Sermon Central
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Detours - Pt. 2 - Detour Details Series
Contributed by Steve Ely on Dec 18, 2012 (message contributor)
Summary: A wandering from a direct route. A different path. Unexpected turns and obstacles. What do you do when your life takes you down a path for which you didn't plan?
Pt. 2 – Detour Details
Interruption. A cancelation. A meeting moved. A delay. A different route. Sickness. Lack. Brokenness. All of these things have one thing in common . . . they are detours. They knock us off our intended and preferred route. They force us to adjust and go a different way. And just in case you have forgotten let me remind you that I hate detours. I like ordered, planned and set paths.
But detours are a reality that we must all face. As we sprint to the end of 2012 and prep for 2013 you need to know that detours will take place. So we talked last week from the story of Abraham who was asked to sacrifice his son of promise Isaac. He shows us that there are two detour decisions that you must make before the moment of the detour so that the detour will not destroy you!
Will you continue to follow and obey if your expected end isn't His intended end? Will you accept His plan if it means your plan has to be trumped? Will you continue to follow if the answer is "No"? We must understand that God doesn't inhabit our plans He inhabits our praise. So we have to be able to praise Him when He brings change to our plan!
So today I want us to move forward and I want to continue to equip you to deal with detours by sharing some "Detour Details" with you!
Text: Judges 6:1-16
1-6 Yet again the People of Israel went back to doing evil in God’s sight. God put them under the domination of Midian for seven years. Midian overpowered Israel. Because of Midian, the People of Israel made for themselves hideouts in the mountains—caves and forts. When Israel planted its crops, Midian and Amalek, the easterners, would invade them, camp in their fields, and destroy their crops all the way down to Gaza. They left nothing for them to live on, neither sheep nor ox nor donkey. Bringing their cattle and tents, they came in and took over, like an invasion of locusts. And their camels—past counting! They marched in and devastated the country. The People of Israel, reduced to grinding poverty by Midian, cried out to God for help.
7-10 One time when the People of Israel had cried out to God because of Midian, God sent them a prophet with this message: “God, the God of Israel, says,
I delivered you from Egypt, I freed you from a life of slavery; I rescued you from Egypt’s brutality and then from every oppressor; I pushed them out of your way and gave you their land. “And I said to you, ‘I am God, your God. Don’t for a minute be afraid of the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.’ But you didn’t listen to me.”
11-12 One day the angel of God came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, whose son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress, out of sight of the Midianites. The angel of God appeared to him and said, “God is with you, O mighty warrior!”
13 Gideon replied, “With me, my master? If God is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all the miracle-wonders our parents and grandparents told us about, telling us, ‘Didn’t God deliver us from Egypt?’ The fact is, God has nothing to do with us—he has turned us over to Midian.”
14 But God faced him directly: “Go in this strength that is yours. Save Israel from Midian. Haven’t I just sent you?”
15 Gideon said to him, “Me, my master? How and with what could I ever save Israel? Look at me. My clan’s the weakest in Manasseh and I’m the runt of the litter.”
16 God said to him, “I’ll be with you. Believe me, you’ll defeat Midian as one man.”
The Children of Israel are once again in bondage and living in fear. In fact, they live is so much fear that they are hiding in caves and running into the hills. They cry out to God for help! We pick the account up with a young man by the name of Gideon making an attempt to avoid losing his harvest from the enemy. He hides.
He tries to be as inconspicuous as possible. And at that place a designed detour overtakes him and in the process gives us some details about detours that we need to know.
a. You cannot hide from a detour!
Gideon is minding his own business and is overtaken by a detour. Moses is residing in a palace and is overtaken by a detour. Joseph is simply sharing his dream and is overtaken by a detour. David is alone on the back side of the desert spending his days worshipping God and is overtaken by a detour.
