This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. The ironic is that the saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. Let me ask you this, isn't there a story behind every picture of at least a thousand words? Gideon is a picture that is far too more like ourselves than we would even probably like to admit. Let me start talking about that last week. In fact, we're finishing up this week this section in judges on Gideon. I do appreciate John Archer helping us to imagine that and get a picture of it in the form of a storyteller here. But be reminded again as I've been going to every single week. Look at the first slide here. What is the purpose of the book of judges? In those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. What's important about the purpose is that you've got to be seeing the purpose every time you're looking in the specifics of the details of a book as large as judges. You've got to be thinking that this story of Gideon, this experience of Gideon is still getting us back to the overall purpose of why this book is written. There's no king, and that's a problem. Everyone is doing what's right in their own eyes, and Gideon was no exception to that story or that rule, and I bet if you're like me, that you're no exception to that as well too. Left to yourself, left without the reigning Lord Jesus Christ in your heart, you'll do what is right in your own eyes to the best of your ability. You'll even fool yourselves to think that it's righteous, that it's the right thing, that it's a good thing. You'll compare yourselves with others and think I'm a lot better than that person, or you'll get involved with a religion that helps you feel good about moral behavior, whatever the case might be. But God is going to bring us back to as he does with Gideon in this story about the need for the one true king to be present in our life. Well, as we looked at last week about Gideon, we talked about some of his struggles and weaknesses, because God brought him into this battle to defeat the Midianite Army, and you wanted to make sure they got the glory for it. So help me recalling what were some of the weaknesses, if you were here last week, or just know the story, that Gideon had and brought to the table, and why Gideon was the perfect choice to deliver the Israelites. Help me out. He came from a small clan. What? He was the youngest? There were more. He had fear of others right when he turned on the idols at night when nobody could see what he was doing. Did he had daddy issues? Oh yeah. All right. Is that worse than false gods? What else? He was from the smallest clan with that. And what about the group that he had with them? 32,000 strong, right? No God, we did that down to about a tenth of that, right? 300 strong. Under my end, ready for battle, right? Sword and shield in hand? Not quite, right? Torch, bowl, trumpet in hand, or horn, whatever. All this was set up. God wanted to make it very clear who's the one that was going to get the glory in this battle. But there was one you might call it the Achilles heel for Gideon in the story. Although he had all these weaknesses, all these struggles, things that were going to glorify and exalt God in this situation. He brought something else to the table. In fact, it was the last thing we mentioned last week that he also brought to the table that became very problematic. What was that? Pride. The battle cry was, do it for God and for Gideon. Do it for God and for Gideon. And we're going to look here in more details here this morning about how that played out. What was really rooted behind that? Because this part in judges chapter 8, the part that we heard John kind of recounting for, helps us get a glimpse of that. If you're following along the side, you're bolting on the outline here. We have three main things to look at. One is Gideon wanted kingship. Gideon wanted kingship. Now you might look at first glance here and go, wow, it sound like he was really deflecting that because he says in judges 8, 22 to 23, he says the Israelites said to Gideon, rule over us, you, your son and your grandson because you have saved us out of the hand of Midian. But Gideon told them, I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you. Now the chapter ended there. You might think that's pretty good response. That God should be king. God should be the one ruling over that. If you look at it and you're honest, Gideon talks a good game, but unfortunately his walk is very different. And that's what I want to look at here under this point here. Gideon's walk was quite a bit different. Gideon didn't want the responsibility that came with being a king, but don't get Gideon wrong. Gideon was all about the glory that came with being like a king. Look at the examples here. One, in this verse here where it says the Israelites said to Gideon, rule over us, they actually say because you, Gideon, have saved us. And Gideon here had a classic opportunity. He had a great opportunity to go, hold on, hold on, wait a minute now. Do we need to review the facts of the story? Smallest clan, daddy issues, youngest in my tribe. My dad was a worshiping other gods here. I had only 300 men. We didn't even have swords and shields. God gave a dream to the Midianites. Many nights were scared. God came into the camp, scattered them. I mean, he could have gone through and reviewed you that whole thing, but his silence, his silence spoke volumes. He didn't set the record straight. Remember as far as Gideon was concerned, it was do it for God and for Gideon. And now that the battle was over, now that the part that he really needed the strength of God was passed, then he was defeated. Now it wasn't so much to do it for God and Gideon. There's more, just do it for Gideon. His silence screamed the reality that his heart was longing to be the one that would be the glory from that. And sure enough, that's what happened. Gideon wanted kingship, but not to be a king. Interestingly too, the story you got, if you don't know more about the meaning of the words, his son named Abemalek, the best interpretation in the Hebrew of that word, Abemalek means my father, the king. All right, he'd already told the people, no, no, no, no, God's going to be a king. But what should I name my first son? My father, the king. That sounds pretty good. But it betrays him. And how often are you like me in living a life that you say one thing, even claim one thing, you'll defend something else about your devotion to God perhaps, but your very actions betray you. You know, we'll talk, we'll sing about God being the most important part of our lives. But we can, we have a hard time squeezing in time to read his word. We're fearful to speak about God in public. Or when the issues come up or somebody has a question, our actions will betray us so often to prove that the reality in our heart is not what we'd like it to be. And it wasn't that way for Gideon. The name of his son was just one more explanation of that Gideon wanted kingship. One of the things happened. He wanted the plunder of a king. You already heard John Archer share that in a story there versus 24 to 25 chapter 8. And he said to them, I do have one request that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder because it was the custom of the Ishmaelites to wear gold earrings. Why does it say that? It means there was a lot. They just defeated them. They took all the earrings. It was not just, because you read that at first you think, oh, you just took the earrings. It's not that much. Everybody wore them. The answer will be glad to give them. So they spread out a garment and each man threw a ring from his plunder into it. Again, not the responsibility of a king, but certainly the reward of a king. He takes the plunder. Not only that, he goes on, he makes with that. He makes a gold ephod. And John mentioned a little bit about what that was. That was this kind of like vest like thing that the high priest would wear. And one of the things that you don't know, as you know more about the story of the high priest and what was part of that, there was something in that called the yurum and the fumum, which were, we don't know exactly what they were, but apparently they were the size that could fit into a pocket of this ephod of the priest war. And they were used as a way to determine what the will of God was. Some scholars believe that it was maybe some type of like maybe two actual like sticks or rods that were exactly the same and the priest would reach in. And depending on what he would pull out, it would be one thing or pull out the other one. And this would be their way of helping it to determine what God's will was in a specific instance. The prophets was one way, but this was one way the priest would have an involvement with that. So here you got a guy. Again, he doesn't want to have the role of king or ruler with that, but what he is quite glad to do is to say, hey, you know, I am the guy though that God spoke to. And I am the guy that seems to have this connection with God. And if you want to find out what God wants or you want to come and have direct connection, you ought to come to me. And he could have made lots of things right with all that gold, but he chooses to make something that only the high priest was supposed to wear. He chooses to do it in his own hometown, not where the tabernacle was, not where the priests were. He's not a Levite himself. He doesn't have a right to wear this, but he decides that he's the guy that should wear something like this. He wants to be the guy that they'll come to. They'll seek the Lord's will. He wants that power and prestige. He wanted kingship. Not only that, it goes on that the text tells us that he had many wives and he had concubines. First 30 says he had 70 sons of his own for he had many wives. Then it goes on and tells us a story about one of his concubines. So this is one of the luxuries again that a king would have had to have many, many wives to have 70 sons with that. He led the lifestyle. Here's the point. Gideon wanted the glory. Gideon wanted the perks of a king, but best case scenario, he was a poser king. He wanted to look like it, but he knew deep down who had delivered them for the minion nights. He knew the one that deserved all the glory and the honor, but he was quite fine taking what he thought was his share of it. It was pride. Gideon wanted kingship. And what are we told in verse 33, the last part of this chapter, it tells us this that no sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites began prostituting themselves to bail. They set up bail barracks or God and did not did not remember the Lord their God who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side. They did not remember. And who was the main storyteller at this particular time to tell them who had delivered them? Gideon. And let me talk to any of you here in this room that have any role of leadership at all parents, husbands, your role of leadership at work, your role of leadership at school, you have a responsibility as a leader to make sure that the glory goes to God and all circumstances. God uses leaders. God raises up leaders. God says, hey, look, don't talk bad about your leaders, even if they're not followers of me because I've established them, Romans chapter 13. Whether they're current presidents, future presidents, whether they're government officials, whether they're school principals, your school teachers, whether they're your bosses, don't speak bad about them because I've established all authority. And with that freedom comes responsibility. God calls leaders to speak and to be the primary storytellers. Look at your area of leadership. Are you a storyteller about the goodness and the faithfulness of God? It's your responsibility because God works through leaders. Are you passing the story along? Gideon didn't. Gideon began to leave out that detail about God doing it all. And no wonder the people forgot. Parents, you want your kids to follow God? You better tell the story of who God is and his faithfulness and the reality of him and your life. The good, the bad, both. Don't just tell me how God's blessed. You tell them about how God has forgiven you for your mistakes and your curses. The things that you've done that deserve the curse of God, how God is so graciously forgiven you. Have that kind of model before your kids. And you'll point them to God. But Gideon isn't alone in his desire for kingship, not at all. He's in good company. Point number two. You want kingship. Not just Gideon, you want it. And the reason why I know you want it is because I want it. We're part of this thing called the human race. We're the ones made in the image of God who walked away from that and defiled that and chose self righteousness over the righteousness of God. We want kingship. We often want the glory of the king just like Gideon did. You know, kings are glorified for two primary reasons. Just think about this through history. Okay. For two primary things that kings do. One, they bring protection to their people. I mean, after all, the king cannot conquer the enemy. If a king cannot lead you to victory and battle, what good is he to sit on the throne of the palace? None. Not only that, but if your king doesn't just protect you, but if he's not a provider for you, what good is that? If you win all the battles, but you have no food to eat in the city, there's a problem. And nobody wants to exalt the king who's not providing for his people. Protection and provision come hand in hand with any king. And in fact, think about it in John 6, when Jesus is one of probably several times that he feeds the multitudes. One time, at least when he's feeding them this 5,000, he gives them to him. It tells us that he goes off to a quiet place to the mountaintop afterwards. Why? Because they wanted to make him king by force, the text says. Why do they want to make him king by force? Because if your king can take one little kid's snack lunch and feed 5,000 men, not counting women and children, whoa, that's the guy you want to follow. That's the guy you want to charge. Kings protect. Kings provide. So why in the world then would you and me want to be king of our lives? The reason is because we think we do a better job protecting and providing for ourselves than God does. That's what Gideon thought. That's what we think. Let me show you why. You crave the glory of a protector king, but you look for the protection in yourself and of yourself. You look for protection from the hell of humanity that surrounds you and you do whatever is necessary to set yourself free from that. Let me give you some examples. Look at humanity and crisis. Here is just a sampling of the kinds of things you can read about in today's headlines in your newspaper or on the news. About part of the problems that we face as humanity, immorality, impurity, lust, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, just to name a few. And most of us would be glad. Hey, we could just knock off one of those. If we could just scratch through one of those. Gosh, this world would be a better place. Wow, my life would be a better place. My job would be better. School would be a lot more fun. Our home life as a family would be so much better. My friendships would be more meaningful. Let me just scratch off one of them. And this is just a sample of the issues that we face, that we long for protection from. You want to be your own protector king over these areas, but a problem is you're trapped within the same hell humanity where these come from. You're part of the environment. You're not outside able to attack the enemy, but the enemy is around you and within you. And it's the terrible reality, but it's a true reality. Let me give you a case of point here when you and I bet all of you have to one degree or another been betrayed by a friend. There's something in you, justice wise, rightously that says, look, that's wrong. Friends do not betray friends. Whether it's your friend that gossiped behind your back. Whether it's your friend that said, hey, I'll always be there for you. Then all of a sudden you weren't so popular anymore and they found somebody else. Whether somebody you're married to. And it's turned their back on you. You pick the form of a trail, but when we are betrayed, we will come to a place here. You know what? We'll see that in that righteousness and that sense of justice inside of us will well up and say, look, there is an enemy that needs to be protected and I need to be protected from. But what do we do? Well, if the trail is your issue, you probably start with being angry, angry. That's the first thing you probably feel because you haven't violated. But it's not just a righteous anger like Jesus had. Jesus had righteous anger because you don't begin to think about the people that you betrayed. You just think that the people that betrayed you. So you come with unrighteous anger. Your anger leads to quarreling because you know doubt when I have a conversation with this person. You're quarreling leads to dissension. There's a separation that begins to happen there. You can often lead to hostility whether it's physically, verbally, emotionally, whatever. And you know, it will probably always end up leading to division. That's how you in me protect ourselves, which is join the list. Or maybe for you, maybe it's not that. Maybe it's a, you know, imagine if you're a poor, needy person. Imagine if you're living in poverty. And for us, most of us who have to imagine that because that's not our situation. But can you imagine somebody who's living in that situation? How easy is it to feel jealous or to have envy? A smile that has more than you. And that's where it begins often, isn't it? Feeling jealousy or envy. Then they can lead to anger, thinking, man, you know, why do they have more than I have? Why do they grow up where they did in their part of town? Why did their family have money and mind in it? Why are they getting opportunities that I'm not? You can lead from anger there. You can go on it soon after that to selfish ambition. I want it. And before you know it leads to immorality. Somebody stealing something, somebody's taking something, somebody's saying, hey, it ain't going to come to me if I don't get it myself. Maybe it's you're the mistreated employee. You're in a place of work and a superior overuse not treating you well. What are you going to do? Well, you're going to probably get angry. You're going to probably go from there to dissension. There's going to be a disagreement that you're going to have with the boss. You're not getting adequately renovated what you think you're worth or doing. And before that, you probably lead to some form of hostility. There'll be a fighter argument. There'll probably be a division at some point. You'll disagree. And hopefully the division won't include you losing your job. But it could. And is it too hard to imagine when that person loses their job and it appointed despair? All of a sudden is driving home drunk, trying to cope with reality and cope with life. And before you know it, their car is out of control. Do you understand that in our attempt to righteously respond to a sinful world that we live in here? We are consumed with the very same things that we want to be protected from. But we would rather have the crown of kingship on our head than somebody else to deliver us. We choose these options. We choose to fight for ourselves as weak and as impotent as it is. We'll do that in our kingship fails every time. Well, it's not just the glory of a protector. We want that provision as well in our lives. We want to be provided for. We look for provision to live in the reality of a world that we know we were made for. What I mean by that is this. Larry Krabb writes in one of his books he talks about how, you know, part of the problem is for us is that we were made to live in perfection. We were made to live in a sinful world. I mean, I'm sorry, a sinless world. You wonder why you have trouble coping with things sometimes. You wonder why life feels like it's falling apart. You just can't emotionally get around it and psychologically be with it because you weren't made to live in a sinful place. You weren't made to live with a sinful nature inside of you. You weren't designed that way. And just like your car as much as you would love it to right now, it does not run off water. You can't live your life running off something that you weren't designed to live by. But yet we do it. We try it. We got the garden hose hooked up to our gas tank of our life thinking this has got to work. It's liquid. It will fill the tank, right? But it doesn't work. We try to revive for ourselves in our own way. We try to seek things like this. Look at this next list. Humanity crisis versus humanity seeking. Here are just four popular things that I've picked here that we will seek to provide for ourselves. And there's not a single person on this planet that's not in some way shape or form looking for love. I mean, can you imagine and think about it for a second? How many songs have been written with this as the theme or a sub theme? How many books sit in Barnes and Noble that do not have either this as a primary theme or a sub theme? How many stories are you interested in reading or hearing about if this is not present at least somewhere, if not a dominant theme in it? We are looking for it. We are wanting to provide the thing that we know we need. But we can't find it just like foreigners saying, I want to know what love is. I want you to show me. We're just as clueless. What about happiness? My goodness. Especially living in the United States of America. Is there any culture that seeks happiness more than this culture? And more that says, hey, you can achieve the American dream. Let me just give you two avenues where this happens. Think about entertainment. Think about how big a role does entertainment and that industry play in your life. I'm willing to gamble that every single person here has at least one TV in your house. I'm willing to gamble here that your car, even though the AC may not work, your radio does. And I bet the majority here own an iPod or some kind of MP3 player. I bet you've seen a movie in the past month, even though my finances maybe are tight. And you're sure of a glass of red box video because you can get it for a dollar, a video now. Whatever entertainment is an industry that's exploding. And it's not just because it's part of culture and arts. And it is some of that. I'm not saying anything's bad about entertainment. I'm saying entertainment is trying to fill a void of happiness. And it's never enough. It's never enough. Think about how much entertainment plays a part. Think about how much from medicating ourselves, especially in our culture, to try to find happiness. 20 years ago, none of you probably would have even known what serotonin was. But I bet the majority of you do. Because we're like, gosh, we've got to find a fix for unhappiness. We've got to provide for ourselves. And don't hear me wrong. I'm not saying they're not appropriate reasons for medication. But if medication or entertainment is your trust and it is your hope in life to be happy, then do hear me clearly. You are in trouble if that is your hope. And you will be sadly disappointed. And don't spend your 77 average years of life now. That's pretty good. Don't spend it seeking that because it will not satisfy. What about inner and outer peace? Oh my goodness. That comes right along with happiness. But we're seeking that. I mean, think about the amount, the industry of professional counselors now and psychologists. Think about the industry of lawyers. You can't find peace with other people. Take them to court. Think about that whole industry and how we are craving it. We're seeking to provide for ourselves. And again, not that there's not legitimate and good times to do all those things. Think about goodness. Think about faithfulness. And we long and we lift up faithfulness and we want to be faithful as long as it serves our purposes. And as long as somebody else is willing to be faithful to us first, then we are all for faithfulness. But you take a moment when somebody is unfaithful to you and that deals off deals off. We long for goodness and charity and things like that just reading CNN this week. How about you probably heard about about the guy that's paying for free gas for people just sits at the gas station and waits for people to come up and just whoever he thinks might pay it on to somebody else. So come up and say, let me buy your tank of gas and people are crying at the gas station because here's somebody that's willing to play 50 or 60 bucks to fill their tank with gas for no apparent reason. We're longing for true goodness and satisfaction. The problem is though you are trapped within self-deception and self-righteous in your own skin and you can't see how powerless you really are. We're motivated to write the songs about love but we're not motivated enough to find out where is the true source of it. You pick it. If I guarantee you, you are trying to be your protector and you're trying to be your provider in your life if it's not God, you're trying to do it in some way, shape or form. Best you can do, just like Gideon, is be a poser king. That's the best case scenario. And you're not filling God unless we're not even fooling other people. We're just all trying to do the same thing. Number three, Jesus is the king. Jesus is the king. Look at the irony of this. People, men and women exalt themselves as king and the attempt to protect and provide for themselves but there's one who is the king and he humbles himself and becomes a person, a man. We'll live our lives trying to prove that we're worthy to wear the crown and the one who has the crown takes it off and says, hey, give me some human skin instead and I'll become a man. By the way, you find that in any of the other popular world religions out there where God becomes a man and dies for his people and you'll understand why Christianity sets itself apart and stands alone.
When we talked about two last week, if you don't have other religions, then you simply have the religion of self comparison. You compare yourself to others and try to make yourself feel better because you think I'm better than so and so. That's really what's behind secular humanism. That's really what's behind atheism and things like that. It's like, hey, I don't need a world religion to tell me another way to prove myself worthy. I'm just going to compare myself to you and I'm looking pretty good compared to you. That's the mentality. Here's Jesus saying, I'll become like you, not with any decay of sinfulness, but I'll come and live among you. I'll come and I'll touch the people that nobody wants to touch like the lepers. I'll come hang out with the people that religious people are too good to hang out with, like the prostitutes, like the tax collectors. I'll hang out with you. I'll invite you to be part of my people. That's how Jesus comes. There's two lists that I kind of gave you there. Those lists come exactly from Galatians 5, but let me put it in context where the Bible talks about it. Galatians chapter 5, I think a slide for it. Look at some of these things don't look similar. The acts of the simple nature are obvious. Sexual morality, impurity, debauchery, adultery, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits a rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warned you as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things. There is no law. What does God say? God says, look, the very things that you need to be definitive from are the very things that are part of who you are. They're part of the simple nature, and you can't fix the problem when you're part of it. You've got to have somebody outside the problem to fix the problem. And it is the fruit of the spirit that brings love, joy, peace, and patience, and kindness. It's not the fruit of your own self-righteousness. It's not the fruit of self-comparrison or other world religions. It's the fruit that only comes from God. That's what he's saying. The story of Gideon was that God could use anybody willing to trust him to deliver his people. And therefore, it's deserving of all the glory. That was Gideon's story. What's your story? Your story is that the true king has rescued you with all powerful protection and provision and is therefore deserving of all the glory. God is the true king. That's our story. He's the one that's protected us. He's the one that provides for us, and he does that through the life of Christ. Dying to ourselves, living in that. We've talked a lot about stories. We started off with a story. Here's the climax of today's story. We're at it right now. What will you decide? And what do you decide today? Will you relinquish the crown that you desire to wear and give it to Jesus? I mean, isn't it interesting in Revelation? It tells us in the future what we will do and they laid their crowns down at his feet. Jesus is inviting you to do that starting now. Don't wait till heaven. Lay your crown of control, being your own king, your own master, lay it at his feet. And if you've never invited Jesus Christ to be your Lord savior, let me ask you and encourage you to do that here this morning. Say, hey, God, I'm done trying to do the king job. I'm done trying to be a poser. You're the king. I give you my crown, my control. Give me your crown of righteousness. Emble of me with your love. Come forgive me. If you're here this morning and you are a follower of Christ and you know there's areas of your life right now where his Lordship is screaming and saying, God is one in control of the area of your life. If you're wondering if God's wanting control of your area of your life, just find the area where things are going crazy and wrong and where there's disaster and you'll hear where the spirit of God is saying, look, here's where your loving God is coming saying, I want in because I love you. Let me end of that relationship. Let me end of that financial situation. Let me end of that brokenness and the healing from things from the past. Let me end from your fear and anxiety about school or job. God's knocking come. Give him lordship and rain in that area. Come invite him to lead. Let's pray. Fathers, we your people now respond here this morning. God will you remind us and show us where we are at in the story your story because the stories are the same. You have chosen your story to intersect ours. And even though we churn from you, even though we said in the Garden of Eden, we don't want to be a part of your story. You have come after us with the holy passion to redeem the people for yourself. God, let us respond to that and come back. Come return. Whether it's those this morning that are trusting you for the first time, relinquishing control, or whether it's all of us here, God, once again, recommitting ourselves and inviting you God to come into the areas of our life. So God, come work. Come move in our presence. Come transform us. Fathers, we pray. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.