From Triumph to Travesty

Victory can be destroyed if we take God's praise. Victory can absolutely be destroyed. How'd that happen? You know, I was just thinking, and you don't give God credit. I was just doing this, and you stop giving God praise. And you start taking it upon yourself, your mind, your thoughts, and everything else. Instead, you swear is God in this moment. Ask yourself in your moments that you see victory, how did God work? He is alive, he is active, he is personal, he is working in your lives, church. Always, always, always give him praise. Three words. Trust, credit, stay. Trust him when you don't have it. Credit him when you get it. Stay humble after he blesses. Trust, credit, stay. Yeah.

He went into the army that didn't make any sense, and it went because God told him to go. If God is with me, how can I lose? He can't. Little did Gideon know that the strength would not be physical that he was gonna do it. It's not gonna be intellectual. It's not gonna be this great. It's gonna be a spiritual battle. And so this is a spiritual lesson for us, church. This is huge. It takes great faith. Right? Here's a key point for us to think about, for us to ponder. The lord and none of us like this point. The lord strips us down to the point where we must depend only on him. We don't like that. We like it. In other words, we got victory, but but we will not see victory if our hands are filled with stuff. We won't have you ever tried to have you had your hands come back from the grocery store and your hands are filled with stuff and you try to open up the door and you can't open up the door because your hands have too much stuff into it? Same is true with us. Sometimes we have so much stuff that we can't open the door to let somebody else in. Sometimes we have so much stuff that we can't even open the door to let God in. Why? Because our stuff is covering our hands. We don't have an open hand. Yes. We we won't see victory when we look when we are too busy looking at our own reflection. And our own reflection sometimes isn't looking in the mirror, its looking at ourselves on our iPhones or our our Galaxy phones or because, oh, look at the Snapchat. Look at how many likes. Look at how many views I've had. Wow. Am I not special? We won't see victory if our hearts are not ready to fight. When we say, I did this on my own strengths, it started with myself, we won't see victory. As long as we're depending upon ourself and not God, we won't see spiritual victory. The apostle Paul writes this great verse. We'll come back to it at the end. He says, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect, what? In your strength? No. In your intellect? No. In your weakness, church. God's strength is made perfect in your weakness.

When Gideon took his warriors down to the water, the Lord told him, divide the men into two groups. One group, who put those who cup their water with their hands and lapped it up with their tongues like dogs, and the other group, those who kneel down and drink from with their mouths in the stream. Okay. So here's how it goes. Imagine this. You got warriors. Some are coming down here and they're taking this cup. You gotta watch my eyes because this is really important. They're taking the cup. They're drinking like this. Notice where their eyes are at. They can see. They're they're aware of the situation and circumstances versus those. Right? Where are their eyes? Oh, look. Hey. There's a little fishy in there. Oh, look. Oh, I don't wanna drink this water. This is ugly water. Right? They don't wanna do that. And so so where is their security? You got masses of them down underneath, ignorant of what's going on. They they can't see the enemy in their neck and they're completely vulnerable. So only 300 of the men 300 of the men drank with their hands. The other got down on their knees and drank with their mouths into the stream.

Any of you ever thought, well, who am I? I'm just a small person going to a small church in an insignificant small community compared to the rest in Southern California. Can God use me? The answer we have learned is absolutely. But you can be too big for God to use. You can't be too small for God to use, but sure enough, you can be way too big for God to use. All of a sudden, the pride, the arrogance of what you've accomplished can overtake God's work in your life.

But if you think about it, tug of war is also a great illustration for spiritual life. You know, on one way, you're getting pulled backwards, backwards towards fear, towards comfort maybe, backwards towards doubt or backwards towards pride. Maybe even backwards towards sin. And other ways you're being pulled forward, pulled pulled towards Jesus, pulled towards Christ, towards your calling, towards your convictions, towards towards the presence of God. And so so you have this tug of war in life into which you're going backwards and forwards, and hopefully, you're making more impact going forward.

Chapter eight goes from triumph to travesty, from from great victory to utter ruin, if you will. Amazing victories turned, one, turned into political tribal disputes. Rather than rejoicing, one of the tribes comes and say, hey, we saw about your great victory. Why didn't you invite us? And so all of a sudden, it becomes pettiness. You oh, we wanted part of that victory. We wanted to be in on the on the raid. We wanted to be part there, and Gideon knew that they didn't. But look at what Gideon says. Gideon says that, you know what? It was God's, but he doesn't say it was God's fault. It was, I did this. Here's the truth, church. There's nothing more that Satan loves than to see Christians fighting one another. Exactly what happens in chapter eight. When we fight over our role, when we fight over our position or our ministry, instead of rejoicing in the Lord's working, the Lord's healing, the Lord's defeating, we dilute the victory.

He wanted to control where the people worshiped the Lord. And so he took that ephod, took it back to his hometown, and the text says that the people prostituted or hoard themselves out over the ephod. They hoard themselves. Never engaged in the services of a prostitute before, but I understand that the role is you pay money and you get pleasure. That's what I understand the role is. Right? Gideon has this Zephod, has this thing remembering a great victory, and they gotta they whore themselves out over it. They pay money to come and to pray. They they give of themselves in some way so that they can come and pray at the ephod. Gideon setting himself up as the arbitrator of who can worship and where they worship, and they're worshiping in Gideon's hometown. Incredible. And the people are coming to him, and they are worshiping him. In other words, Gideon didn't wanna become king, he wanted to become their priest.

The lord said to Gideon, you have too many warriors. You have too many warriors. And every commander in the world is going, what? I have too many warriors? If I let all of you fight the Midianites, the Israelites will boast to me that, if you have your bibles, mark this little passage. God bless you. They saved themselves by their own strength. Look at that. Only 32,000, 135,000. How did they do it? They were clever, they were smart, they were fantastic, they did it on their own strength. And God says, no, no. If you've got this many soldiers, you're gonna say, we did this on our own.