don't know what's wrong in your life, but the Holy Spirit knows what's wrong in your life. And sometimes you just have to groan, God help me. I don't know what I need. Just help me. Give me what I need. And so he was willing to obey God finally over his family, even though he was afraid. Scripture here says, Yeah, you know, heroes aren't fearless. They have fear, but they do it anyway. His family had slipped into a cultural trap, just like the Disney trap we talked about. I don't want my kids to be the only ones who don't have Mickey Mouse shirts, you know, things like that. They fell into that trap just like Christians do today. Jesus said, See, it's two things. One, they're going to get rewarded like crazy, and they already have eternal life. But many who are the greatest now will be the least important then, and those who seem the least important now will be the greatest then. That's why I said God always chooses those little weak things. He said, I choose the weak and small things to confound the wise, the ones who think they're wise. So getting and destroying the false gods, and that's what we need to do sometimes as Christians. We need to destroy our false gods. We need to reprioritize. Make that hobby that we love so much. It's okay to have it, but quit putting it before God because you made a sin out of it. So you can reprioritize, and you can still have your hobby, but just not before God. Anything in your way needs to be moved out of your way. It doesn't make it bad unless it's between you and Him. So it can be a good thing for another day, but not on the Lord's day or not on the Lord's requirements. If it knocks you out of being a good father, being a good husband, being a good wife, being a good employee, then you need to reprioritize. And that's what he did here. Early the next morning, as the people of town began to stir, someone discovered that the altar of Baal had been broken down and that the ash of Raphael beside it had been cut down in their place. And in their place, a new altar had been built, and on it were the remains of a bull that had been sacrificed. The people said to each other, Who did this? And after asking around and making a careful search, they learned that it was Gideon, the son of Joash. Bring out your son, the men of the town demanded of Joash. He must die for destroying the altar of Baal and for cutting down the ash of Raphael. Was it Baal that rescued them from Egypt? Was it Baal that protected them in battle? No, Baal did nothing for them. He was just a big fashionable god that they jumped on the bandwagon. He was the Disney of the time. But Baal isn't even real. Like transgenders and all those people we talked about, sexual deviants, that's not even real. God never made a person that way. Not the first person was ever created that way. God doesn't create someone the way he tells people not to be. They're just living a false reality and so were these people. And Joash shouted to the mob that confronted him. And this is his dad who just had a false god in his possession. And he is learning. But Joash shouted to the mob that confronted him. Why are you defending Baal? Will you argue his case? Whoever pleads his case will be put to death by morning. If Baal truly is a god, let him defend himself and destroy the one who broke down his altar. I love that. Joash seems like he's learning from his son, right? That's great. The truth will set you free. So true. The truth will set you free. And he allowed the truth to set him free. He just probably got sucked into the hype. It's easy to do, to get sucked into the hype. That's what the enemy does. He finds something that will pull you away from him. And he glorifies it. And he introduces you to people that will help you drift. And the next thing you know, you've slipped away. And you need to reprioritize. He says, from then on, Gideon was called Jarrah Baal. Which means, let Baal defend himself because he broke down Baal's altar. He showed courage. This last slide says, Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. I think we can all learn from that. And that's one of the reasons that Damon is doing this. Have you heard of Rocksmith? No? Check out Rocksmith. Here, I'll pull this up. This is how I learned a lot of my songs. Check out Rocksmith. I even have a video. He's got a mix of Rocksmith. There goes Leon. Okay. Come on. There's a hat. What's that? He actually has a hat. Okay. Is mom already gone? She didn't even come. You should write a book for her. She didn't? That was fun. That's how I learned a lot of my songs. And they turned it into practically a video. It's really cool stuff. Now, If there is an in-app person that can play all those songs and all that, they can get started now. But that's how I learned how to play a lot of the songs that I know how to play now. And the only way you can do that is to find my cat. I think she's upstairs. I don't think she's upstairs. See ya. You should have a book. You should. Get started on your book. Hey!