Judges 6:36-40

Hey, hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions. This morning, we're going to be talking about Gideon's fleece. How do we know what we're supposed to do? How's that line up with not testing the Lord? Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray. Father, what a blessing and a joy it is to get to read your word, God. It's a it's a gift that we have from you. And we pray that we would not take that for granted. Please, Lord, teach us to follow in your ways. Help us to understand your word. Help us to walk before you with wisdom in Jesus's name. Amen. All right, let me grab my glasses. Here we are at Judges chapter 6, just a few verses 30 through 40. 36-4. So Gideon said to God, "If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said." And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he rung the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, "Do not be angry with me, but let me just speak once more, lest let me be, let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece. Let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on the ground let there be dew." And God did so that night. It was dry on the ground or sorry, it was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on the ground. Well, that's it. We just need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So, what is this about? God has called Gideon to rise up against the Midianites, the Amalachites, and the people of the east. He has called them to go to war. But he's a pretty timid and fearful guy. Right? This whole time it's right, we we got in the book of Joshua, be strong and very courageous, right? be strong and do not fear. Again and again and again, God had to encourage Joshua not to be afraid and not to and to have courage. But here we have Gideon and we're we're finding a very similar tendency, right? But he's hiding in the threshing floor. How do I know that you're really sending me? The the the flame coming out of the rock consuming God telling him to go and to destroy the Baal altar and the ashropole and make an sacrifice on it. All that was in the last part of this section of this chapter. But now we have Gideon and and he's called the army together, right? Did you notice that in the last part? Asher, Zebulun, and Nefali, and they came up to meet him, right? He's got thousands of people there. He's blown the war trumpet, and people have responded to go to war. But now on the precipice of battle, he's scared. How's he know he's going to win? Is it going to go well for him? I mean, they've been coming in like swarms of locusts. And so he puts God to the test. He says, "All right. Well, Lord, you said you're going to be with me, but he he says, 'Okay, I'm going to put a He right, the test says, I'm going to put a piece of fleece on the ground, and when I wake up in the morning, if there's dew on the fleece, but not on the ground, then I'll know that you're going to be with me." He wakes up in the morning and the ground is dry, but he takes up the fleece and it rings it out and there's a whole bowl of water. And he says, 'Lord, please don't be mad at me. And you can hear the fear in his voice, like how how do I know for certainty? He's seeking for certainty. He wants a certainty in the sign. And God accommodates his weakness. And he says, "Let's flip the miracle around. Next time, if there's dew all over the ground, but the fleece is dry, they'll know you're with me." He goes to bed, he wakes up, and guess what? The ground is wet. and the fleece is dry. The miracle on both sides works. God is assuring him by the sign that it's going to happen. Now, I'm just going to say we're going to kind of rearrange coffee and devotions just a little bit from our normal and go straight to see calling because, you know, I remember a time in my life where I looked at this story and I I thought, you know, that's actually not a bad idea. I was trying to figure out whether or not I should go to grad school to do a a master's degree in church history. And I thought, well, I don't know if I if I should go or if I if God's going to care for us when we do go. And so, I know my adviserss and and different mentors were saying I should go, but I had a wife and we're pregnant with a second kid. Is this really what we should do? And so we went ahead and we said, "Okay, we're going to send out letters and we're just going to see if if we can get everything down to the penny for how for how we're going to take care of our finances when we're there because we didn't want to go into debt. That's fine." And I even told my pastor, I said, "Uh, I'm just going to put out a Gideon's fleece here and I'm going to I'm just going to see how people respond to these letters and and if the money comes up, which I had no certainty that they would, great." And I was so excited. I came to my pastor and I said, "Micah, Micah, guess what? We got within $100 of what we need to pay for the whole degree. It's it was amazing." And so I told him this and he said, "Well, that's fine." Uh, but I'm not sure Gideon's a great example of courage and faith. He was wanting assurance from God's miracles rather than God's words. And Micah wasn't trying to be mean to me. It was just like it, you know, it's good. You could have just asked people for money and that would have been fine. But the Lord has promised to be with you to care for you and provide for your family. And so don't let the sign be what you trust in. You trust in the God. That is a big encouragement to me because he brought up, he said, you know, uh, I'm not saying you did send Brian. But even when Satan told Jesus to see if God would really care for him, what Jesus say, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." He said, "So, if Jesus could trust his heavenly father like that, so can you." And that's what I want to encourage you with today. If the Lord has called you to do something, it may be scary. And it should be in accordance with God's biblical principles, right? I'm not saying, right, if if you think that God's calling you to buy a car that you can't afford or start a business that you don't have the capital to invest in or or something like that, right? I'm not God's not calling you to ever go into a sinful scenario. If you get the sense that, you know, oh, maybe the Lord's telling me I should go find a wife at a strip club. No, that's not a thought that came from the Lord. He's not going to bless you in that, right? But the point being is that if the Lord has clearly called you to do something, trust in the Lord. If you're chasing after his glory, it may have hard consequences. This may have been a really difficult, serious battle. Any sane person who's thinking about picking up a sword and a shield and literally going to either be killed or kill, they better be sober about it. And I think Gideon was being sober and naturally afraid. Wanting assurance from God that he wasn't going to die. And God was gracious. He accommodated. He stooped down to Gideon's weakness and he gave him this sign. Gideon knew that they could this could make God afraid or God mad at him. And so he says, "Please do not be mad at me. Don't let your don't let your nose burn." And the Lord listens. And the Lord is gracious. Be strong and courageous. If you are following in the way of Jesus Christ, if you are going in his footsteps, if you're following in his patterns, if you're seeking God's glory, the furthering of Jesus's kingdom, you need not be afraid. What can man do to you? If God is with us, who could be against us? So follow after him, Christian. Don't be afraid. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much. We thank you that you do hear us in our weaknesses. You know that there are times in which we are Lord, we're sinful. There are times in which we fail and we do silly and stupid things. But Father, we pray that when we are fearful that you would give us courage and strength. We pray Lord that you would help us to trust in you and you alone. For you are good in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ. May you endure to the end. I'll see you next time. Bye.