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What does God do with a wayward son? Does He turn His back? Does He walk away? Does He quit the relationship? The answer reveals the heart of God, and it’s important to know because a lot of people have become wayward at one time or another in their lives.

That was the situation with Israel. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and the elders who survived with Joshua, but then it says, “There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which he had done for Israel.”

That was the problem, the next generation hadn’t experienced the miracles of God as the generations before them. They didn’t know the Lord. That’s the key phrase. They didn’t know the Lord; they hadn’t experienced personal revival.

Israel was unfaithful, and just as God had forewarned, life became extremely difficult. That itself is a life lesson. Life would get so bad for the sons of Israel that they would cry out to the Lord. At least they knew whom to cry out to.

Every time they cried out to the Lord, He would answer by sending a deliverer, a judge, to rescue them from their oppression. He would not turn His back on them, He would send a deliverer. They would then follow the Lord while that deliverer was alive, but after that deliverer passed away, they would fall back to the ways of the world, to the ways of the gods of the nations that remained among them.

It was a cycle that repeated itself almost 250 years in the history of Israel. God sent a deliverer each and every time. He never quit; God never gave up. That’s also a life lesson.

God will not quit on you either. He wants you to know His heart in advance. “All day long I hold out my hand to an obstinate and rebellious people, who walk in ways not good,” God said through the prophet Isaiah.

In Judges 6, we will meet Gideon. He is the fifth judge, or deliverer of Israel. He’s not who one might expect God to raise up. When we first meet Gideon, he’s hiding from the Midianites, threshing wheat in a winepress out of fear.

In other words, it’s a story of God taking the weak and making them strong. It’s a story many can relate to because they are aware of their weakness. But God delights to use the weak for His glory. Many want to walk in God’s purpose in their lives but are very much aware of their inadequacy. This is a story of how the weak become strong.

I. Faith is the Answer

 Verse 7 - the sons of Israel cried to the Lord on account of the oppression of Midian.

 God sent a prophet to the sons of Israel to open the eyes of their heart. The point of God's message was simple, “I am the same God who brought you up from Egypt; my power has not diminished. Why did you not listen to my voice?”

 God shows them the root of the problem. The oppression of the Midianites was only a symptom. The real problem was their lack of faith; and lack of faith comes from lack of relationship.

 There are life lessons for us out of the story.

A. Blaming God is never helpful

 An angel of the Lord, who could well be an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament, came and sat under an oak tree.

 Gideon was there, threshing wheat in a winepress to save it from the Midianite raiders. In other words, Gideon was hiding in fear.

 The angel of the Lord then addressed him with a most unusual greeting, “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.”

 In Gideon's mind he was anything but a valiant warrior, and he certainly could not understand how God could be with him.

 First, he said what many others have said in times of trouble, “If the Lord is with us, then why has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about?”

 Was Gideon angry with God? Clearly, he’s blaming God for not being with them. Verse 13 – – “The Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

 Blaming God never helps, but many do. “You say you love me, then why did you allow all these troubles to happen in my life?”

Pastor Rich Jones
Pastor Matthew Dodd
Rich Jones Calvary Chapel
Calvary Chapel Worship Center
Calvary Chapel Hillsboro
Calvary Chapel Oregon
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