In this youth-oriented sermon, the speaker retells the biblical story of Gideon (Judges 6) with vivid, contemporary illustrations. The narrative begins with Gideon hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat to feed his family while the Midianites dominate Israel. An unknown messenger declares, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior,” prompting Gideon to question the claim and request a sacrificial sign. After offering a large loaf and a goat, the angel confirms the call with a miraculous sign, assuring Gideon he will not die. The angel then commissions Gideon to destroy the Asherah pole and Baal altar in his father’s house, which Gideon does covertly with a servant. The next morning the community discovers the idols destroyed and seeks the perpetrator, leading to Gideon’s confession. Throughout, the speaker emphasizes that serving God does not require perfection or greatness; even the least, like Gideon, can be called to be a “mighty warrior.” The sermon draws practical lessons for youth: suit up spiritually by giving your best, trust divine confirmation, act courageously in obedience, and understand that God equips the seemingly insignificant for His work.
Chapters
Today I'd like to talk about what it means spiritually to suit up. What does it mean to give your best to the General? One thing that it doesn't mean is to be perfect, that you have to be something great in order to serve God. And there are many, many, many illustrations of this in the Bible, but my favorite one is a young man who was hiding in a hole in the ground, and he had taken some of the wheat from his father's field, and he had gone to this old winepress, which basically what they used to do is throw all the They would pile grapes in a big hole and everyone would jump in and stomp on them until there was grape juice. Then they would scoop it up and they would drink grape juice and toe jam together. And that's how they made their grape juice. And I'm sure it fermented more quickly with whatever's between your toes in the middle of the grapes. But that was what a wine press was. And he's down in the bottom of this wine press with the wheat. And he's threshing the wheat. Because the enemy has grown so strong, the Midianites are so strong, that if they see an Israelite doing anything in the field that looks like harvest, they're fine, you can come out and you can plant. Plant seed, that's fine. You can come out and you can water it, you can tend it, you can weed it. But if you start picking it, the Midianites will come and they'll say, "Ah, I see you've got a nice harvest. We'll take that, thank you very much." And so this young man has taken some of the harvest on the sly, off the corner of the field when no Midianites were looking, and he has made his way to the old winepress and climbed down inside. And he's down there threshing the wheat so he can have a little bit of wheat to make a little bit of bread so that his family can have food. And as he's there in this hole, hiding from the enemy, and he can barely see what he's doing because the sun is just off on the horizon, and there's— it's dark in this hole, he doesn't hear the footsteps as someone walks up. And someone walks right up to the edge of his pit, and they look down, and there down in the pit is young Gideon. And this person, who Gideon didn't know, didn't even know was there yet, looks down at him and says the most amazing thing to somebody hiding in a hole threshing wheat. He says this: "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." And Gideon just, first of all, I'm sure he freaked out, because there's a voice and he's like, "Ah! They caught me!" Then he looks up and he realizes it's not a Midianite, it's somebody dressed like a traveler, somebody from a distance. I don't know who they are, but 'What a stupid thing to say,' he says to the person. 'How can you say the Lord is with me? Do you see where I am? Do you see what I'm doing? It's not grape season. It's not even the season for the harvest. It's a little early. But I'm down in this grape press threshing wheat so that I can keep it because our enemy is so strong. And you say the Lord is with us? If the Lord is with us, why am I down in this pit? If the Lord is with us, why are we so afraid of the Midianites? Why are they so strong and we're so small? Why is it that their camels are like the sands of the sea It's like the seashore, and we're like one little seashell full of sand. If the Lord is with us. You know who I am? No, of course you don't know who I am. My name's Gideon. I'm the youngest son of my father, the least of his brothers. He's the least of the tribes of his brothers. And we live in a little podunk town out in the middle of nowhere. And my father's the priest of that town. And we don't even have enough stuff just to have a happy town. How can you tell me when I'm the least of the least of the least and I'm in a hole in the ground that I'm a mighty warrior? And this messenger says, because I have come from God to tell you that. And Gideon has this kind of oh my goodness feeling, and he climbs up the side of the pit, and he comes up and he starts looking at this man, and he realizes maybe, maybe this is Maybe this is a messenger from God. Maybe this is an angel. And so Gideon doesn't know what to do, and so he says, "Well, so you say you're from God." He says, "Yes, yes, I've come from God just to tell you that he has a great work for you to do, that you are his warrior, you are his champion." "But how can I be sure that you're from God?" "I don't know, how can you be sure that I'm from God?" "I have an idea, I want to make a sacrifice, and I'll bring you a sacrifice, an offering." And if you accept the offering, then I'll trust that by your accepting the offering— I mean, that's a bold thing to do if you're not really a messenger, you know. So I'll bring an offering back. And the angel says, that's fine, you go, Gideon. And so Gideon goes back home, and when he comes back, he brings a whole lamb to sacrifice— or a goat, sorry— and a bowl of soup or broth. And it says that he makes a loaf of bread. And if you look up In Judges, Judges 6 I think it is, where he makes this loaf of bread, he uses— now I'm not much of a cook, but he uses something like 5 or 6 bags of flour to make one loaf of bread. And so I don't know if he didn't know what he was doing and he's just like pouring flour all over the place, or whether he's thinking, well, look, if this really is God, then I should make a really big loaf of bread. But the proportions that the Bible says he made is, it's a lot of wheat. And so anyway, he makes, I imagine, this big loaf of bread. And he brings this big loaf of bread, and he brings this goat, and he brings this bowl of broth, and he sacrifices the goat on the stone in front of this angel. Sacrifices the goat, and the angel says, "Just put the meat there on the rock." And so he does. And then he says, "Now pour the broth over the meat. Set the bread on top of the meat." And so Gideon does all this, and the angel walks forth with his staff, And he just taps the rock, and poof! Smoke goes up in the air. And there's just a cloud of smoke everywhere. And Gideon starts coughing and waving, and as the smoke clears, and he looks around, he looks down at the rock, and there's a rock. But there's no meat. There's no moisture at all on the rock from the broth. There's no bread. And as he looks around, he realizes there's no angel either. And Gideon starts to tremble. He realizes, I've seen God. And I know what Moses says about if you see God, no man can look upon God. I've seen his face. And he yells out loud, I'm gonna die! Lord, please don't kill me! I've seen your face, I don't wanna die! And this voice just says, you're not gonna die, Moses. I mean, Gideon. I'm sure he said that to Moses too, somewhere. You're not gonna die, Gideon. And Gideon looks around, he says, "Where are you?" "I'm here." "Oh, okay, um, I believe you now." "That's good, Gideon. Your little test was fun." "Okay, um, so you said you had something for me to do?" "Yes, Gideon, your father has— he's the priest in his village, but he has idols to false gods." Before I can put you to work, I need you to go and knock those idols down. Get rid of those false idols out of your home. Okay, okay, I'll do that for you, Lord. After it's dark, when nobody's looking, is that okay? That's fine, Gideon. And so he makes his way home and he goes to bed like normal, sleeps there, pretends like he's sound asleep, waits until he hears his dad go to bed. Okay, it's quiet. Gets up quietly and for some silly reason goes over and wakes up his servant. Hey, come help me. He says, what are we doing? We're just gonna do a little job that God gave me to do. God gave you? Yeah, just come. And so he and his servant go out and he says, this big Asherah pole, we need to knock it down. Knock it down? It's gonna make a lot of noise. Let's knock "Shh! Knock it down quietly." "Okay!" And so they rip this thing out of the ground and knock it over. Then Gideon looks at it and says, "Ah... God said we had to destroy it. Do you have an axe?" "An axe? An axe will make a lot of noise!" "Well, we have to destroy it; we have to break it up." So they get an axe and Gideon chops this thing up in the middle of the night. Amazingly nobody comes—nobody notices—and then they knocked down the altar of Baal that breaks into pieces—a big stone altar. Then Gideon tiptoes back into his bedroom and he says to his servant before he goes, Don't tell anyone. We didn't do it. You don't know anything about it. Okay. So Gideon goes to bed. When he gets up in the morning, it's to the sound of pounding on the front door of his house. Boom, boom, boom. And his father opens the door and runs out. What is it? What is it? What's wrong with you people? Someone has knocked down the altar of Baal and has chopped up the Asherah pole that we worship. And we've come here this morning to worship. And they're dead. I see. Do you know who did it? Yes, we know who did it. Your son, Gideon. Oh, how can you know that? How could Gideon possibly? He's been here sleeping all night. His servant told us. Oh, the servant's hiding now, kind of around the corner, and Gideon's made his way to the front door, is standing by his dad. Dad, what's going on? Gideon, come out here for a minute. Just want to ask you some questions. Okay, Dad. Um, have a look at the ground, Gideon. Oh, Dad, look, your, your, um, altars. Wow, they've been busted up. Hmm, must not be good to have those altars. Gideon, do you know anything about this? Um, well, God kinda told me to do it. God told— I'm sorry, I'm a priest. 'God told you to do it, did he?' 'Yes, Father.' Gideon's father scratches his head. He looks at the idols, he looks at the men, and the men are yelling, 'We want Gideon dead!'
