The message for the week is “We cannot do the saving on our own; we need God.”

We need God.  Lot’s of times we try to do things on our own, and it’s hard. 

We can always ask God for help.  That’s what we do when we pray…

I want to share with you a story from Old Testament—the Hebrew Scriptures—of someone who needed help and asked God.  It’s from a book in the Bible called JUDGES.   The story I want to talk about this week is about GIDEON.  Gideon was an Israelite.  The Israelites were now living in the Promised Land.  Remember last week, I told the story of how Joshua and the Israelites defeated the Canaanites at Jericho, when the walls came falling down.  The Israelites are now living in the Promised Land.

But they didn’t have it easy.  There were other tribes and people who always wanted to fight them.   In the Old Testament, there was a leader of the Israelites named Gideon. 

Gideon wasn’t a KING.  He was called a JUDGE- that’s what they called the leader of the people.  God was supposed to be their king. There were some people that wanted to fight the Israelites, the people of Gideon.  So, Gideon had to put together an army.  He was from a very very big family, so he called out to his cousins.    

Gideon wasn’t really sure if he should fight so he asked God for help. Do you ever do that?  Do you ever ask God for help? I do it all the time!  I am always praying to God for help.  I will say things like, “God if you want me to do this, show me a sign!’ 

Then I have to look for a sign from God. Sometimes when I am doing that—I feel like I am testing God.  I feel like I am putting God to some kind of test.  I am not sure I should be testing God!

That’s what Gideon does—he tests God.  He does it two days in a row—and both days God answers Gideons prayers.  God says this battle is the right thing to do.  So, the call goes out to his cousins- and they respond!  They assembled a huge fighting force—22,000 men!  Believe it or not, that was a problem—he got too much help.   Soldiers came from hills and the valleys to support Gideon.  There were too many soldiers.  There were so many soldiers that it was unfair to the other side. 

It’s like if you were playing a sport like basketball or soccer and the other team had twice as many players as you had—it wouldn’t seem fair.  Or what if you were playing a video game against a friend, and that friend is way better than you, and they always beat you—they always beat you—you never win—it doesn’t seem really fair does it? 

That’s the way it was with this battle.  Gideon had way more people on his team.  It wouldn’t even seem fair.  So God said to Gideon—”Gideon, I let you test me—so now I am going to test you!!!  If you go into battle with all these soldiers you are going to win.  You are going to win, and it’s going to be really easy!  It’s going to be so easy—it won’t seem fair!  Gideon its gonna be like an NBA team playing a bunch of 10 year olds.  And the 10 year old kids have never played basketball before!  It’s gonna be so easy that you will think you did it all on your own.”

Gideon and his Army would take all the credit, and they wouldn’t give any credit to God.  God doesn’t want all the credit, but I think God wants a little ‘shout out.’  God wants a little love.  But if they won—they wouldn’t do it, because it would be too easy.

So, God says to Gideon, “You tested me—now I want to test you!  I want you to fight with fewer people.  Your army is too big, so let’s shrink it down a bit. If you have fewer people, you will still win, and you will know that I am with you!” 

So, Gideon goes along with God.  The first test: just to ask who was afraid. 

There was a whole bunch of people who were afraid to go into battle.  I would have been one of those people.  I’d be afraid to go into a battle.  Do you think that you would have been afraid? Well, a lot of people were afraid.  So, Gideon let all the scared people go back home. This shrunk the army down a lot.  Over half the army went home.  But they still had 10,000 soldiers for one battle!    

The next test was a weird one.  Gideon told all the people to go to the water to get a drink.   So, they all went to the river for a drink.  How would you get a drink from the river?  If you were going to drink from the river (not that you should drink river water, you probably shouldn’t)—but if you were (and you shouldn’t), how would you do it? 

You don’t have a cup.  You just have your hands and your mouth.  Right now, show me how you would get a drink from the water….Go ahead, show me.   Don’t worry I can’t really see you right now—that would be really weird!  But pretend that I can:  show me how you would get a drink!  

Well, I have good news—you would have been sent home!  God and Gideon only took people in the army who drank water from the river a specific way.  Guess what that was?  Show me how a dog drinks water. That’s right, show me how a dog drinks water.  A dog laps the water with his tongue right.  Of the 10,000 men in the army, only 300 of them drank water like a dog!   So those were the men that God chose for Gideon!  And that was probably the weirdest army in the history of armies.

But Gideon wasn’t sure they could win a battle with only 300 weird dog-like soldiers. 

So, there was one more test.  God told Gideon to sneak down to the other army’s camp and listen.  So, Gideon did.  He overheard them talking about a dream that said that Gideon’s army would win! 

Gideon led the men into battle, because he truly believed that God would be with him!   Even though now Gideon’s army would be far smaller than the army.  It would be a greater victory!  And they did attack.  And the weird army of Gideon drank and barked like dogs and won the battle.  And they all knew that God was with them!      

God is with us!  But Jesus is with us too.  Remember what is says in John’s gospel, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world!” (John 16:33)

Jesus has overcome the world and that means with Jesus’ help YOU can overcome anything!