Interpreting the Input
Judges 6
December 2, 2001
Last Wednesday, I was in the office preparing for last week’s sermon about inviting God to Shatter the Silence, and this man literally just busted into the room. No telephone call, no knock, no announcement of his intentions he just barged in. If you have ever been to my office you know that it used to be a janitor’s closet and my desk sits about 5 feet from the door. So when he came the fright almost knocked me out of my seat.
He asked me if I knew where some attorney was. I did not know, but I knew that he wasn’t in my building so I offered to look up his phone number and call him but the man said no and walked out. About 2 seconds later the door opened again and he said is this some kind of church or something, we have a plaque that says Dayspring Community Church on the door. I said yes and he said, could I put in a prayer request? I said sure what is on your mind. He began to tell me the most unfortunate story. Apparently he and his wife had been involved in some bad things and then they came to know the Lord. But they did not pay the price of discipleship and they drifted away and the drifting essentially cost them their children and now they were faced with the possibility of her losing her freedom. I asked him if I could pray with him and before we knelt down he said, “I think the Lord is trying to tell me something, I’m just not real sure what it is.” After he left, it hit me that positioning yourself in such a way as to invite God to shatter the silence doesn’t complete the process. Communication is only successful when the party that is listening understands what the speaker is saying. So today I want to complete our study on hearing from God by examining how to properly interpret the input.
Just as a reminder, last week we discovered from Samuel that for God to shatter the silence we should prepare ourselves by practicing the disciplines of service, solitude, and surrender to anything he might desire. Today by examining the life of another hero of our faith, we will discover when God speaks, and we will develop a set of questions we can ask of God, ourselves, and our circumstances that will help us interpret His input.
Turn in your Bibles to Judges 6:11-24 (READ). We are going to examine the encounter and call to arms of Gideon.
First question that I want to answer, is how we can have confidence that it is truly God that is speaking. There are 2 times when God typically speaks.
God speaks and gives guidance in times of worship or seeking. Two Bible verses to hang on to here before we look at Gideon.
Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the patter of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” In other words, our ability to hear and interpret God’s voice will be heightened in times of spiritual exercise or bliss, those times when we are worshipping. The closer you are to God the more likely you are to get a word you can be sure about.
Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This promise covers times of spiritual doubt as well as spiritual bliss. It says that in those times when you are not close to God, as a matter of fact in times of doubt, confusion, and even anger, if you turn to God for the answer he will give you one. But you have to turn to him.
Which of these 2 circumstances do we find Gideon in? What is going on here? The Israelites are in a time of political oppression because of a season of spiritual rebellion. God has sent the Midianites to exact judgement on Israel because the scripture says they did evil in the eyes of the Lord. The Midianites would allow Israel to plant their crops and get them ready for harvest, and then at harvest time, they would invade their land like a swarm of locusts and ravage it, taking the harvest and then destroying the crops. Forcing the people of Israel to move out of their cities and into caves in the mountains for protection. When the time was right, they would sneak down to their fields, harvest what they could in secret and then go and hide as they processed them for consumption.
This is what we find Gideon doing when the angel of the Lord appears to him. Verse 11 says that Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress. A winepress was a large vat where the grapes were stomped. It was typically at the bottom of a hill and was all wrong for the threshing of wheat. That was done on the top of the mountains in the open where the wind was strongest. The wheat was tossed into the air the wind carried the chaff away and the heavier kernels of wheat fell to the ground. But in the winepress, Gideon was safe because he was in secret, but he was unsuccessful because he was getting no wind.
Verse 7 informed us that the Israelites had been crying out to the Lord because of Midian and I have to believe that Gideon had joined the choir. As a matter of fact, I think that Gideon, out of frustration was seeking some answers while he was wasting his time down in the winepress threshing wheat. “What in the world is going on here Lord? We are your chosen people. Okay we have strayed a little, but we need some help down here. Midian is going to literally eat us for lunch and your supposed people are going to at least be driven from the PROMISED LAND and into extinction.” I can’t know for sure, but it’s possible that in frustration and anger Gideon was seeking some answers from the Lord and if you seek you will find. So God responded.
Two times that you can rely on God to speak. In times of worship of course, but also in times of seeking and it was here in the winepress that Gideon was seeking answers. So we can be reasonably confident in these two situations that God will speak.
Which leads to the second question we are going to ask today, how in the world can we know what He is saying?
The thing that complicates understanding God’s voice is the multiplicity of voices that come your way at all times. From my experience, I hear God’s voice the same way I hear the voice of distraction, it comes in the form of an idea. The little light bulb pops up over your head. Whether you are in a time of worship or seeking, when God speaks there is going to be a burst of excitement or anticipation because the idea that came to your mind is typically a solution. It involves something great and excitement is sure to follow. But is this your idea, or God’s? The question that should enter your mind as you are growing and learning to hear from God, is how do I know that it was Him and not me.
Look at verse 14 here and see what God said to Gideon (READ).
That must have sounded like a good idea to Gideon. Who wouldn’t like to be used by God to save a whole nation and be a hero. But at this point Gideon was not sure that it was the Lord who was speaking to him, like many of our ideas the man delivering this message seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
So Gideon asked for a sign that this bright idea had come from the Lord. Verse 17 says, “Gideon replied, ‘If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me.’” I believe that this type of question is a fair one to ask. Many people say that you should not ask God for signs, you should just follow his directions. But that stance presupposes that everyone always knows when it is God they are hearing from.
The truth is that discerning God’s voice comes with practice. If you are new to it like Gideon was, then you can and should work toward clarification in determining if it is God’s voice that you hear. Gideon asked for a sign, God gave it to him. As a matter of fact, if you read his entire story, Gideon is continually asking for signs that he is following God’s will, and once God offers him a sign without Gideon even asking.
Our situation is a little different that Gideon’s. As believer’s we have the full revelation of God’s word, and the indwelling presence of God living in us. With this sort of equipment, we can thoroughly examine the voices by asking the right questions, and in the end determine with reasonable assurance whether this is God or not.
What are these questions?
3 QUESTIONS OF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES:
#1 Will the execution of this idea cost me anything? God’s instructions are wrapped in the envelope of sacrifice. There may or may not be some personal benefit in what you are led to do from God, but if it is all about personal benefit, then you should proceed with extreme caution if at all.
#2 Ask about the investment. Will following this plan ultimately invest in people. One thing is for sure about Jesus, he was in the people business. His primary concern was showing & extending love, grace, and mercy to people. If what you are being led to do will ultimately be building value in people then chances are this idea is from God.
#3 Ask about advancement. Will I be advancing the kingdom of God by personal growth; by equipping the saints for the work of ministry; or plowing ground &/or sowing seed? If following through means that God’s kingdom is going to come, this too might be God’s idea.
1 QUESTION TO ASK OF GOD
Ask about encouragement. Ask the Lord to confirm His idea by granting you encouragement to carry on. God offered Gideon this kind of encouragement. Look at Judges 7:10-11 (READ).
God said if you are still afraid, I’ll give you a sign of encouragement. So Gideon and his right hand man go down there and they hear one guy telling another about a nightmare he had. His friends response was, this can only be the hand of Gideon who is going to crush us. Gideon enthused by this conversation gets up, goes and rallies the troops and its game on.
God recognizes that you and I need encouragement from time to time. Listen, He is pulling for us. He does not want us to be afraid of making the wrong decision and so he will do what is necessary to build our faith to the point that we can and will attempt what He is telling us to do. God is not the kind of instructor to give an assignment and then just hang you out to dry. He will be thoroughly involved in what you are doing and will give you the courage to carry on.
Historically, He has used two means to grant his people courage: His word and his people. When you ask for encouragement from God, ask him to confirm what He wants from you through his word. When he give you a verse to hang onto, write it down, place it in your memory banks and get on with the program.
Also be sure that you ask God for encouragement through His church. When Nikki and I thought that God was calling us into ministry we asked God to confirm his call through his church. That’s what He did. Within a couple of days we got a note in the mail from a friend that we hadn’t heard from in a couple of years saying that we were on her heart and mind and she was praying for us. I spoke with one of my mentors who said that he had in his day timer that he needed to speak with me about going into the ministry. Over and over again at every turn we received encouragement from the body of Christ that reinforced what we believed God was calling us to do.
Let me say this. If you don’t have someone that you can turn to for guidance when you think you are hearing from God, then you need to find someone. This person needs to be someone who pulls for you and is not threatened by you. This person should be someone whose walk with the Lord you can trust, and they should have the ability to stop you dead in your tracks and cause you to think twice about the direction you are going. Not that they are always right, but at least they have your ear to the point that you will stop and consider what they are saying. This is the kind of person that God will use time and time again in your life, and each of us needs that individual. So we need to ask for encouragement and encouragers.
1 QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF.
Is this idea consistent with my gifting? Does this idea line up with your gifting, passions, and experiences, but beyond my abilities.
Two considerations here. First, could you do what God is calling you to do without God? IF the answer is yes, then even if the thing is a good thing, it is not God’s thing. God’s assignments cause us to have to rely upon Him. His desire is to work on this earth through us. If you can do it then it is too small, but if y’all can do it, if it requires you and God’s gracious gifting then the assignment might very well be from God.
Second, whatever God is calling you to do, should fit you to a T. God saved you and equipped you with gifts to accomplish his purposes. His ideas call for your utilization of those gifts for the building up of the body of Christ. He will not call you to do something that would make you and everyone around you miserable.
God’s ideas will not waste our gifts, passions, and our experiences. If we are supposed to be good stewards of these things, then we know for sure that God’s intent is to be a good steward of them.
Gideon, felt inadequate to do what He was being called to do. In Judges 6:15 Gideon responds to the Lord, “How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” But God said I will be with you. In your weakness, I will be strong.
Gideon you bring your passion to the table and I will bring my strength. I believe that God is saying that to each of us when he calls.
You bring your passion, gifting, and experience to the table, and I will bring my strength.
It is not always easy to discern the will and voice of God, but it is always possible. Worship God, turn to Him in frustration and when you hear from him, ask those discerning questions in an attempt to stay in His will.
