#Nofilter - Gideon
Taking the filter away from biblical stories we heard as children and hearing all of it. In this sermon, Pastor Rob takes the filter off of the story of Gideon!
EXTRAORDINARY
• Employee • Son
• Boss • Daughter
• Husband • Friend
• Wife • Person
What would an extraordinary person do?
God created Israel to be extraordinary, and they started looking around and acting ordinary.
Disobedience à Disaster à Deliverance
Gideon
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
Judges 6:1–4, 6
The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. [He’s in a hole or a shelter.] When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.”
The Lord answered, “Oh, then never mind. I must be at the wrong house.
The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
Judges 6:11–16
“Will you be with me?”
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all…
Romans 8:31–32
The value of a thing is the price it will bring.
It’s dangerous to think more highly of yourself than you ought.
It’s equally as dangerous to think less of yourself than God does.
~ Steven Furtick ~
What would we do if we were confident God was with us? In us? For us?
#Nofilter - David
Taking the filter away from biblical stories we heard as children and hearing all of it. In this sermon, Pastor Rob takes the filter off of the story of David!
Have you ever stumbled trying to run after Jesus?
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 11:1
Sometimes we stumble when we are not where God wants us to be.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful,
2 Samuel 11:2
Our eyes must turn from alluring objects that come into sight.
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home.
2 Samuel 11:2-4
Sin cost us more than we ever budgeted for.
So David sent this word to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent him to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house. David was told, “Uriah did not go home.” So he asked Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a military campaign? Why didn’t you go home?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”
2 Samuel 11: 6-11
Stumbling is a gradual process.
You have two options when you fall.
Option 1: Stay Down
Option 2: Get Back Up
Why?
Why should you get up?
It doesn’t matter what you have been through or what has happened. What matters now is what you do after you have fallen.
Hold on to the father’s hand as he picks you, dusts you off and restores you.
When God restores you, he doesn’t restore you to the way you were before you fell. God’s restoration process makes you better than before.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2 Corinthians 5:17