Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
The prophet Micah says he will be their peace we've.
This is Week 2 of Advent and Advent is the season is the
church. It begins the church year and we
begin the church year with waiting.
Advent is a season of waiting, of looking The first Advent was
the people of Israel, the nation of Israel and the whole.
Earth waiting for the Messiah, waiting for the promised One.
Well, Jesus has already come and he's always already demonstrated
himself to be King. And so now we wait for his
return. But it's similar a lot the same,
waiting for his return as waiting for him the first time.
But the Christmas season, this Advent, as we talk about peace
and hope and joy and love, and we are in the presence of trees,
so many trees and Garland and flocking and candles and lights
and bells. And we know and we see it and
it's good and it kind of lifts our spirit for a minute.
But the really big things, the difficult things in life, the
loneliness, the fear, the anxiety, the emptiness, we have
to acknowledge that. The bells and the whistles.
And the trappings don't dissipate much of the pressure
of real life just because it's. Cold.
Cold when the wind blows and the bells ring and the candles and
you got all the store and the candles are lit up and there's
bells. If our souls are empty or thin
or waiting, it just sounds like noise.
Music of Advent can just be a distraction if your soul is
depleted, if you're empty, and if you're waiting.
Christmas is the season of giving of gifts.
It is a season of lists and and waiting and going on this but
if. We're not careful.
The season of giving can become the season of comparison, a
season of pressure, a season of discontent.
You felt that you do the best that you can.
But man, why does Santa always bring the best stuff to the
neighbors next door? Why don't he?
You know I didn't get APS 4. Why don't we have that right?
PS Five. Now see, I'm still grumpy over
the four. I don't it's a season of bright
lights. Dim spirits.
It's a season of big noise, empty hearts, tired, weary,
going. All the stuff is good.
All the places that we go, right?
The parties on that that stuff, that's good.
But the reality nagging behind the behind all of this, the
thing that we go and the quiet moments when the bells are gone
and the music is gone away. The trappings of Christmas just
can't bring you peace. But they can.
Reveal your longing for it, and I think this is where Christmas
meets. Us and our longing for peace and
the place that we go to find it and the places that we go to
stop, to pause like Chris was talking about, to slow down and
to be proactive into the world instead of just reactive on it.
And we realize like if it was just a matter of Christmas
season, we would hang wreaths on the door and reindeer in the
front yard all year long. But it's not We hear the bells
and we sing the songs and we want it.
And there are moments we catch glimpses of it where we're at
rest and we're we're at peace. But then there's something else,
and there's more of it. It's been about five years since
I've taught the entire Advent series by myself.
For the last five years, this has been a teaching team series.
And the reason was back at our old building, I came.
And it was this message in particular that I walked off
this stage again after teaching about peace and said I will not
teach that again until I understand it.
And it wasn't that I didn't understand that it wasn't that I
didn't know where the Bible verses were.
It wasn't that I didn't know what Michael was.
I just didn't know peace in my own life.
I had the same things that we all have too much month at the
end of the money kids that are growing up and becoming things
that I start to realize I don't have any control over that.
And who am I? How do I deal with the things
that are big and that are scary? And this job is so wonderful and
I love doing this, but a big part of my job is just a job.
It's budgets and staff meetings and coming and going.
And the reality is, most of the time when I walk off the stage,
I feel like a giant imposter and a big pretender.
And it doesn't change at Christmas.
And there isn't. Peace.
I realized about five years ago when I was walking through this
and I was looking for and I noticed that I didn't have it.
I could talk about it, but I didn't have it.
I realized, So what is that? When you have moments and you
realized that the peace that I had been looking for was a
counterfeit peace. It wasn't that I wasn't.
Trying to get peace. It wasn't that I didn't want to
peace have peace, I just wasn't going about it the right way.
I would wake up and try to convince myself that I was good
at whatever good means right. And what happens then Good
becomes whatever room I'm in. If I'm in a room with really
well behaved button up people, well then good means morally
better. And what happens then is if I'm
in with people that I feel are better than me morally, well
then what I do is start to. Pretend, don't I?
And you know what happens when we pretend we don't have peace,
Because where there's pretense, there's the fear of being found
out. What if I'm not as smart as they
say they are? What if I'm not as good a
preacher as they think I am? What if I let them down?
Because the reality is I know exactly how good I am and I'm
not whatever I try to convince you of otherwise.
And so the distance between what I try to put on and what is real
in my heart and soul, that gap is where peace dies.
This definition of peace that comes from our culture, we talk
about consolidation of power, getting all the strongest people
to believe one thing and to respond one way.
And if we need to get in order to that peace is powerful enough
that if we have to step on a few people or conquer a few enemies
to get it all together and get the right things done, it's just
a small price to pay. So we got to crush a few skulls,
so we got to step on a few throats to get it done.
That's OK, as long as then we can then have peace.
But the problem is, as soon as you gain peace by crushing your
enemies, your peace. Finishes because their children
are bitter that you've killed their parents.
And so we find peace over people, only to find peace
dissipating again as their children come for retribution.
We chase peace through control. If I can just make it all work,
if I can just fit it, if I can just get enough time and energy
and money into the right place at the right time with the right
people there, if I can just make all of that work, then it will
all come together and everything will be fine.
If I can just make this work. And so we walk around the world
trying to control the world. And when we inevitably, every
minute of every day come to the realization that we do not live
in a world that will be controlled by you.
We have this tension. I have this need to control and
I have this radical inability to control.
And so do you know what we do? We drink.
Or we take drugs. Or we spend money.
Or we cheat. We do anything that we can to
numb the peace. We're looking, we're searching,
we want it. I just can't make the world do
what I want it to do. And So what I want, it's so
important to acknowledge and admit at this Christmas season,
right? Like there, we're going to solve
this. But we've got to begin with the
bad news. If we're going to understand the
good news, we have to begin with the bad news.
The bad news is that most of us long for real peace.
And we have settled for substitutes for counterfeits.
Last week we we came to saw this realization that if we confess
our darkness, it will open the door to hope.
You remember, we saw the people of Israel under the oppression
of the Assyrian Empire, and they thought that the promises that
God had made them about protection, about provision,
about a. Future about a destiny.
God's people thought that God had let them down.
And when they came to that place and they acknowledged and
recognized and confessed the darkness around, and when they
looked around, they'd go, this isn't what it's supposed to be.
Into that place. God said, I'm solving this for
you. When we confess and admitted our
darkness, the door to hope was opened.
And this week when we confess. Our fears and our anxious.
Are you listening? I'm not talking about just
confess. That you're anxious.
I'm talking about standing in front of the mirror and
confessing. I'm afraid that if I don't work
myself to the bone, I'm afraid that if I don't fill every
minute with every activity that any person can imagine and think
of, and I don't tell everybody how busy I am, I'm afraid they
won't think I'm worth anything. And so we grind and we burn to
the nub and we're trying and we're going and we just, we
don't have peace. And so my hope is for us to
prepare room here for the peace of God that comes and we're
going to look at a different place.
This isn't one of the traditional Advent readings
today. But the reason we're dealing
with this was because this summer as I was processing this
and I knew Christmas is coming and I'm like, well, we're going
to have to talk about this. And so, you know, what are we
going to do? We can have this right during
this time. This is a passage.
This is a story that I came across that will help me
understand what peace meant. That helped prepare me to deal
with this passage today. And it's not perfect.
I'm high strung, boy. Shocked.
You're shocked by that, right? I'm high strung.
My brain works fast. I'm creating problems that have
never existed in the whole world.
So that I may then worry about them and fear about them.
And what I want to tell you is that's friend, that's not the
world that you were created to live in.
That's not the reality that Jesus came to show us.
That in fact, is the very world in reality He came to save us
from. When we talk about salvation and
we talk about peace at Christmas, this is what we're
talking about. So we're going to be in the book
of Judges. And it's upfront.
So a couple things like here's OK, so here's why I'm a big fan
of like paper Bibles, OK? Because when the paper Bible,
what you can see is this is the beginning and this is the end.
And relatively speaking, things move from here.
To here so you're like how insulting that you would.
Feel like you have to tell us that it's OK.
I get it. Like, I know, right?
Here's what's important. This is Jesus where we find
Jesus, OK? This is where we pick up our
story today in the book of Judges.
OK, so now God made a promise to Abram.
He said I'm going to make you a family and a nation, and I'm
going to bless the world through your.
Family And so Abraham had a son and his son had a son, and they
became a family and they went to Egypt and they became slaves.
And then God chose Moses and said Moses, go get my people and
tell them to go. And Moses said you're crazy,
there's a pharaoh there and he'll kill me.
And God said go anyway. So Moses went and got the.
People out of Israel and they settled.
Into a place and when we come to this, we're in a season now
called the period of the judges. There was no king.
It was that enemies would come and God would raise up a judge.
Some of the judges you've probably heard of, you've heard
of Samson was a judge. Many of you may have heard of
Deborah who was also a judge today in Judges Chapter.
Six, we're going to read about Gideon, who was a judge, OK?
So now where we come to the book of Gideon is a very similar
place to where we were last time in the book of Isaiah, except
this time the enemy of God's people is the Midianites.
Now the Midianites were brutal. People talk about them like they
were locusts. They would show up and they
would devour everything they would eat.
Every crop take every herd, every everything, right?
Like they're the Grinch reaching down the chimney for the last
crumb of Midianite of of of a Israelite stuff, right.
So we come to six verse 11 and we read this.
The Angel of the Lord came now. Let me pause right here.
We could go real deep and spend a lot of time talking about the.
Lord and the Angel the Lord. Here's what I want you to know
today in the Old Testament. Before we saw Jesus, there was
this thing how do how does God who is a spirit show up right?
And so I don't want to I don't want to parse this too much
today. What I want to show us is what's
happening here is God is appearing to Gideon, OK?
God is showing up in this place. So here's what we have. 6 verse
11, The Angel of the Lord came and he sat under the oak that
was in Ofra, which is just a place, OK?
It's a place in Israel. It belonged to Joe Ash, the
Abbey Azarite. OK, so here's a guy, Joe Ash.
And now listen, Joe Ash's son was Gideon, and Gideon was
threshing wheat in the wine press in order to hide it from
the Midianites. OK, so let's look at what we got
going on. We've got Gideon hiding.
Now I want to ask you, why do you hide scared?
We hide when we're afraid that there's something out there
that's bigger than us, that's going to take from us what we
don't want, right? So what we're told is that
Gideon is afraid and Gideon is in the wine press.
Threshing wheat. So there were two places in this
kind of agrarian. 1 was the threshing floor.
The threshing floor was where you would take wheat, all the
kernels and the stalks of wheat, and you would take them together
and you'd take a. Big like fork what do they call
it? Pitchfork right and you'd.
Throw it up in the air and the little papery husk, it's called
the chaff, very light. You'd throw it up into the wind
and the wind would blow the chaff away.
You've heard about separating the wheat from the chaff, right?
It's how it goes. You throw it up and you throw it
and the wind will take the chaff away.
And what you're left with is the heavier kernels, right?
So when you are threshing wheat, you want to be in a high place
up on top. Now there was another place in
Israelite agrarian called the wine press.
Now the wine press is where you would take all the grapes that
you would have. And you would.
Crush them to make wine. That's good.
See, right. So now here's the thing.
When you're crushing the grapes and you're making wine, what
happens to the liquid When if you're on a high place on the
top of the hill, right, Where's the liquid going to go down.
So where would you have a wine press down?
So the wine press was at a low spot in the ground, generally on
rock or in a cave. Generally there would be very
little wind there, which is means it's not a great.
Place for threshing wheat Is it getting his scared out of his
mind and he is changing every aspect of his life to
accommodate his fear? You ever felt like that?
You ever been so afraid you don't check your e-mail?
You ever been so afraid that you don't go check the mail?
You ever been so afraid of that you don't go to the doctor?
You ever been so afraid? This is Gideon.
Gideon has accommodated fear and anxiety in his life to the point
where it is now the defining characteristic.
It is now the defining quality of what he does.
There's Gideon hiding in Daddy's wine press.
Threshing wheat. What's interesting?
The most important words I want to point you 2 are the first
several words in verse 11, the Angel of the Lord aim because
what I want to say is I don't know where you are today.
I don't know what you're dealing with, but if you like Gideon,
you're doing the unthinkable in an unthinkable place because
you're afraid and because you're scared and you have lost that
picture of yourself and you've tried to start defining yourself
by other things and by external things.
You're right in a place where Gideon was.
And the good news is that God enters Gideon's story right at
the exact moment where peace seems least likely.
That's where God comes and gets involved.
It's that moment where Gideon doesn't have anything left to
hope, and he doesn't have anything left to look.
For he's resigned. Himself to a word of fear and.
God shows up in that space. So the question is, where does
peace seem least likely to you? The debts too big, right?
God could never deal with that debt.
You're just stuck for the rest of your life.
Maybe you made a bad decision and now you're underneath it and
you've just resigned yourself to debt and death and toil and
anxiety for the rest of your life.
Maybe that's the point where God enters your story.
Maybe the cancer is too aggressive and you heard about
that Doctor Who said you can't. Maybe you can't.
Maybe that's the point where God enters your story.
Maybe that person across the table, that neighbor you've
heard love your neighbor as yourself, and you look across
the street at your neighbor and that person is too different
too. Dissimilar.
Too unlike. You can never build something
with them. Or maybe your sin is just too
obvious. Maybe you wish you had one of
those secret hidden sins that didn't show on your face, but
you don't. And maybe the guilt and the
shame that you fear because of this has just chased you down
for your entire life, and you have bought into the life that
you can come here, but you can never really be free from that.
Your sin is just too big. That sin in particular, there's
no grace for. There's no coming.
Back from that one, what I want to show you, friend, is in the
middle of your fear, in the middle of Gideon's fear, God
came to him. Listen.
Are you listening? You think you're just here to
hear me talk? If all you hear today is me
talk, you may have wasted your time.
Because what I would say to you is this may be your wine press.
This may be the moment in your fear where God has something to
say to you. It's not about hearing me.
It's not about pleasing me. It's not about, it's not about
any of those things. This is about the fact that in
this moment, in this place, in the place of your fear, your
anxiety, your discontent, God has something for you.
And what would you expect to hear from God in your hiding
place? Now, let's be real careful and
talk like cuz when I we talk about stuff that's hard, right?
Like we can talk about addictions and fears and
anxieties and stuff like that. But when we start talking about
hiding place like this, I just want it to be like a closet.
No, I mean when you are wasted drunk, because that's the way
that you get away from your problems and God meets you
there. He doesn't wait for you to sober
up. He doesn't wait for the headache
to get him. I mean, he shows up to you in
there. What does God want to say to?
You in that moment. When you're verbally abusing
your spouse because you can't make or do what you want, or you
can't make him do what you want. When you're licking it on your
kids because you can't figure out how to control them and
manipulate them and make you want to do, and you start to
feel like you're losing the whole thing.
What does God say to you in that moment when you are busy and
exhausted and tired and afraid, but nobody ever told?
You that. You're more important.
Than what you do? What does God say to you then?
Because he showed up for getting in a place of fear and a place
of anxiety. And what I hope that you see is
that God probably isn't going to tell you what you think.
So again, the context. Is.
Gideon right hiding on daddy's threshing floor, doing what he's
got to do. When we read this in verse 12,
then the Angel the Lord, the Lord appeared to him and said,
the Lord is with you. Mighty warrior.
Get the picture? This is Gideon hiding again,
right? And here comes God, mighty
warrior. You're like, here's where God
begins to build peace into our life.
When God shows up to Gideon, he begins with two things.
Are you listening? Presence and identity.
The first thing that he told him was God is with you.
Listen to me here. Look at me.
Where are you today? Have you given up hope?
Have you lost hope? Did you weep all the way here?
Are you weeping right now? Listen to me.
What I want to tell you as God is with you, He's not ashamed of
your tears. He's not afraid of your fears.
He's not embarrassed by the thing that you have gone
through. He is standing here and He wants
you to know that He is with you and you can't change that.
You didn't start it, You didn't do it.
You didn't create this situation.
He did and He came to you. And what He wants you to know is
He is with you. And the second.
Thing that he comes to is identity.
He called Gideon a mighty warrior as Gideon cowered in the
shadows, afraid of the Midianite onslaught.
Here's what that means. Are you listening?
That means that you're not who you think you are.
That means that thing that you let define you, and maybe you
let it define you because somebody told you it defined
you. Maybe your dad told you when you
were growing up, maybe your boss told you, maybe a sister or a
teacher, or it's just something that you told yourself, but you
told yourself that you didn't fit.
You told yourself you didn't have any value unless you were
producing something. You don't have any value unless
you are important or significant or seen.
And what God says is that's not true.
God called Gideon a valiant warrior before he stepped out of
the wine press. Now let me just ask you.
Did he know? Was he telling the truth?
Had Gideon ever felt like a mighty?
Warrior. See.
Well, let's keep going. It's like there's a story here
that's going on, right? Gideon's got this incomplete
picture. God calls him dying warrior.
And listen, my hope is that this is like water for your thirsty
soul. Some of you.
I'm talking particularly to those of you who peace seems
like a cruel joke thing that God talked about but never delivers.
Remember, when we come to these stories, we don't put ourselves
in God's place, right? Like we don't look at God and
go, yeah, I think I would do it. God didn't know we put ourselves
in. So listen, here's like, here's
what I want you to be, Gideon. For a while.
Blessed are you, the Lord is with you, valiant warrior.
And Gideon said to him, Please, my Lord, you can imagine a
little bit of sarcasm dripping. Please, my Lord, if the Lord is
with us, why has all in this happened?
Oh, Lord is. With me, he says.
Oh, so I'm just threshing wheat in a wine press just for my own
good? Lord's with us, huh?
Yeah, we're your people. God.
You said you promised you deliver, right?
Why has all this happened? And we're all your wonders that
our ancestors had told us about. They said the Lord has brought
us out of Egypt, but why is the Lord abandoned us and handed us
now to Midian? You didn't even know you could
whine when you read the Scripture, but it's important.
God, where were you? We followed you and you have
been Lord. I went to church every week, I
read the Bible, I gave the 10%, I did a smug, I did all the
things God and you let me down. See, this is what fear does in
the moment with the shadows. Fear will give you 1,000,000
reasons and then a million more to doubt the voice of God.
It'll give you 1,000,000 reasons to tell you that that voice in
your head that tells you that he's with you, that he sees you,
that you're a valiant warrior. He had every.
Reason to tell you that you are wrong.
And what does Gideon do? Oh, I'm about oh, you're the
Lord is with me. Great.
If he's with me then why does everything?
Suck so bad. You ever feel like that?
Surely if I was a God, I would create a reality better than
this one, right? But what I want?
You to say is this opens the door for what comes next.
And this is the most important thing because what Gideon does
is express honestly his longing in his heart.
God. He's not rejecting God.
He's saying, God, I want to believe that you're good, but
I'm having a hard time reconciling the difficulty that
I'm in with the reality of your goodness because either you
can't stop this or you're not stopping this.
And I don't understand. Have you ever felt like that?
Well, Gideon's questioning in this moment isn't God's
existence. He's questioning God's nearness.
And what I would say is that is the place where peace vanishes.
Peace is that sense of knowledge that it's going to be OK.
Not that I am going to do it, not that I'm going to fix it.
We don't care that much. About that because we know who
we. Are the question is.
Is God with us? Is God going to be here?
Is God going to do something? Is it going to be OK?
So Gideon asks these questions, right?
Serious questions. And listen, here's what I want
to tell you. You have to ask those questions
and you have to ask them in prayer.
You have to go before the Lord and whatever it is that
convinces you that you're praying, if you got to get on
your knees or fold your hands, you got to say the hard thing to
the Lord because the Lord responds to Gideon and what does
he say to him? Verse 14, he says this, the Lord
turned to him and says, go in the strength that you have and
deliver Israel from the grasp of Midian.
I am sending you. He didn't answer a single one of
his questions. God, where are you?
Why have you done this? He's like, not now Gideon,
you've got to go. They are waiting for you, man.
They are waiting for you to go. It gives them an assignment.
And what he says is go in the strength that you have.
He's not. He doesn't even want to measure.
We're just like, Lord, this is I, Lord, I only have three
skills. Well, three's enough.
Just kidding, Lord. It was one skill.
One's enough. What?
Was the secret to Gideon having enough?
I am with you. That's the good news.
You can't. You can't help whether Midian is
invading or not. You can't help.
The quality and nature of your enemies.
You can't help that. You feel like you're slinging
wheat in the winepress. All you can do.
Is wrap your head. Around and hope and plant in
your heart this idea that God's plan is to give us peace through
companionship. We don't want that.
You don't want that. You want peace through a problem
solved. You want peace through radical
empowerment to do what I want to my enemies.
And that's just not the story. In fact, there's nowhere in the
story. That that's the story.
Do you remember how God went to Abraham?
Do you remember how this story started?
He went to Abraham and he said go to the land.
I'll show you. He didn't say go over there 400
steps and then take a left and then go through here.
He says, I'm going to show you walk with me.
And he went to Moses and Moses thought he was going to handle
it. And Moses, he was, he was going
to be the guy, right? He was God's guy.
So what does he do? He sees injustice and he gets
involved in what does he do? He kills an Egyptian.
Well, then he's got to go hide in the desert for 40 years.
And what happens is God comes to him and he calls his name.
Do you remember what he said to Jesus?
Jesus told him after he said, don't worry about what you're
going to say when you get called in because I'll be there with
you and I'll teach you the things that he has to say.
He's saying, Gideon, don't worry about it.
Gideon, I'm going to be with. You.
And what does Gideon say? Please, Lord, how can I deliver
Israel? Look, my family's the weakest in
Manasseh and I'm the youngest in my father's family.
Literally Gideon's. Like bro, I'm in a wine press,
bro. I'm literally scared of my own
shadow. I'm scared of every single thing
possible. Moses did the exact same thing.
Moses was so tough, he's. Killing.
Egyptians, I will single handedly deliver myself, my
people, ha ha, ha, ha ha, right? And then later, right, at first
he's like, God, how could you let your people down?
You do this, right? And then when God calls me, he
says, Hey, I want you to go to Pharaoh.
Moses. You want Moses is like, I can't
talk, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So at first when he's accusing God, God, where were you and all
this? And when God's like, let's go
make peace, he's like, well, I can't do it.
OK, is it me or is it? You I can't figure out like I
don't. Know I don't know who it is.
The fact is, God isn't the least bit concerned about throwing you
to a place where you feel like you don't have it all.
God is perfectly content for you to be out of your depth and out
of your water and out of comfort so that you will know that He is
with you. Now I have to say this.
This is my pastoral obligation. Are you ready?
Are you listening? And I say this with love.
And my hope is that I say this and a light will go on.
This is not good news. For you if you like to
spiritualize control. If every time I ask you how
you're doing, you say I'm so busy and you just want me to go,
oh, you sure must be important, I'm not going to tell you that.
I'm going to tell you it's your fault.
You should say no to more things.
Watch. No, you spiritualize control.
If you think micromanaging your kids is giving them the best
opportunity, this isn't good news for you.
This isn't good news for you. If you demand clarity before
taking a step. This isn't good news for you.
If you have to know how every T will be crossed and how every I
will be dotted and how every step that you take will fall.
He didn't say that to Abraham. He said go and we'll figure it
out together. I.
Want him to send me a little Waze link so that I can have her
just tell me turn left and 400 feet and you know why I want him
to send me a Waze so I can go. I think I'll take the scenic
route today and do my. My own thing anytime that I
want, right? But what God says instead is I'm
going that way. Let's go together.
You stick with me, and as long as you're with me, we're going
to be OK. This isn't good news for you.
If you call fear discernment. If you think every time you're
afraid of something, that means you don't have to do it.
That means every time you're uncomfortable, you're excused.
If it's every time something that you hear that you don't
like, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't fit into your
already conceived of worldview, this isn't good news for you.
But if you know that the peace that has eluded you feels
tangible and close, this is good news.
Because in your darkness and your fear and your anxiety and
your lostness, God shows up. And so here's the good news.
Like when Gideon was afraid. So I didn't like, give him
anything. He's just like, hey, I'm here
with you. Hey, Gideon, I see something in
you that you don't see. I think that's my spiritual
gift. My spiritual gift is
encouragement. And what I tell people is that
means that I generally believe that you're capable, that you're
more capable. How do I say it?
I generally believe that you're capable of more than you.
Think that you're capable of right, like you got the Holy
Spirit, dude, like the same spirit that like part of the
water that brought Jesus from that you're fine.
You just need to like get going. And God is not afraid to like
right? Get out and get going.
Because he knows and he knows that it's going to be afraid and
he and he knows that it's scary and get in, in his darkest
moment, God is just literally just standing there encouraging
him. Look at you, you mighty.
Warrior hiding in the shadows, right?
And what happens is you listening as God begins to speak
His presence, and as God begins to speak about Gideon's
identity, the fear begins to melt off of Gideon.
The fear begins to drip off and he just does the thing that he
knows to do. What do you do?
When God begins to confront your fears.
What do you do? When God challenges your deepest
held assumptions. When verse 17 then he said to
him, Gideon now talking to the Lord, he says, if I have found
now. You got to realize that.
Gideon's whole world has been peeled back here.
If I have found favor with you, he says, give me a sign that you
are speaking with me. OK, so let's real quick.
Gideon is not asking for proof that this guy is speaking with
him. Do you know what the proof of
him speaking with him is speaking with him, right?
This this isn't about proof. Listen, if I have found favor
with you, give me a sign. Now listen for the sign that he
asks for. Please do not leave this place
until I return to you. Let me bring my gift and set it
before you. I just want to stop.
What Gideon says is, will you please not leave?
Like, I know you're sending me to do something.
And it's hard and it's scary and I don't know how it's going to
come. But here's what I need from you.
God. OK, here's the deal that will
make God. You.
Not abandoned me when I go do this thing that you're asking me
to do that I don't even know what it means.
I don't know where it comes when I go to do this thing.
God can I? Can you?
Will you be here when I get back?
And he said, I will stay until you return.
God's waiting for you. God went to Gideon and he found
him in his fear, and he waited for him.
Listen, here's what that means for me and you.
Are you ready? You don't want to hear this, but
I love you unintendedly. You are way more afraid of your
fear than God is. He is not remotely in a hurry to
deliver you from the things that pose no existential threat to
you. Because what Gideon found in the
midst of his fear is a God who will wait for him.
A God who will still be there when he gets back.
And So what does Gideon do? Right?
Gideon's like, OK, I'm going to go, I'm going to go do this
thing. And Gideon does what we talked
about. Remember last week when we
talked about kind of preparing space, right?
We talked about hospitality. Well, look at what Gideon.
Does verse 19. So Gideon went and prepared a
young goat and unleavened bread from half a bushel of flour.
OK, so let's talk biblical. What are they called when you
make one measure, another measure, right, Because it says
half a bushel. OK, so we've got a young goat.
So the young goat would have been.
Held for a celebration right like you read you read about in
the in the prodigal son, the youngest son comes home, father
kills the the fattened calf. This is that the young goat.
This is a celebration. Now remember the context here
Gideon is hiding on the threshing floor because
Midianites consume everything they are in a famine.
They are in a panic and now Gideon says let's go kill the
fattened calf. He's saying let's have a feast
right here. Talks about half a bushel.
Half a bushel is 20 to 22 lbs of flour.
Talk to me sourdough Mamas. How much sourdough?
Can you make with 20? 5 lbs of flour.
Here's the important listen. Don't miss this.
Just a second ago, Gideon was hiding from sight, didn't want
anybody to see him. And now all of a sudden he hears
about the presence, this Angel of the Lord, and now he's
killing a fattened calf. And 25 how much bread can you
make with that, right? And he's presidency.
Gideon is starting to see he's not so worried about the
Midianites destroying him. Now he's more concerned about
his hospitality, about treating his friend.
And he goes extravagant because his fears weakening.
Did I finish reading that? He brought them out and offered
to him under the oak. OK, so now he brought him a
meal. So what do you expect when you
have a meal? You come over to my house.
We cook. We have the goat and the bread
and all the stuff. We sit on the table and we eat
and we talk and we chew the fat and we spend the evening
enjoying each other. And let me just tell you, in
those moments, often fear will dissipate because I'm able to
tell my friend David I'm just worried about work, man.
It just doesn't. It doesn't happen.
And in that space, my fear begins to dissipate when I
realize that I'm not alone. Side note, we're the body of
Christ. Do you know how Christ comforts
his people? All y'all right?
And so here's Gideon brings in this meal and the Angel of God
says take the meat with the unleavened bread and put it on
this stone and pour the broth on it.
This is OK, so now. We're starting to get some
symbolism stuff. OK, pull the.
Broth on it, then the. Angel of the Lord extended the
tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat.
Just feed me, bro. I'm not touching it, right?
He touched the meat and the unleavened bread and fire came
up from the rock and consumed the meat in the unleavened
bread. Then the Angel, the Lord,
vanished from the site. There's another place.
There's another place where meat would be taken.
It would be laid on the table and liquid would be poured over
it and it would be consumed with fire.
Do you know where that was? On the altar in the Tabernacle.
The offering for sin is brought and placed on the altar, and the
sacrifice is made. And what the Israelites would
have called that is worship. Gideon goes to bring hospitality
is obedient. He says I'll do what you say
God, I'll go where you say I'll make that I'm still afraid, but
God, I'm going and I'm doing it and what that means what that
shows us is that obedience in the presence of fear is the
beginning of worship. Listen, some of you one of my
favorite things to watch when I watch worship is like the
nervous, like the like the tight lippers, right and I grew up
Baptist, right like this is where this is how you worship in
the Baptist Church, right? You don't like sing too loud,
right? I'm so I watched, but sometimes
I'll watch a moment where someone will engage and things
just change. The guard begins to drop, maybe
their eyes closed and they begin to sing differently.
I don't want to say his songs are great, that the worship of
the Lord isn't just a song. It's a sacrifice of obedience.
It's a sacrifice that says I believe there's a world.
Out there that's. Different than that, than this
one. And I want to respond to that
and I want to walk towards that. And that begins by obeying in
the presence of fear. And here's what it looks like in
a very like you go on Facebook and you see somebody who says
something about you. It's a subtweet.
They don't call you by name. They would never do that.
But it's a subtweet and it's under there.
And you all of a sudden are angry, but you're also a little
bit afraid because what if people believe that nonsense?
What if they believe what they say about me?
What if they believe? A thing and you begin to fear
that feel that fear well up and you're like, well, I got to
crack back on that, like I got to fix that.
I got to solve that problem. But instead you just say, Lord,
I'm going to leave my reputation to you.
And you don't respond. You see what that is?
That is obedience in the face of fear.
You're afraid if I don't defend myself, who will defend me?
The Lord. You can do it or the Lord can do
it. He has more tools at his
disposal than you do. He's generally proven better.
The whole Red Sea on the Egyptian thing, I was pretty
good. Pretty good, right?
This is the apocalypse, right? The revelation.
This is what Gideon sees in that flash of fire when the tip of
his staff touches that meat and the fire comes up.
Gideon is realizing who he is and what happens when you see a
God. Verse 22 when Gideon realize
that he was the Angel of the Lord, he said Oh no.
Lord God, I've seen the Angel of the Lord.
Face to face, see. God's holiness is a destructive
thing. We can't stand in the presence
of God's holiness. And you're just like, oh, well,
that's just me. No, listen, I want to make this
point. We're sinful.
And this is a flawed analogy, but I think it'll get you.
Imagine I've got a shirt, a white shirt.
I mean, it is crisp. I mean, it's pristine.
And I have taken this shirt to the cleaners and they have
pressed it and iron it and it has got the heavy starch and I
can stand it up on its own. And I put it in and have to
slide my hands through the sleeves and I can feel them
tearing. And it is, oh, and it is
beautiful. And I put it on and I'm.
Buttoned up and it is good and I look good and I'm just standing
yourself admiring myself in the mirror like yes, right, and here
come my children, Peanut butter and Jelly on their hands because
it's lunchtime and they are sprinting.
Daddy and they. Jump towards me and I meet them
with the stiff arm of love. Do I love my children less
because they have gunk on their hands?
Absolutely not. Absolutely not what I do.
Then as I take my children, I lift them up and we go clean
them off so that they can have the hugs and kisses that they
desire. You can't have the peace that
you desire as long as we insist on the.
Control and the. Clarity and all of those things
that we need and what worship does is reveal God's holiness
and grace. That's why it's hard.
That's why I'm often times we resist it because when you close
your eyes and get quiet and you begin to sing about a God and
you sing out the song worthy of it all is the one for me.
I just put it on because that's a song about God's goodness and
his worthiness and just know. When you get in a quiet space
and you close your eyes and you just by yourself begin to sing,
you are worthy of it all. You are worthy of it all,
friend. Your heart begins to melt.
Things begin to change. You begin to experience
something that is different than what you have experienced
before. And it is God's holiness, and it
is God's power. And it can be difficult.
And Gideon knows it, and he's afraid.
And he's like, oh, this is it. I've seen what I'm not supposed
to see. I know that God wants to bless
me or protect me or whatever, but I'm not.
Supposed to see him and what does God say to him in that
verse 23, but the Lord said peace Gideon, don't be afraid.
I'm not here to kill you. Some of you think that if you
draw close to the Lord he's going to destroy you and kill
you. Gideon is expecting retribution,
but instead what he gets is the opposite of that.
And that's what peace is. Peace is not the absence of
fear, it is the presence of a holy God.
Now let me connect something, right?
Because this is Christmas. We're told that our peace is
Jesus. So let me connect this to us,
right? So we go down to verse 24.
So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there, and he.
Called. He called the.
Altar. The Lord is peace, and it's
still there today. What Gideon did here was called
an altar. Said like that's the altar, but
he named the altar after the Lord.
What Gideon did here is name the Lord.
And what did he name the Lord? Peace.
Jehovah Shalom. Yahweh Shalom.
And so Gideon names peace. Peace is the presence of God on
the threshing floor of our disappointment last week we saw
Isaiah and what Isaiah did was expand peace.
God's presence is in the that unique weird little story on the
threshing floor right there and God needs him.
But then Isaiah expands it last week, Isaiah 9 verse 6.
A child will be born to us, a son will be given, and the
government will be on his shoulders.
He will be named wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal
Father, Prince of Peace. We see the God who met Gideon on
the Russian floor as peace himself when we see Jesus his
son. And when we get to Luke chapter
2 and we read about the angels and they're announcing to the
shepherds, suddenly there was a multitude of heavenly hosts with
the angels praising God. And what do they say?
What's their message? Glory to God on the highest
heaven and peace on earth to people that he favors.
And in John chapter 14, Jesus, on the verge of death, the
shadow of the cross, looks his disciples in the eyes and says,
my. Peace, I'm leaving you.
Not the kind of peace that comes from Rome and a sword and a gun
and a military adventure. Not the kind of peace that comes
from the Sanhedrin with religious observance and and all
kinds of guilt and fear and shame because you're not living
up to what you want. That's.
That's not it at all. It's the peace of Jesus who
meets us in our fear and invites us into worship.
So the Christmas question actually is, are you looking for
peace in the wine Press of strength and control, or will we
instead worship the Prince who came as peace for us?
So now if you're a Christian and maybe you're in here and you've
been walking with Jesus and you come to another Christmas
holiday season and you see the lights and the bells and all
this, but you feel powerless and you feel ashamed and you wonder.
If Jesus just kind of died and saved you, but then left the
rest up to you and what I'm going to say is friend, your
role and responsibility is to find him in this and what you
like what this is what Chris talked about with with the
communion. You've got to make space.
You have to force margin into your life because you're bosses
and the voices outside, the voices of the Midianites,
they're going to keep telling you that you got to be afraid.
They're going to keep knocking on the door.
It's going to keep knocking down and you're going to keep
listening to them. So createspace in your life and
find the God who is with you and he was looking after you and
guess what? You may not have enough for your
current situation. You may have to sell your house,
sell your car. You may have to do a manner of
crazy wild thing. Lord is with you, valiant
warrior, and he will be there where you go.
Now, maybe you're not a Christian.
Maybe you're here because someone offered to buy you lunch
after this. That's a good friend, and you
should take them up on it. You should let them buy you
lunch, make them spend for you. Get the steak.
It's good. Tell him, tell him.
Jesus would want it, right? But listen, maybe this is all
new to you, the idea that God wants you to have peace.
Maybe what you thought was just God wanted you to be good, or
God wanted you to not have fun. Or maybe you just have you're
more like maybe you're at that Gideon place at the beginning of
the story where he said, if you're so good, why is this so
bad? If you're so good, why is my
life so difficult? Listen, what I want to tell you
is the story that we tell is not the story of a God who came to
make everything comfortable and easy in our life.
But we tell is the story of a God who came.
To invade our life with. Peace in the face of our
enemies. Not an easy life.
Not a life where we are never on the threshing floor.
Not a life where we never have to face things that we don't
understand. A face, a world and a life where
we constantly face things that we don't know and we don't
understand. And the confidence that we serve
a God who is. Present and with us and for us
and loves us. That is the story that we tell.
And what I'm asking you today is if you have never done that, I'm
asking you to get into that story, to begin living that
story. Here's how that happens.
The first thing you have to do is confess, talk about the fact,
the reality of your way. Try.
I've tried to earn my way into security.
Can never have enough money. I've tried to be handsome
enough, I've tried to make people like me enough.
I've tried to be smart enough. I've tried my way day after day
after day. And my way produces fear, my way
produces anxiety. Because the world that I'm
trying to control isn't mine to control.
And I'm not asking you to do anything at that point, Just say
it. Say it the way that I approach
relationships, the way that I approach money, the way I
approach spirituality, the way I approach my job causes fear and
anxiety. And then I want you to confess
again that the life that God wants you to have and the life
that you want for you to have are different.
See, you just want to have enough money to go on a vacation
every now and then. And God wants you to have
purpose and life and abundance. And God wants you to know that
there is nothing in this world that can destroy what God has
begun in you. And he wants you to know that
hard times will come and you'll the last.
We have to confess that we cannot walk our way and arrive
at the destination that God has for us.
I cannot simply do what I think and want and arrive at the peace
that God has for me. So what that does is it presents
us. I confess that I've been walking
my way and haven't arrived at the peace of God.
And I confess that God has a way for me that if I'll walk that
way, then I can know and achieve the peace.
Moment by moment, day by day, slowly but surely over time.
And then the biblical word for what we do is.
Repent, we begin to look. For.
Peace in a different place than we looked before we begin to.
Look for peace down a different. Road than we have before and so
I want to very specifically we're going to pray but I want
to talk especially to you if you today just said I want that I
need that peace from Jesus and you've never said that before.
I'm going to ask you that. I'm going to pray.
I'm going to ask you to pray with me.
And then, but before I do that, when that's done, because you're
going to want to go, people are going to start shuffling.
Hey, listen, by the way, I'm going to give you a blessing.
If you start hurrying out after the blessing, the blessing is
not for you. I'm just saying that that's
good. That's good.
Yeah. After you've received the
blessing, I want you to send me a text message, one word text
the word follower to the number 94000.
That's not my phone number. That's a short code.
I'm not showing up at your house.
I'm not going to do anything. Nothing like that.
I just want a point of accountability.
I want you to say today I chose the path of peace for the first
time. Let's pray together.
Father God, I thank you that you met Gideon there on that
threshing floor. And I thank you that you're
willing to meet me on my threshing floor as well.
Places that I go to hide. And Lord, you are well
acquainted with the dark spaces in my life, the places that I go
to hide, the masks that I put on to pretend to appear to be when
I'm not. You see all of those things.
And Jesus, I believe that your desire is to deliver me from
those. And Jesus, when I read the story
of Gideon, I, God told Gideon to go get a sacrifice.
And God accepted Gideon's sacrifice, but the peace came
before that. But Jesus, when I think about
your sacrifice, you made peace eternally.
And Father, I pray for those in here maybe who haven't known you
before and in this moment they're saying, I've tried to
find peace every way that I can and I need it from you.
That's you. Pray this on you.
Just pray quietly in your heart. Say it with me.
Jesus, I realize that I have been trying my own way to get to
You and it has not led me to You.
Today I recognize that that path is faulty and it will never lead
me to what I desire, which is You.
But Jesus, I confess that is sin, and I ask that You would
lead me on the path to peace. Save me from the path that leads
away from You, that I might be made new and restored in Your
presence. Thank you Jesus, for your love
and Your grace. We ask all these things in Your
name and for Your glory. Amen.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.