 Good morning everybody. The 11 a.m. service, are you guys wound up? No, well you're about to be, we're gonna get wound up in this place, is that all right? Hey, one thing that we just wanna announce to everybody that just excites me is obviously brother Abraham was with us last weekend, did you guys enjoy his message having brother Abraham here? We asked everybody if they would sew, we took a second offering to sew into India and I told you we wanted to be the largest of his offerings while he's in the United States and you guys gave over, I think it was 36,000, almost $37,000 last weekend, so thank you, that's so awesome. Man, I appreciate that so much, brother Abraham, he wanted me to just tell you, thank you, radiant church, you've done it again. So excited, so it was just great to have him. I don't know about you, but every time I'm around that guy my faith just goes to a whole other level and God is on the move, not just here, not just in India, but all over the world, amen. Turn with me in your Bibles this morning if you brought one to Judges chapter six, Judges chapter six, this is the third time I've preached this message, it's the first time I'm preaching it without notes because my iPad died in the front row. So my iPad just went, phew, sorry, no more power. So you never know what you're gonna get, I might just preach a whole different message, so just be ready, but Judges chapter six, this is our hero's summer series as we're looking at different characters in the Old Testament and learning from their encounters and their lives and their experience, their faith, really. And today we're gonna be looking at a man who is one of my favorite Old Testament characters. He's not just a character, he lived a real life. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that, that these aren't just figments of someone's imagination. These are real men, flesh and blood, real women that lived real lives, had challenges, were flawed, but yet did extraordinary things because of the God that they knew and submitted to. And today we're looking at Gideon. So I want you to look with me here at Judges chapter six, beginning in verse number 11, we're gonna read down through verse number 16. It says, now the angel of the Lord came and he sat under the terabinth tree at Oprah, which belongs to Joash the Abbey is right, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites. An angel of the Lord appeared to him and he said, the Lord is with you, oh mighty man of Valor. And Gideon said to him, please sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us and where are all of his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us saying, did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt, but now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hands of Midian. And the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hands of Midian, do not I send you. And he said to him, please Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my father's house, verse 16. And the Lord said to him, but I will be with you and you shall strike the Midianites as one man. So to catch you up where we find Gideon in this wine press, having this encounter with the angel of the Lord, you have to realize that Israel for several generations now has been dwelling in the promised land. Joshua brought them in, they were able to gain their inheritance. All the different 12 tribes have spread out all over the land, but because they were somewhat disobedience in their relationship with God, they didn't drive out the Canaanites and the other inhabitants of the land. They didn't drive them out or defeat them completely. There was still some that had been left in the land. And as is often the case with the people of God, over the course of time as life got better and easier and more comfortable, they relied upon God less, became much more confident in their own strength and their own power, laxadaisical in their relationship with God, the culture around them actually changed them more than they changed the culture around them. They began to be affected by the Canaanites and all the other different cultural peoples that they had intermarried with that were their neighbors that they found themselves living in. One of the reasons why God wanted them to drive the Canaanites out of the land is so that he could make sure that there was a kingdom culture, that there was a unique way that they, as the Jewish people lived, but because they didn't do that, they became infected by the corruption, by the idolatry, by the immorality of those other cultures and they didn't change them, they were changed. And so what happened is over the course of a period of time, God removed his hands of protection off of them and allowed them to experience some military defeats and their enemy at this particular time was the Midianites. The Midianites were not Canaanites, they were nomadic Bedouin people that lived out in the desert who every so often would come riding in in their huge hordes of camel riding warriors. Just imagine just an army of 30, 40,000 camels coming into the land. I mean, it's just coming in and these are warriors. They're descendants of Ishmael, they're the Ishmaelites, modern day kind of Arabian Peninsula type of people. They come riding in and Israel is completely devastated. They're defeated militarily. And when the Amalekites and the Midianites come into the land, they don't just come into fight, they come into pillage. They burn down their houses, they take their children as slaves, they wait until Israel has reaped their crops during the harvest and they take all of their food. When their animals are giving birth, they take all of their new animals so they have no prosperity, they have no food, they have no life, their homes have been burned down and this happened somewhere between seven and nine years in a row. And so what had happened is Israel no longer was fighting back. Israel every year would kind of hope that the Midianites wouldn't come back but they'd pretty much given up hope now. They stopped rebuilding their homes, they moved into the caves and the cliffs. They're no longer harvesting crops, they're eating what is left over that's just kind of growing because some of the seed fell to the ground in the last harvest. And they've just kind of given up planning for the future, building their families, they've given up believing that God was for them, they're just surviving. If you ever had a moment in your life where maybe some very devastating, some very painful things have happened in your life, found yourself in a place where you're not dreaming about the future any longer, you just can't get your mind off of what you're facing today. It doesn't matter whether it's some camel riding, Midianites that are coming into your life or whether it was a sickness or a disease that came against you or you find yourself in a marriage crisis or a financial crisis, whatever the case might be. When you're in that mode, you stop thriving and you focus on just surviving. And in the middle of that generation, there's this young man named Gideon. Gideon where we find him in Judges chapter six is hiding from the Midianites. We find him at the lowest place possible. We find him in a wine press. And a wine press is low because by the very nature of how you made wine, you took the grapes and you would, in Middle Eastern culture, they would put them into these big canvas or wool structures and they would throw the clusters of the grapes and they wanted it to go downhill so they would roll them downhill and then they would hew out of the stone a low point about the size of a kiddie pool that had a drain that went down to another low point where they would actually collect it. It was the lowest possible place that you could be and we don't find Gideon in the wine press actually making wine. What we find is him hiding at the lowest place possible with a few stalks of wheat. Trying to thresh it, to get a handful of barley or wheat to fill his stomach so he can go hide back up in the cliffs. He's in survival mode. He's not planting. He's not threshing. He's not even worried about making bread. I mean, how many know you gotta be pretty desperate when you're not even thinking about making rice, you just grab a handful of hard rice and you just stick it in your mouth because you're that hungry. That's where Gideon was at. So imagine Gideon who's hiding from the Midianites he's down in a wine press. He's trying to be quiet and without him knowing it the Lord shows up on the scene. The Lord's standing over underneath the tree and he waits for just the right moment because that's what God does. And then he says, get in you muddy man of error. To me, it's kind of humorous. Because God does have a sense of humor. He suddenly appears in places and because God knows everything he knows that people are gonna be freaked out. I mean, imagine, have you read the Bible and the stories of angelic visitations? God doesn't like gradually like light. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Here I come, here I come, here I come, here I am. He doesn't do that. He just waits till you're at your lowest moment when you're not suspecting it. And he goes, hey you, hey Mary. Hey Joseph, hey Gideon. You mighty man of valor. It's kind of like you sneaking down into the kitchen at two in the morning to grab a little snack when nobody's looking. Your wife's had you on the keto diet. You haven't had any carbs in like the last three weeks but you're just starving for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This has not happened to me. And you think nobody's paying attention and you sneak into the kitchen and lights are off, open the fridge. You gotta get the jiff peanut butter, real peanut butter with sugar and like other substances like xantheum gum that nobody knows exists. And you smear on the bread and you get that ultra sugared smucker's jam. And you smear and you're about ready to take a bite and you close the fridge door and there's your wife going, what are you doing? That's not keto. That's kind of this moment. Angel Lord says, the Lord is with you. You mighty man of valor. Now I don't know about you but if the angel of the Lord appeared to me like that. I mean, we're not talking about short little chubby cherubs with little wings that you know, it's like, oh, little cute little cupid. No, we're talking about warrior angels of the Lord that have come out of the presence of God that are glowing, shining with the presence of the Lord. And he sits under a terribent tree and he's talking with Gideon. He says, you mighty man of valor, the Lord is with you. I would have argued with the Lord. I would have said, who are you? Whoa, this, whoa. But Gideon immediately, his response tells a whole lot about where his heart's at. He says this, if God is with me, then explain to me how everything has happened that has happened to us. Why are we devastated? The name OFRA that it says that he was at actually in the Hebrew language means place of devastation. He says, why are we here? If God is really with me, then why is everything falling apart? Where are his promises? We've heard all of the stories of our forefathers that told us about how you delivered us, how you brought us out of Egypt, how you defeated Pharaoh, how you defeated all of the gods of Egypt, and you can't even take care of the Midianites for us. And you want to tell me that God is with me? Where's God? Where's all the stories? Where's all the miracles? We're fighting for our life here. And now you want to show up and tell me that God is with me? I don't believe that God is with me. Do you know what's interesting about that story is that the angel doesn't even bother to answer his question. We have a lot in common with Gideon because sometimes when we find ourselves in place where things have not gone the way we planned them or have seemingly gone sideways on us, we can ask the same type of questions that Gideon asks. It's like, God, if you're really with us like you promise in your word, then why has this happened to us? Why did you allow this to happen to us? Where's all the stories of all the miracles? I hear about healing over here and miracles over there. Brother Abraham comes to church, talks about people being raised from the dead and it's like, where's that stuff here? You know, it's interesting to me that most of the time in the Bible and in life when we ask God those difficult questions, he rarely gives us the answers. Have you noticed that? That God rarely gives us the answers that we're looking for. I once heard a much more seasoned pastor than myself tell me. He said, the reason why God doesn't give us the answers is because even if he did, they wouldn't make sense and they wouldn't satisfy us. Because what we're looking for is justice through our own lens and experience and God is so much bigger than us. So much wiser than us. So much more infinite than us. It just would blow our minds. He doesn't give Gideon the answers that he's looking for but what he says is he says this. He says, I want you to rise up and go in this strength that is yours. What strength? What strength of knowing that God is with you. He says, I want you to go. You're gonna be a deliverer in Israel. I want you to go and rally the armies together and you're going to defeat the Midianites. And then immediately Gideon goes into all the reasons why he's not the guy for the job. He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. He says, number one, you need to realize that I'm from the tribe of Manasseh. Manasseh out of all 12 of the tribes of Israel is the smallest and the weakest tribe in all of Israel. Go on over to the tribe of Ephraim. They're the most powerful. He says, but then in the tribe of Manasseh, my father's family is the weakest clan in the entire tribe of Manasseh. And then in my father's clan, I'm the weakest of all of my dad's kids. So basically what he's saying is this. He says, have you noticed that we're the Israelites and we're the victims. We're weak, we're defeated, we're oppressed. But even within our oppression, there's the weakest tribe that's Manasseh and then there's the weakest family, which is my dad's. And then in my dad's clan, I'm the very weakest. What he's saying to the angel of the Lord is, if you're going to deliver Israel, you're going to have to do it through somebody else besides me because I'm the most unqualified human being on the face of the earth for the job that you're calling me to do. There's nobody smaller. I'm in the lowest place that I could possibly be. I've got a little bit of wheat in my hands. I don't have a sword in my hands. I don't have any belief in myself. And you want to tell me that I've got strength and that I've got a destiny and that I've got a calling? That's exactly what the angel of the Lord was saying to Gideon. Aren't you glad that God doesn't speak to you based on your insufficiencies or your weakness? He doesn't define you by your past. He doesn't define you by how you see yourself. But God, just like in Gideon's case, always calls us by the name and the purpose and the calling that he established for us before time ever began. He doesn't see you as you are. He sees you as he created you to be. And he called Gideon a mighty man of valor. It's interesting, Gideon's name. Here he is in the wine press. Here he is telling the angel of the Lord all the reasons why he's unqualified. But his name actually means something significant. And his name means the one who breaks down and the one who builds up. The one who breaks down and the one who builds up. An angel of the Lord calls him, you mighty man of valor. You courageous warrior. You are gonna be a deliverer in Israel. You have a mandate on your life. And I believe in the same way that the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon in his lowest place. And the same way that the angel gave Gideon a mandate that we're gonna look at here in just a moment. I believe that you and I today as believers in Jesus Christ, Christians living in a 21st century North American context have a lot in common with Gideon, whether you know it or not. You say, well, what do I have in common with Gideon? You know, that's thousands of years removed. Well, I think in the same way that Gideon underestimated himself, I think we underestimate ourselves. And in the same way that Gideon found himself hiding in a wine press because of what was going on in the culture around him, I believe that the church, and listen to what I'm gonna say is a, what I'm about to say about the church is not talking about radiant church, it's talking about the church in the American context that you and I live and function as a part of in the 21st century right now. The church in America for the most part is hiding in a wine press from our enemies because we have found ourselves in a state of devastation and the golden era of the church seems to be a thing of the past. See, there was a day in American history where almost everybody said they were Christians, whether they were or weren't. There was a day where if you went to church, meant that you were a good person. Today, the most recent Gallup polls taken in New York, L.A. and most major cities across the United States, the poll that was just taken in 2014 asked the people on the streets what you call somebody who attends a worship service once a month and they defined that as a religious extremist. So congratulations. You're here today, you're an extremist. We live in a post-Christian American culture, that's a sociologist now defined American culture where 40 years ago everybody had pretty much a Christian worldview, the Ten Commandments, the Bible, that was a good thing, you go to church, you get married, God has, there's the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it was called the Judeo-Christian work ethic and belief system, but that's not the culture we live in. We have shifted over the last several decades. The spirit of this age has swept in. Now it's not one God, it's if there's a God and it's a pantheon of gods. And you take your pick, it's not a Judeo-Biblical worldview, it's all kinds of worldviews. There's a nihilistic worldview, there's a secular worldview, there's a pantheistic worldview, a naturalistic worldview. Science has been elevated to the priesthood of our culture and we have all of the idols that we read about in the Bible, that other culture's worship we have within our own culture. And here we are living now as believers in Jesus Christ, people who believe in the Bible, believe in God, but we're a little afraid and intimidated by the fact that we're living in a time where people are not necessarily kind to you if you don't bake them a cake or if you close your store on a Sunday. Now listen, I'm not talking against anybody, I'm just painting a picture of kind of how culture now looks at the church. And here's what it's done to Christians in American culture. We found ourselves hiding in a wine press, trying to survive. Hey, you know what, all I wanna do is I just wanna go to work, get my paycheck and go home. I don't wanna talk, I don't wanna argue, I don't wanna debate, I don't wanna cause any problems, I don't wanna post anything on my Facebook that might be a little controversial. If I'm brave, I might put a radiant church bumper sticker on my car, which you should do, and I just wanna go church, worship God. I wanna get off this planet and go to heaven someday. Praise the Lord. I wanna read a book that tells me that every blood moon and every time the wind blows, it's another sign that we're almost out of here because that's good news. I'm ready to go to heaven, Maranatha, even so Lord Jesus come because this place is messed up people. I mean, can we just be honest? It's dark out there sometimes, right? It's spiritually dark, it's like Jesus come. How many know that's gonna be a glorious day when Jesus does come back? I mean, when he comes back, the trumpet's gonna sound, the eastern sky's gonna part, he's coming on a white horse, faithful tattooed on his leg, I mean, sword coming out of his mouth. I can't wait to see what that looks like. It's figurative, just so you know. Okay, so I mean, but Jesus is coming visibly, physically to the earth, he's gonna establish his kingdom on the earth, he's gonna, I mean, it's, man, what a glorious day that that's gonna be. But listen, the church for the most part has given up on the idea that the gospel works, that God has any plans. We think that society has moved on beyond any repair. It's almost like we think that our culture has outgrown God as if God's in heaven with his arm crossed going, wow, these people have really become sophisticated. Look, they've got these smartphone devices, they don't need me anymore. They figured the gig is up, okay, they've outgrown us. I'm medieval, long, white bearded guy sitting on a throne and they've all got smartphones and internet now, so the gig's up. I sure didn't see that coming. It's almost like God's in heaven going, well, I don't know how I lost control, but I kind of lost control, so I've got some kids down there, Jesus wants you to just go snatch them up, get them out of here before things get too messed up and we'll answer a few little sporadic prayers, but I'm busy running universes. Do we really have that image of God? Or can we believe that sometimes what looks like a setback is really a set up for your comeback? Is it sometimes that in the midst of darkness, God speaks to a Gideon generation that unbeknownst to themselves has been called and destined and given a mandate from heaven in the midst of a generation that looks beyond hope and God is trying to break through the shadows of our fear, break through the pain of our past, break through the limitations of what we think is possible and instill faith and identity on the inside of us so we rise up out of the wine press as mighty men and women of valor and we become deliverers in the midst of our generation. That's why we have so much in common with Gideon because I believe that that's what God is saying. It's what he's saying to Gideon and it's what he's saying to us. What is he saying to Gideon? Look with me here at Judges chapter six. We're gonna look at his mandate. It starts in verse 25. Here's what the Lord told him to do. And by the way, the whole story of Gideon's huge, but this is just one part of it. In verse 25, here's what the Lord told him, he said, here's what I want you to do, Gideon. I want you to take your father's bowl and the second bowl, seven years old, and I want you to pull down the altar of Baal that your father has. We'll come back to that in a minute. And I want you to cut down the ashura that is beside it and I want you to build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here with the stones laid in their due order. What's interesting is here's Gideon and the Lord says, first thing that I want you to do, your first mandate is I want you to go pull down the idol and the altar to a false God that your father has in his front yard. I want you to wait till night, then I want you to go and it would be the equivalent of I want you to take your dad's F-150, hook up a chain to the hitch and jerk that altar down, bust down the idol, tear it all down and over the top of the stronghold, that's a key word, stronghold, I want you to build an altar to the Lord. Have you ever thought about this when reading that story? If Gideon is the son of a Jewish man from the tribe of Manasseh, why is there an altar and an idol to Baal and Asherah in his front yard? It's because he's become culturally accommodating. See the culture around him, the Canaanites, they worship Baal. Baal was a God of prosperity, sometimes it was a God of rain, which in an agricultural society meant prosperity, whether Asherah, which was basically like a totem pole, was a feminine deity that was a goddess of sexual fertility and pleasure. So in the Canaanite culture, Baal and Asherah were almost like twins that you would worship together. And here's the Jewish people living in their land accommodating the culture instead of changing the culture around them. Gideon's own father, who still by the way believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has now built an altar to Baal, a false God. And he's erected a pole to Asherah. It's cultural accommodation. You see, he was saying, I still believe in Yahweh, I still believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but culture around me, everybody else worships these other things, so I kinda wanna cover my basis. Unless we criticize and we judge him, I want you to realize this, that in our culture today, in American culture, we have idols. You say, well, we don't worship trees. Oh, don't we? No, we just cut them down, grind them into pulp, make paper out of them, print dead presidents on them and live our lives for the pursuit of them. Well, we don't worship sex. Really, have you watched network television lately? See, America, the world has not dialed down their sexual immorality. We've just lowered our standards. So things that we as followers of Jesus would have never watched a decade ago have been affected by the boiling kettle with the frog in it. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and so we finally gave in and said, well, I'll put up with it. I'll put up with it. I'll put up with it. I'll put up with it. So, we, there's sexualities everywhere. It's on the magazine covers. Our poor girls, our poor young girls who are growing up are forced to see airbrushed, non-authentic images of sexuality. Porn is available everywhere that we go. It's the largest market of porn, by the way, now is young women 18 to 27 years old. It's affecting women. It used to be a guy problem. Now it's a culture problem. And we have people that can even engage in intimacy because they've been so impacted by it. And let me tell you what that is. It's not just a porn issue. It's an idol issue. We've got idols of money. It's interesting if you go to Wall Street in New York, which controls the economic centers of the world. What do they have right outside of Wall Street? They have a golden calf. They call it a bull. Bulls and bears. We've got our own idols. We've, I mean, sports. Hey, I love sports. Are you ready for some football? Yeah, I'm ready, baby. Bring August on. I love football. But have you noticed how we worship it? Have you noticed how we don't know verses out of the Bible, but we know every stat of every fantasy football thing that's going on? We've got musicians that are celebrating hedonism. We've got our own idols. And you know what has happened in the church? Well, we're too busy hiding in the wine press because we don't wanna be the pariahs in culture and we don't wanna be persecuted and don't want somebody to think we're a good person. Don't want somebody to call us a bigot or narrow-minded or religious extremist. We hide in the wine press and then we erect the altars of Baal and the poles of Asherah so that our neighbors don't get mad at us. We've become culturally accommodating. And God says to Gideon, I'm not looking to be worshiped one day as one God among many. I want you to worship me with your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your strength. I don't wanna be one among many. I wanna be the one and only. Gideon, I want you to rise up out of your wine press. I want you to realize I've created you to be one who tears down and one who builds up. And I want you to tear down the altars of Baal. Tear down the poles of Asherah. And I want you to build the altar of the Lord on top of that stronghold. Gideon had a mandate to build an altar to the Lord in the midst of his generation and listen to me. So do you. You may say, well, not me. Who am I? I'm not an altar builder. Gideon didn't think he was either. Gideon thought he was unqualified. Not promise you, you're more qualified than Gideon was. Let me tell you what happened about a generation ago. About a generation ago during the World War II era, there was something called a counterculture revolution that took place in the 60s. How many of you were around in the 60s and you remember kind of the age of Aquarius revolution that was taking place? Okay, God bless y'all. It was, everything began to shift in American culture. Universities began to teach humanism. People began to experiment with Eastern religions as well as drugs and free sex. There was protests against wars. There was some positive. There was the civil rights movement. But then there was also some violence and things like weather underground and terrorists, anti-nationalists, anti-American groups that were coming in. There was a proliferation of free sex and easy sex and drug use and LSD and all kinds of things that were going on. And our culture was going through a massive shift. We had the British invasion. Music became probably the most influential media of our generation. More so than it had ever been before. Television was proliferating. Wars were going on and fears were going on. And when the counterculture revolution began to take place in the 60s, and it started really earlier than that, but in the late 50s, going into the 60s, here was the church's response. Well, things are getting bad, so guess what? Jesus must be coming soon. So get ready for the rapture. Now, by the way, before you email me and tell me I can't believe you don't believe in the rapture, I believe in the rapture. When Jesus comes, I'm going up, baby. Nobody's gonna argue about that. It's like, I practice. But the church said because things are getting so dark, it must mean that we're near the end. Therefore, we need to recede from culture. It's like, hunker down. And while we were hunkering down, there was a counterculture revolution that was taking place on the universities, in the streets. There were riots, there were protests, there was a call to overthrow the government. There were some positive things, like the civil rights movement again, and women's rights, and some of those things that were taking place, but it was all mixed together. And there was really a belief among many of their leaders that they were actually going to change the world, the age of aquarium, that was what they talked about. But quickly, they realized that even though they had so much passion and energy, you weren't gonna change the world by protest. I wish the church would figure that out. That we don't change the world by protest, you change it by influence. So here's what all of those protesters did. So while the church backed up and said, Jesus must be coming, by the end of the 70s at the end of the Vietnam era, most of the leaders of all of those different movements said this. They said, the way that we're gonna change culture is not by protesting, it's going to be by influence. So they all backed up, broke up their little groups, and everybody in American culture thought to themselves, it looks like the storm is over. We can go back to life like usual. But what all of those leaders and young people in the 60s did was they all went silent, radio silence, but they went and got their degrees. And they became lawyers and professors. They became filmmakers. They became musicians. They became journalists. And then the lawyers then became judges and politicians who appointed other people of the same ilk and chaired, fellowshiped professors in the universities that now were shaping the minds of the next generation. And they had a long-term vision. They said this, if we're gonna change culture, it's gonna take a generation. And it is a proven fact. You can look throughout history. You can change a country and you can change a nation, but it takes a generation to do it. And so what happened is they began to be professors, espousing their views. Then they became lawyers, changing and shaping the laws, legislators in politics and in governments, changing and shaping things, becoming judicial representation on courts and federal courts and local courts and mayors. They began to be screenwriters for films and for television pilots and sitcoms and movies and television programs and mini-dramas. They became journalists that controlled the newspapers and all the different voices. And for a generation, they took their time of moving up through the ranks to the highest places that they could possibly be. And then in one decade, everything began to shift. And the church in the last 10 years has stood back and said, what just happened? And I'll tell you what happened. Influence happened. And the reason why it wasn't the church being at the forefront of influence is because we thought the end was near. And we failed to do the very thing that Jesus told the church to do in Matthew chapter five. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are a city set on a hill. Whoever lights a lamp doesn't put a basket over it but he puts it on a lamp stand for it to shine. And when it shines, it gives light to the entire room. We didn't do what Jesus said. We didn't occupy until he come. We were making plans for the evacuation. And in that middle of that, there were innovators that rose up, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bezos, others that are right now, Elon Musk, that have risen up and I could sit here all day and name a bunch of cultural influencers who didn't become influential in the day. They did the hard work behind the scenes, elevating and moving up. And what they did was instead of being comfortable in their subculture, they actually created a counterculture. Now, let me tell you how this applies to you and I. In the church, we've been guilty of limiting ourselves to one altar. An altar that God told Gideon to destroy, here's the definition of an altar. It is an elevated place within a sanctuary that is dedicated to offering sacrifice and worship. Elevated place of sacrifice and worship, usually found within a temple. God said, I want you to tear down the altar, Bill. And on that stronghold, I want you to build an altar to the Lord. Can I just tell you right now in our world, there are a lot of strongholds that the enemy has a grip on. Almost every sector of society, education, business, the arts, the family, even in religion, law and finance and business, there's all these different culture shapers that are strongholds because whoever controls them or whoever is influential within them begins to shape how things go. Every single one of those strongholds in our culture, you can look at movies, you can look at media, you can look at music, you can look at politics, you can look at law, you can look at finance, entertainment, sports, family, religion. Every one of those has a stronghold and has a dominant spiritual influence. They have an altar. Finance has an altar. Business has an altar. Religion obviously has an altar. Family, altar. Entertainment, altar. And as the church, we've been content with one altar at the front of our buildings. See, I grew up and we called this the altar. Come to the altar. My pastor gave an altar call every Sunday. And most Sundays I responded to it because I was such a rotten kid. I remember watching Star Wars and afraid that the rapture was gonna happen while I was watching and it was like, oh Jesus, don't come, please, please, please, please. Because in the world I grew up and watching a movie was a sin. And so that Sunday, the pastor gave an altar call. I ran to the altar. This was our altar because it was an elevated place where worship is offered inside of a sanctuary. But what we failed to realize is that in every other sector that you and I live life in that are strongholds, Jesus wants an altar built there for him as well. And the way that we do that is by influence. Just like he told Gideon, Gideon, I want you to go and I want you to tear down. I also want you to build up. I want you to build an altar on the stronghold in the midst of your generation. I want you to build an altar to the Lord for the goodness and the presence of God to be experienced. I want you to build an altar to the Lord where sacrifice and worship can be experienced. I want you to create an elevated place in the midst of your pagan culture so that they can see the goodness and experience the reality and the love of God. I want you to build an altar there on that stronghold. And the greatest lie that hell is propagated to the churches that we need to keep our altars in the church, but today I want to challenge that. I want to challenge you with this. What would happen if a Gideon generation arose up and realized part of the reason I was put on this planet, part of the reason why I got the job where I work, part of the reason why I live in Kalamazoo in 2018, part of the reason why the school I go to, part of the reason why I'm designed the way that I am is not to hide in the wine press from the rest of culture and one day a week come to the altar. Maybe the reason I was created and put on this planet in the midst of hiding in this wine press was to hear the voice of the Lord speak to my destiny and calling and to rise up out of the wine press and go to the strongholds that God has called me and to build an altar to the Lord there. Maybe that's why you were put on the planet. What would happen in the entertainment industry if born again, spirit filled, Bible believing, creative, very talented people wrote better stories than Hollywood wrote stories and actually made really good films that pull at people's hearts and leave them asking really serious life questions. It's happening. I tell you it's happening. What would happen if God would raise up men who stand in arenas before 30 and 40,000 people and lead them not in a celebration of sex but in the singing of the Psalms to a modern version? Can I tell you it's happening? His name is Bono, the band is U2. What would happen if God were appointing politicians that were more loyal to the kingdom of God than they were to a donkey or to an elephant? They were more loyal to a lamb in Washington and actually pursued righteousness. It's happening. What if God would fill with his spirit and his anointing teachers that every day that they went into the classroom they realized I'm not just going into build an altar, I'm a carrier of the presence of God because in my heart dwells the Holy Spirit and everywhere I go, God goes and my heart is now the temple of the Holy Spirit and that means there's an elevated place of worship for me, when I go into my classroom, my kids are getting contaminated by the radioactive anointing of the Holy Spirit that's on the inside of me because I'm Gideon and I'm building an altar. What would happen if every businessman would take a look at their books and see that God is prospering you to be kingdom influence and that how you do business and who you do business with is giving you influence in the marketplace and it wasn't just when you went to church that you're worshiping, it's when you're doing business that you're worshiping. What would happen if in every sphere of life Godly men and women realized that they were not unqualified, they were not weak, they were not overlooked, they were not devastated, but they were Gideon and they were called for this moment. I'll tell you what would begin to happen. Renewal, reformation and revival would come to our generation and I believe with all of my heart that's exactly what God intends to do. We don't need revival, God says you are revival. You are a carrier of revival. I want everybody to stand up across this room. I told you I'm gonna get wound up. I want you to hear me, listen to me. The Lord is with you. You need to hear this. The Lord is with you. You mighty man or woman of valor. You are Gideon. You are the one who tears down idols to false gods, lives a superior life, introduces a superior culture and you build and carry an altar to the Lord. The answer is right here. And this morning, I'm gonna do something I rarely do but I feel so impressed to do it this morning. Before we go and before we walk out into the world today, I believe God's calling us out of the wine press. He's calling us out of our wine press and he's calling us to rise up in the strength that is ours which is his presence and to realize what we're called to do. And this morning, if in your heart, your hearts cry, is God every idol in my life that is not of you, I want torn down. Today I decide to reject it utterly and totally. God forgive me for the idols in my life. And the second part of this is if you hear and you say, God, I want to be a builder of the altar of the Lord where you've put me. You're a college student. God's called you to build an altar on Western Michigan University, on Kalamazoo Valley Community College, on Kalamazoo College, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Doesn't matter where you go to school, Michigan State, even the U of M, Wolverines need Jesus too. If God has positioned you and you wanna be an altar builder to the Lord, businessman, mom, artist, musician, lawyer, doctor, doesn't matter who you are if today, you're saying, God, I wanna be giddy and I wanna be the one who tears down and the one who builds an altar to the Lord where you've positioned me. I want you to get out of your seat, out of your wine press, I want you to just come. We're gonna line the front and we're gonna pray together. And if we have to, we're gonna fill the aisles and today we're going to receive the strength from God's presence. I want you to come, if that's your cry. Come on, don't wait, don't delay. Come forward, every altar builder, come. Everyone who's tearing down an altar to anything other than Jesus, I want you to come. Come on, get out of your wine press. You don't have to come, but if it's in your heart, I want you to come. I believe with all of my heart, God has marked this generation to do a significant thing and I'm not content, I don't know about you. I'm not content to just breathe oxygen and wait for Jesus to come and let the world go to hell in a hand basket. I believe that the greater one of heaven dwells on the inside of us, that we are the wine skin of revival. We have been put here for a reason. It's not gonna happen because somebody else does. It's gonna happen because we said, yes, here I am, Jesus. And I just want us all across this room. Come on, just lift up your hands. We're gonna pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, release the spirit and the anointing of Gideon in this house this morning. Lord, I believe that there are reformers in this room right now. There are reformers, there are revivalists in this room right now. They don't look like we think they're gonna look because they're not gonna be preachers, but there are kingdom financiers in this room right now. There are artists in this room right now where the most creative expression of the kingdom of God that the world has ever seen is gonna flow out of them. There are moms that are raising godly embers of fire on the altars to the Lord in their families that these children are gonna raise up and they're not gonna be sacrificed on the altar of culture, but they're gonna build the altar of the Lord. There are musicians in this room for the purpose of the kingdom. There's innovators, there's creators right now where there's technology that's not been created. There's employees, there's builders. In this room right now, Lord, release the anointing of Gideon. In this room, Lord, and we say, God, if you're gonna do a work in this generation, you need an epicenter and it might as well be Kalamazoo, Michigan. So Lord, let your kingdom come. Let your spirit fall in this place upon us. Lord, we surrender every idol, every false God. Lord, we refuse to be syncretistic and culturally adaptive. We say we are counterculture. We are kingdom culture. Jesus is Lord. We live for him. We were made for this hour and this world belongs to our Father. Lord, release your anointing upon every one of these God. New ideas, promotion, elevation, influence, salt, light in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus. I want everybody who's at the front who responded to this. I want you to just take your index finger right now. I just want you to take it. I want you to point it at yourself. And I want you to say this with me. Say, I am Gideon. Say it again. Say, I am Gideon. I am Gideon. Come on, three's important. I want you to say it one more time. Say, I am. I am. Gideon. Gideon. You know what I love is that the story of Gideon ends as he defeats the Midianites with 300 against thousands. And you know what the cry was when they went into battle? The sword of the Lord and Gideon. The sword of the Lord and Gideon. Come on, everybody just hold your hand up. Like you're holding a sword. You're not. But you have the sword of God's word in your heart. Come on, right now just say this with me. For the sword of the Lord and Gideon. In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. Amen. Come on. It's gonna be us, right? It's gonna be us. Yes, Lord. Come on, just praise him. Praise him in his place. Lift your hands, lift your voices. Jesus, we worship you. Lord, we worship you, God. Have your way. Jesus. Have your way, Father. All right, now I'm going away for two weeks. But when I come back, I'm gonna be back for a summer fest when Rita and Jared are here. Listen, I know summers are time for chill and relax, but this in the spirit, it's time for us to press in closer. God wants to use you to pray, to intercede, to invite. Who's in your life that right now needs? Alters broken off of their life to have a genuine relationship with God. Come on, let's pray. Let's pray like we've never prayed for the lost around us and let's invite. And let's not just take the summer off. Let's dig deep because a city's at stake. Amen? Everybody, God bless you. Have a fantastic, fantastic afternoon. And remember, you're not leaving the Radiant Church, you're leaving Azradian Church. God bless you guys, you're dismissed.