Summary: GIDEON COMES TO A REALIZATION THAT: No great man ever lives in vain failure visits each of us: Each person has tasted, felt, beheld, the bitterness of failure, of feeling either too inadequate or inferior, or just too average, to accomplish great things.

Judges 6 Notes

The Need of Heroes and the Heroic

Hall Street Baptist Church Sunday Morning Dec 3, 2006

Urian Oakes (1675-1681) Fourth President of Harvard University, in speaking of the theological necessity of history said “We are to be the Lord’s remembrancers.” By that felicitous phrase he meant to remind the Baptist listeners that it was their duty to remember those mighty men and mightier deed that God had raised up among them that his providence and purpose would not be forgotten by the generations rising in after times.

William Tarrant would later pen, “Now praise we great and famous men,

The fathers named in story;

And praise the Lord, who now as then,

Reveals in man His glory.

NO GREAT MAN EVER LIVES IN VAIN

FAILURE: Each person has tasted the bitterness of failure, of feeling either too inadequate or inferior, or just too average, to accomplish great things. Through God, we can achieve any task He calls us to, and any task we set our hearts upon.

I. HEROES COME IN A HOUR OF HAUNTING HOPLESSNESS.

a. The people of Israel sin and the Lord gives them to __________ for seven years.

b. This is the ____________ time in Judges a generation of Israelites fails God. (Matthew 24:12)

c. Israel has become a nation of hiders. Hiding out in caves, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.

II. HEROES COME FROM UNLIKELY SOCIAL SETTINGS vs.11

a. Gideon is hiding and working

b. He complains to: An angel, Himself, or the Lord? (circle correct answer)

c. He is full of Excuses.

d. Vs 16. God’s response______________________________ (fill).

III. HEROES OVERCOME FEARS BY BELIEVING vs. 25

a. The character of heroism is its persistency thrust upon us.

b. Fear is a real issue vs26