Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I heard about a man that wanted to buy a Rolls-Royce. He was in Australia, so he wrote to England and bought one from the factory. When it came, he was showing it off, and everybody thought this was a wonderful car. They said, "Well, how does it do this, and how does it do that? What's the horsepower?" The man said, "Well, I'm really not quite sure what the horsepower of this car is." He went and looked in his little book, and it didn't have it. It had everything else but the horsepower.

So he wrote to England, and he said, "What's the horsepower of this Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce?" They said, "Oh, we never tell anybody that. That's a trade secret." Well, he got very upset about this, and he got his lawyers onto it and ended up having a lawsuit to try and find out the horsepower. The English firm were being typically stubborn, and they just decided they weren't going to tell this guy what the horsepower of this car was. In the end, they sent a telegram after a lot of pressure, and it had one word on it, and it just said, "Adequate."

They never did find out what the horsepower was, but the man was proving the adequacy of the car. You know, God is adequate. Isn't He able? Isn't He adequate? Yes, He is. Maybe we can't explain it, and maybe we don't have a manual to put it under a microscope or have the facts ready for you, but God is able. If we didn't believe He was able, we wouldn't be having Bible study, and we wouldn't be saying, "Look, Jesus Christ can do anything that He says He can."

He is able. He's able to do anything in our lives that needs doing. He is Elohim, the God who is the Creator, the Mighty One, the Powerful One, the Everlasting One, the Highest of the Highest of all gods. He is Jehovah, the One who has decided not only to be able in the sense of the physical universe, but to be able in the sense of the little individual universes that you and I live in, in our world, in my kitchen, in my living room, in my neighborhood, in my friendships, in my relationships.

The word Jehovah tells us that. He is the One that would be personally involved with us. We're studying those names of Jehovah, the compound names of Jehovah, and today we come to Jehovah Shalom. Jehovah Shalom: The Lord is Peace. The first thing we need to know about God being peace is that it's His nature. Just as it's His nature to be Almighty, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, it is His nature to be peace.

Jehovah in Himself is perfect peace. That doesn't mean that He isn't grieved at sin, moved to anger at evil, or feels sorrow for our sorrows. In other words, the Bible says, "In all our affliction, He was afflicted." It doesn't mean that He doesn't feel these things. Yet none of these things disturb or destroy or unsteady Him. He has this perfect balance in His divine nature that means He can't be upset by anything, never surprised to the state of being pushed over the edge into being out of control.

In that sense, God is perfect peace. None of these things disturb Him, even though He is able to feel the anger at sin and evil and to feel the sorrow of our sorrows. It does not unsteady Him. It's that word I like when I think of God: He is not unready. He is rock firm. I see that peace in people. Actually, I see that peace in my husband. Stuart has a sense of what I'm talking about today. As I was thinking of illustrations, I think I would say personally that my husband has demonstrated for me the peace of God in his life.

Not that there is not sorrow, not that there is not anger, not that there is not grieving, but it doesn't disturb or destroy the peace of God that somehow is at place in that man. With that comes peace for other people. It reminds me of the storm at sea. Jesus was in a boat and there was a big storm. He calmed the sea. It says that there were with that particular boat other little ships, and when the sea was calmed by Jesus in that boat, the calm came to the other little ships around.

Maybe that's a good little story for a mom who is surrounded with other little ships bobbing up and down, and there's a pretty big storm going on in your home and your life. If the peace of God can be Jehovah Himself in His presence for He is peace within my heart, then those other little ships around me will know the peace that comes because the peace has come to me. The peace will come to others. Jehovah is peace. He is steady.

Now, He could never give others a peace that passes understanding if He were not perfect, unfailing peace Himself. That stands to reason. The peace that passes understanding that the Bible talks about, all of us can understand certain sorts of peace: the peace when everything's in order in our lives, the peace when everything's going our way, the peace when we are happy, the peace when we are healthy, the peace when things are good, the peace when there's money coming in and we have a job.

But the peace that passes understanding, when nothing's going right, when somebody's died in our lives, or a relationship is dead and buried that we held very dear, can we understand that peace? No, we can't. That takes God to make peace in a heart when everything else says there shouldn't be any. The peace that passes understanding. Jehovah in His nature is peace. Secondly, it's His desire that you and I really enjoy that peace. He desires we know the peace He knows. He really does.

"Peace I give unto you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Jesus wants us to experience the peace. Jehovah wants us to have His peace, to know it as He knows it, to be that person that is steady, to have that perfect balance within, not always to be being tipped over the edge when something untoward happens.

So what is this peace then that He is? What does the Hebrew word mean? Well, it's not necessarily the absence of conflict. Augustine's definition is my favorite, too: the tranquility of order. That's peace. The tranquility of order. Getting it all together. I've just been on a campus and I've been learning some new terms. I've been trying to learn those, and I can't even remember any of them now, so I haven't learned them very well.

But I do know when I came to the States and I was trying to learn new phrases, I used to hear, "Get it all together." I don't know whether the kids still say that now. Get it all together. In England, I used to say, "Pull your socks up." That's what it means. Pull your socks up, get it together. God has got it all together. He is together, and nothing will ever disturb that. Now, that is a huge thing to know about God, because it doesn't matter how much you're falling apart. He doesn't, He isn't, and He never will.

He is perfectly, tranquilly in place, in order. Whatever happens, when this world blows up, which it will one day at His command for it is to be destroyed eventually by fire, He will not be disturbed by that. When the universe and the sky and the universes are wrapped up like a scroll, which we're told will happen, He will not be disturbed by that. Nothing, but nothing, can disturb God. Now, just imagine if He can lend us that undisturbed quality of His nature.

What a difference that's going to make to our lives. The word is often translated in the Bible, Shalom is often translated in the Old Testament as wholeness or finished-ness or fullness, a sense of completeness is explained to us through this word. Welfare, it's often translated, the welfare. "Tell me about the welfare of your family," the Shalom of your family. It's often translated wellness. We hear a lot about wellness now; we have wellness seminars. Where does that come from? Well, of course, it comes from Jehovah who is perfect wellness in Himself.

Twenty times it's translated perfect, mature, wholeness, harmony. But 170 times it's translated peace. Where it's translated peace in the Old Testament, it's usually in relation to peace offerings, speaking of a harmony of a relationship or a reconciliation based on the completion of the payment of a debt and the giving of satisfaction because the debt has been paid. It's in Leviticus and all of those areas of our Bible that talk about the peace offerings that you see the word Shalom written all over the pages of our Bible.

Every time you read about the blood sacrifice, the peace offering, the Shalom offering, the Shalom offering, you get the idea that it took blood to bring peace. There was a price for peace, and Jehovah Himself paid it. Peace lost by the fall was restored through Jehovah Jireh, the lamb that God provided. Remember? The word peace expresses the deepest desire of the human heart and the way that God met it. When you read about the peace offerings that are given at the Temple, the blood is shed, the life is given.

Then the meat is given back to the family that God and man may enjoy together that meal, symbolizing that God and man are at one, at one together. A very meaningful thing. Shalom. The Lord is peace. The Lord tells us He's peace, how? By His names, and that's what we're talking about, isn't it? How God reveals Himself through His names. The great name of the Messiah, what is it? The Prince of Peace. His name shall be Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

When our God reigns over our lives, His Prince within brings us His peace. Jerusalem, the city of peace, that's what the name means, the city of the King who is the Prince of Peace. The name itself means City of Peace. Shalom is the word that is most common in the form of greeting in Bible lands. Whenever you go to the Bible lands, you'll see the Israelis walking around with guns on their backs saying, "Shalom." So it does not mean the absence of conflict. What are they saying in the midst of conflict, carrying a gun around? Peace. Peace.

It's their wish, it's their hope, it's what they're striving for themselves. Everyone's looking for peace. Everyone's looking for inner tranquility. Everybody's looking for peace of mind. Jehovah's presence is a peaceful thing. What a wonderful thing to tell people, that we have a God that can give them peace of mind. Do you know anyone that needs peace of mind? Then why don't you introduce them to a whole bunch of people that are saying in essence, "I know Jehovah, and He has given me peace of mind."

Peace of mind is a wonderful thing to enjoy when there's absolutely no human reason. Christians are saying, "I have peace. I don't understand it, but there is a tranquility of order in my life." I was looking in Time magazine for some illustrations of people looking for peace, and of course, I didn't have very far to look. You don't have to look beyond the billboards and the paper every day. But I did come up with this particular picture of the man in Wall Street who was hearing the news over the tape.

He's sitting there with his head in his hands. It says, "After the fall." I thought, "Which fall?" But they meant the fall on Wall Street, obviously, not the fall I was thinking of. But after the fall, man was sitting with his head in his hands in Genesis days. Now, one of the results of that general fall of man into sin and alienation from God, one of the results of that is chaos in our relationships, in our world, in our dealings. Here you have, in a very practical sense, chaos in our monetary, practical things.

The man's got his head in his hands. I just picked out a few phrases from that article: "Now it's the morning after and the dream of painless prosperity has been punctured. The crash of the market shattered the American sense of financial security. For many of the Wall Street whiz kids, the first taste of financial fear was experienced. For others, a gnawing unease about not only their investments but also the health of their nation." It's that gnawing unease that we can speak to.

We have reason to have a gnawing unease about the health of our nation, we are told at this moment. But in the midst of the conflict, we can know Jehovah who is our peace. Jehovah is our peace. Secondly, Jehovah brings peace. The background to the story of Gideon, which is where we find this little incident, is a very interesting background. Joshua has died. He has led the people into the Promised Land. The land has been divided and more or less conquered. There are still people to be overcome, there is still ground to be claimed.

But the people are living in the land of Canaan, but there's no national unity whatsoever. There is no peace among the different tribes that Moses and Joshua led out in this great big bunch of people that seemed to have a unity. Now they are scattered in all these different places in Canaan. There is no central government. There is no unity of purpose. Even the tribes begin to fight each other and bicker over property and whose garden finishes and the next one begins, and where this land starts and where the next one was.

"Joshua gave me this," "No, he didn't," "Moses said this." All this rumbling is going on, all this chaos. There is no central government. There is no central worship, which is more important. Everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. So they began to intermarry, and the people became a snare to them. They began to worship their gods, even though Jehovah had leaned out of heaven quite a few years earlier and said, "I am Jehovah M’Kaddesh." That's another name that we're not going to have time to look at.

Jehovah M’Kaddesh: I am the Lord who sets you apart, the Lord who sanctifies, the Lord who keeps you this people untouched because I am going to make of you a missionary nation and I'm going to send my perfect servant to this Jewish nation to bring hope and help and salvation to the world. Even though God had tried to tell them that there is a sense of peace when we do set ourselves apart, when we are sanctified, when we are God's special, precious people and we should keep ourselves untouched by the world in that sense.

Even though God had tried to do that, it wasn't happening. By the time we get to this story, there's a mess in Israel. It's just a big mess. So God gave them over to these nations and they got into trouble, and they became into bondage. They began to cry out to God, and every time they cried out to God, He gave them a judge. He gave them a leader. When we get to the Book of Judges and we start right at the beginning of Judges 3, we see the sort of leaders that God was raising up.

You need to read Judges 3, 4, 5, and 6 because it's probably a part of your Bible that maybe some of you are not very familiar with. It's very interesting. Let me just give you a few of the things that were happening. In 3:1 it says, "These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan. He did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience: the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, the Hivites living in the Lebanon mountains."

These were left to test the Israelites, to see whether they would obey the Lord's commands which He had given their forefathers. War toughens you. Tests toughen. God will leave us enemies around us to prove the nature and the caliber of our spiritual experience. So the Israelites lived among these people. They took their daughters in marriage even though they'd been told not to by Moses. They gave their own daughters to their sons and served their gods.

So the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God. They served the Baals and the Asherahs. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that He sold them into the hands of others. Every time the Israelites cried out because they didn't like the king that had come and conquered them, God raised up a man. The Lord gave the king of Aram into the hands of Othniel who overpowered him. So the land had peace for 40 years until Othniel died. Once again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

Because they did evil in the eyes of the Lord, the Lord gave Eglon, king of Moab, power over them. Then he describes what happened there, and then the Israelites cried to the Lord. When the Israelites cried to the Lord, then the Lord raised up the next judge. There was this fellow Othniel who was Caleb's grandson. I love that little touch there. Caleb was the man who wholly followed the Lord in Canaan. Caleb and Joshua were the only adults from the old group of people that came into the Promised Land.

All the children that had been born in the desert came into the Promised Land. God did not allow the people because of their rebellion who had come out of Egypt to enter the Promised Land, and that included Moses. But Caleb and Joshua wholly followed the Lord, and they led the children who had been born in those 40 years, the young people, into the Promised Land. These are the people who are now being spoken about in the Bible in the Book of Judges.

Othniel was Caleb's grandson. That godly heritage is seen here, and he became a judge and went to war, it says. He became a judge and went to war. It's just a little phrase. He began to fight for God and fight for the people of Israel. That lasted about eight years or so, and then he died. Then the Israelites fell back again. Then Ehud came into being. He was a judge. He did very well for a time, and then he died. What happened? The Israelites went back to their old shenanigans.

God had to raise up Shamgar. In verse 31, you'll find him. He killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad. He was a Rambo, you know. He ran around and got rid of 600 of them. Then God raised up a woman, and she was just as hard-nosed and gory as all the rest of them. Deborah led Israel, she was judge in Israel. Barak was the head of her commanding forces, and she told him to go and have a battle with Sisera. He said, "Well, I'll only go if you'll go with me."

She said, "Well, all right, I'll go with you. If you won't go without me, I'll go. But they won't say you won the war, Barak; they'll say a woman won it. Is that all right?" Well, apparently, he said it was all right because he wouldn't go without her. Off they went, and they did a great job. Sisera ran away and he was exhausted, and a woman called Jael took him in. This lady, Jael, spelled J-A-E-L, saw Sisera running away, and she put him in the tent.

She said, "I'll look after you." He said, "Thank you very much, and cover me up if my enemies come because Deborah and Barak are on my heels." Jael said, "Sure." So she waited till he was asleep and then she took a tent peg and hammered it through his head. Those were cruel days, and human flesh was cheap. There was a lot happening of this sort of thing. I mean, wouldn't you have thought people that lived in those sort of days needed to hear a message like this: "I'm peace. I can bring the tranquility of order. I can get hold of all this gory mess, put it back in place."

Well, the next judge after Deborah was Gideon. The Midianites were then in charge of Israel. Israel had done very well under Deborah; she led them well. But when her time was over, they did evil in the sight of the Lord. You see this pattern all the way through the Book of Judges. God raised up Gideon because the Midianites were giving them a real hard time. In Judges 6, you've got the Midianites coming down and setting fire to all the crops of the Israelites and having little guerrilla raids and carrying off their women and their children as slaves.

Coming here and coming there. Israel's got its back to the walls. Israel is in apostasy. They have put up these poles, these Asherah poles, and they're worshipping the goddesses that they represent. They're sacrificing bulls to Baal. Gideon came from the ruling family, from the people that should have been showing the way. His father should have been, seeing he was a prince and had many sons, the one that was calling Israel back to God, but he wasn't doing it.

So we meet Gideon. Gideon is frightened. Gideon doesn't have a sense of personal peace in his life. We see this because in chapter 6, he's threshing wheat in a winepress, verse 11. You don't thresh wheat in a winepress; you thresh wheat in the open air, on a hill, because you need to throw it up in the air and let the wind carry away the chaff. It's very hard to thresh wheat inside in a winepress, probably in a cave. But because Gideon was frightened, he was doing this.

The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the tree and watched him doing this outside the cave in verse 11 and 12. He said, "The Lord is with you, O mighty warrior." I think he had his tongue in his cheek. "O mighty man of valor, the Lord is with you." There was Gideon hiding in his cave threshing his wheat. Look at his answer, verse 13: "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Didn't the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."

"Sure," says Gideon, "the Lord is with us. So where is He? Where's He been hiding, and what's He been doing? Why am I threshing wheat in a winepress because of the Midianites? Why are the Midianites here? Don't tell me the Lord is with me. Why has all this happened to us?" Do you ever hear anybody say that? There was no sense in Gideon's heart of peace. There was personal conflict there. Until God brings personal peace for our personal conflict, we cannot bring peace to anyone else.

God was going to raise up this man Gideon, so He needed to first deal with him personally. That's how God works. He deals with us personally that He might help all those other little boats around us who are part of the storm of life of which we're a part. So the angel of the Lord comes and says, "The Lord is with you, mighty man of valor," etc. He says, "But sir, but sir." Watch it when God comes to you and says, "I'm with you." Don't start your "buts." But this, but that, but the other.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" in other words, he asked. When I was at Taylor this week, one of the staff members was telling me that she has twin boys. I was looking at the pictures of these babies. She said, "I did have a little boy who was four, but I got into a little bit of depression after the birth of the twins." I believe it's quite normal to go through that. Maybe anybody would be depressed if they had twins, I don't know, but it was more than the normal thought: "What am I going to do with twins?"

She got into quite a bad depression, so her husband decided to take the little four-year-old away just for a week and give her a break. Her mother came in and took the twins, and she was just going to have time for herself. Well, the husband took a busload of students and the little four-year-old down to somewhere down south which was pretty isolated. They were going to have some meetings there. The little boy began to get sick and he began to vomit very badly, and there wasn't a hospital nearby.

They just thought he was sick, but it was a very serious problem inside his intestines, and early in the morning, the little boy died. She was telling me all this in tears, and I was listening to her and wondering what on earth I could say. She said, "You know, how could this happen? I've just got so many questions, I'm so angry. Here we are in the Lord's work, doing His work. Why would God allow this to happen to my child when we're in full-time Christian work? 'Sure the Lord is with me. Sure the Lord is with me.' Then how come all this has happened to me?"

Exactly the same thing. That's what I did. I just said, "Well, on Thursday, I'm going to be talking about this. Why don't we look at these passages of Scripture together and see if we can find some answers?" There is personal conflict in our lives if there are those angry questions, perhaps. God needs to bring us His sense of personal peace before we'll ever be able to be a judge of Israel or be able to go out and fight the war with the Midianites.

Perhaps if we're still angry in our heart or bitter about something that's happened, then we have to ask ourselves, "Do I really believe that Jehovah is Shalom? Is He my Shalom?" If He isn't, then maybe like Gideon, you can say, "Well, but sir," and then listen to His answer. The answer is very simple: Go in the strength that you have. Just start and work out of your anger. Just take the little faith you've got left.

He doesn't say go in the strength and the power that you have not, but just take the little bit of faith you have left and begin to work again outwards instead of disappearing inside, asking all these questions, hiding in the cave threshing your wheat in the winepress. So Gideon begins to ask for signs, and that's what we do so often, isn't it? "Give me a sign," verse 17. "So I really know it's you talking to me. Give me a little sign. I mean, is this all in my head? Is this in my imagination? Just give me some encouragement, give me a sign."

Jehovah is very happy to do that. He takes the meal that Gideon has prepared for him, and fire comes from heaven and consumes the offering. In this moment, Gideon's eyes are opened and he sees that this is indeed the angel of the Lord, that he has been talking to Jehovah in a manifestation of Jehovah in human form. His eyes have been hidden from this at this point. He knows that this is some strange messenger, he's not sure if it's from God. "Give me a sign so I might really know it's God that's talking to me."

God reveals Himself to him, verse 22. "O Sovereign Lord," says Gideon, "I've seen the angel of the Lord, or I've seen the angel of Jehovah, face to face." But Jehovah said to him, "Peace, Shalom. Don't be afraid, you're not going to die. For no man can see the face of God and live," the Bible says. Yet Jehovah said, "I will give you the ability to have seen my face." So Jehovah reveals Himself. "Yes, it's really me telling you, this go in my strength, in my peace."

So he asked for the sign and he receives it. Immediately, God tells him to go to his family and begin there. When we have had our personal conflicts resolved, we then have to go and tackle our family conflicts. He is told, verse 24, after he's built his altar to the Lord and called it "The Lord is Peace," Jehovah Shalom, "that same night Jehovah said to him, 'Now, take the second bull from your father's herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father's altar to Baal, cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the pole that you've cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.'"

So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town, he did it at night rather than in the daytime. Do you blame him? I mean, this is his father's pet bull he's about to sacrifice, and this is his father's pet religion he's about to tear down. He is very frightened of family conflict. But he has peace within, remember, and that's what makes the difference. Okay? Personal peace helps you to face family conflict.

Some of us find it really hard to sacrifice the family bull, to break down the family's religious beliefs, because we love them so much and we've too much respect for those that we love. But peace at any price doesn't bring eternal peace to the souls of those we love. Peace at any price does not bring eternal peace to the souls of those we love. I really know what I'm talking about here because for years I struggled with this. I love my family so much, my mom and my dad, and I respected them so much that to cut down their beliefs, to sacrifice their family bull, was a huge battle for me.

I remember my mother saying to me at one point, "I feel a thousand miles away from you, Jill." There we were sitting about two feet away from each other, but I knew what she meant, and I couldn't say anything. Didn't Jesus say, "I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword"? Now am I contradicting myself? No, because the very fact that you are trying to be what God wants you to be in the midst of your family is going to automatically bring that sword of division between those who know Jehovah as their peace and those that do not.

So there will be conflicts in families, funnily enough, because you have found Jehovah who is peace. It's a parody, but there it is. For years and years and years, it was the hardest thing for me to do. My mother would say things to me like, "Jill, I can't believe you really believe there's a place called hell and people are going there. I can't believe you believe so-and-so isn't a Christian. I mean, how could you think such awful thoughts? Do that?" It was so hard for me to sacrifice the family bull, to take the Asherah pole.

Yet I had to face over and over again, the only hope I have of bringing eternal peace to the people that I really love more than anyone else in life is to do it and to take the consequences. Many times I did it at night. I was afraid. I didn't come out in the open. I'd try and find a way to do it so that there wouldn't be conflict. But when I was really true to God and I really said, "Mother, I would give anything to tell you that there is no place such as hell, and that if we do not trust Christ, we're going there—you, me, Dad, Shirley. But because I love you, I have to tell you there is. I really believe it. Jesus said there was. I'm sorry to cut down your beliefs, your precious religious beliefs. But if they're going to take you to hell, I have to do it because I love you."

That's hard. Yet I can testify that there was a sense of order in my heart. Oh, there was sorrow upon sorrow. There was a sense of anger at sin, there was a grieving. But God held me together inside. The tranquility of order was there even as I stood in the midst of a lot of family conflict because of this particular conflict of religious beliefs. Gideon faced this. Can God, can Jehovah Shalom, be my Jehovah Shalom in the midst of family conflicts? Yes, He can. He was for Gideon, He has been for me, and He can be for you.

Well, after the personal conflict, after the family conflict, he's ready to face the world. He gets out there, and God says, "Go get the Midianites!" He gets all the armies together, thousands and thousands of people, and he looks how many there are. He says, "Oh, boy, I hope I've got enough men in my army." God says, "Well, I got news for Gideon, you've got too many men in your army." He said, "What do you mean? Even with all the thousands of men I've amassed, the Midianites are like grasshoppers in the valley!"

God said, "Yes, they are, but there's just too many men. Get rid of some of them. Get rid of thousands of them. All those that are afraid, send them home. They're no good to me, can't use them." Trembling, Gideon did it. Then God said, "How many more have you got left? Too many. Take them down to the river, see which of them drink burying their thirsty heads in the water and who scoops up the water and drinks like this because they're watching for the enemy. Take those men, the 300 that are left out of these thousands of your army, and together God and they will rout the Midianites."

Gideon said, "Okay, you got to show me a sign. If you expect me to do that stupid thing, try and fight an army of millions with 300 men, show me a sign." Who can blame him? He puts his little fleece out and he says, "Let it be wet in the morning, and if it's wet I'll do it." Well, it was wet. So he puts it out and says, "Let it be dry. Let all the ground around it be wet, and let it be dry." So it was. He did it again.

I mean, God was so gracious to this guy. He gave him encouragement and sign after sign. Then He even let him sneak down to the army and hear a man tell a dream. This dream, the guy says, "We're going to be beaten. Gideon's going to beat us." Then he sneaks back again. I mean, God was so encouraging, and God always is, because there is a war out there and there is a conflict and the enemy's great. But He'll give us help. He'll give us guidance. He'll encourage us.

So they set off. How do you beat the Midianites? You beat them with vision, with faith. You find the personal peace for yourself. You deal with the conflict in the family by making your stand for God and doing what you know you should do. Then you get out there in the world, and you are personally convinced that God is with you and God is sending you. Then you find some people to go with you, 300, a nucleus, not a mass of people.

In the ministry, you would just go under if you expected to do it with the mass. God doesn't work like that. He works with the twelve. He works with the nucleus. He works with the three. Look for the three, look for the 300 men, look for someone who has like minds as you to fight the war against Satan. Then go get them, and don't worry about the mass of people that aren't coming with you. Don't worry about the people that quote "aren't committed."

Find your committed nucleus who will pray with you, who will go with you, who will have a Christmas coffee with you. It'll only be one or two, you'll have to search for them, but find them because they're the 300. It's the 300 that are going to get the Midianites off your back. So with the 300 men, they went out there and they had a lamp in their hand. It was hidden with a jar, and they had a trumpet. Gideon said, "Keep your eyes on me, do what I do."

That's what Jesus says to us: "Keep your eyes on me, do what I do." You go out there, and at the time He tells you, you lift up your voice, you break the jar, and the light shines out. All the enemy is very confused because there's a ring of light around them, which makes them think that there is a whole army. They break forth into panic and they kill each other and they all run off, and the war is won.

How do you get rid of the Midianites? How do we fight the world war that is the war against evil? After receiving our personal sense of peace, making our stand in our family in the midst of conflict, bringing them as best we can, God helping us, His peace. Then we get out there and we live a broken life because the jars had to be broken before the light could shine. Then we lift up our voice like a trumpet, and we say, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." We say, "In the name of Jehovah," and we go in His name, in His strength, and the battle will be won.

Jehovah is peace: personal peace, peace in family conflict, peace in our world where there is no peace. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are peace in Your nature, in Yourself, that You bring peace. You brought it to us because of the cross. The peace was not without price, the price of the peace offering: Christ Himself. As we share that knowledge deep within ourselves, we are intent on saying thank You. But we are like Gideon; we're frightened of the Midianites, we're scared of our families and the conflict that this might bring. We sure don't feel that we're mighty men of valor and can take on the Midianites.

But You've shown us through this simple story, a real story of real people, that You are who You say You are, that You can bring us personal peace. You can help us to do Your will, even if it's at night at first, in a scared sort of way. That we can give You what we have, not what we haven't: a little flicker of faith. We can pick up our jars and light our lamps, take up our trumpet and take our place out there in the world. Teach us what it means to live a broken life, that Your light might shine into the darkness and that the forces of evil may run away. Teach us what it is to lift up our voice like a trumpet for God and for His cause. We ask it that peace may come to our world in our time for God's sake, for Jehovah Shalom's sake. Amen.